This has been an absolutely wonderful year for technology enthusiasts in India, particularly people who bought or are looking to buy affordable or mid-range phones – which is most people.
In order to outdo each other, brands have been constantly churning out new options spread across different price segments. Honor 20 which debuted as a covetable flagship is now available for a very attractive price of Rs. 22,999. Taking in this fresh perspective, let’s pitch the handset against another popular mid-range option, the OnePlus 7, in order to help you decide which one would be the better buy for your specific needs.
Design and Display
Design-wise, Honor 20 and OnePlus 7 clad a gradient outfit. But, both phones have a different approach to it. Honor 20 conjured in the Dynamic Holographic Design, which is a three-dimensional glass sandwich with vivid colors and diamond prism patterns. It’s also noticeably lighter and more compact, and consequently more comfortable to handle.
OnePlus, on the other hand, shares a similar design language as its predecessors. The novelty comes in the way of two new colors – Red and Mirror Gray. Off the two hues, Gray one’s the less glaring one.
Flip to the front and we have the same pain point with the OnePlus 7 that we have with its overall looks. It’s definitely a good one but feels a lot overdone and old news. Yes, the blame is on the v-shaped notch. Gladly, Honor introduced the Hole Punch, which is distinct and relatively modern.
On the display front, OnePlus sports a 16.28 cm (6.41-inch) FHD+ Optic AMOLED panel, whereas Honor happens to have a 15.90 cm (6.26-inch) FHD+ IPS LCD screen. Both of them offer a pleasant viewing experience, we leave it to your choice. You won’t go wrong with either.
Notably, there are no capacitive fingerprint readers on the front and back of both the handsets. OnePlus has improved the in-display fingerprint reader, which is quicker than you would think. But the interesting application is on the Honor phone. You see the power button on the Honor 20 acts as a fingerprint reader too, which in our opinion is a smart utilization of space. Capacitive readers are known to be more reliable than optical readers, especially in the long run.
Camera comparison
Both, the Honor 20 and OnePlus 7, employ the same Sony IMX586 48MP sensor – veritably the most loved camera sensor of the year 2019 – in the lead. On the OnePlus 7, the camera is paired with a 5MP depth sensor that’s used for enhancing portrait shots.
Honor 20, on the other hand, has a much more versatile quad-camera system. You get an additional 16MP wide-angle camera, a 2MP depth sensor, and a 2MP snapper with a macro lens (In fact, Honor 20 was the first phone in India to debut with a dedicated macro camera).
The ability to shoot artistic wide-angle landscapes and close-ups with macro sensor are quite in trend and something that users wouldn’t want to miss out on at this point in time.
But it’s not just the hardware. Honor 20 benefits from all the work Huawei has put in over the years in refining its image processing algorithms and Camera AI and these abilities are further fine-tuned with its Kirin 980 chipset that has a dedicated NPU. The end result is better consistency over OnePlus 7, as the Honor 20 can accurately judge a scene and effortlessly churn out excellent, balanced images every single time!
Honor also has a clear lead with selfies. The 32MP sensor used on the Honor 20 outright overshadows the 16MP selfie snapper on the OnePlus 7.
Performance and Software
Now, let’s compare the performance hardware at the heart of Honor 20 and OnePlus 7. Both these phones are evenly matched in terms of hardware. The Honor 20 is powered by Huawei’s 7nm octa-core Kirin 980 and the OnePlus 7T employs the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processors. Both of these mobile processors are amongst the best in the business. Where the Honor 20 has an advantage over the OnePlus 7 is its GPU Turbo 3.0 technology which significantly elevates the gaming experience on the former.
OnePlus’s Oxygen OS and EMUI are both among the best software in the market today. Oxygen is much closer to vanilla android and the Magic 2.1 presents a fresh take and integrates a plethora of extras that let you tweak the interface to your individual liking.
What makes the Magic UI stand out is its stability and consistency. That’s because Huawei engineers both the software and hardware in-house and the Honor 20 benefits from the resulting system-level optimizations. For users, this means no unwanted surprises or random stutters. Everything works as it should. Delightfully, the brand has recently announced Magic UI 3.0 for the phone and we can only expect it to better our experience with this update.
Battery
As for the battery, the two phones are quite evenly matched. The OnePlus 7 has a 3700mAh power unit, while the battery on the Honor 20 has a slightly higher rated capacity of 3750mAh.
Both HONOR 20 and OnePlus 7 have 20W warp charging. But, owing to a more power efficient hardware-software combo and an advanced battery management system, the Honor 20 gets the limelight in battery department as well.
Verdict
OnePlus 7 can’t quite keep up in a lot of areas. Honor 20 clearly offers a better experience and much better value. It would be wrong if we do not tell you this that the Honor 20 is coming on Amazon for the first time and as a launch offer price, the product will be sold at a steal price of INR 22,999 from November 26 (Amazon launch date) to November 29. Trust us, you wouldn’t want to miss this opportunity!
