Honor introduces the first smartphone with in-screen camera and 48MP main shooter

Look out Samsung and Huawei. It appears that Honor has beaten them to the punch in revealing an all-screen smartphone with a tiny cut-out-hole for the front camera. The device is the Honor V20 which is likely to be called the Honor View 20 in global markets. 

As manufactures are trying to kill the notch, a cut-out-hole on the display is seen as an alternative solution to the front camera conundrum. According to Honor, the camera hole on the V20 is only 4.5mm in diameter and it is placed at the top left corner of the LCD display. Surprisingly, there’s no mention of its front camera specs but Engadget has reported that the camera app indicated 25MP resolution on the demo unit. 

For its main camera at the rear, the Honor V20 will be using Sony’s new IMX586 sensor that pushes a resolution of 48MP. It has a 1/2.0″ sensor size and it supports 4-in-1 “Light Fusion”. Each pixel has a size of 0.8-micron which can be combined to create a larger 1.6-micron pixel size for better low light performance. As a result, it can produce a high detail 12MP image that’s further enhanced with AI. This is somewhat similar to Huawei P20 Pro’s 40MP camera that produces a clear 10MP image. 

Interestingly, Xiaomi had recently teased an incoming smartphone with a 48MP camera that’s due early next year. This could be the same Sony sensor as the Honor V20. Under the hood, the V20 runs on Huawei’s top of the line Kirin 980 that comes with dual NPU for faster AI performance.

Another new feature is Link Turbo which allows you to experience download speeds by combining both WiFi and 4G LTE connectivity. If your WiFi connection is slow, it can intelligently switch to 4G for faster downloads.

It is worth pointing out that Samsung has a similar feature called Download Booster. It was introduced since the Galaxy S5 but it’s limited to downloads via Galaxy Apps and PlayStore. 

Details for the rest of the phone’s hardware such as RAM, storage, battery and screen resolution are still unknown. The announcement is seen as an opportunity for Honor to claim “first” before Samsung announces the Galaxy A8s tomorrow. 

The actual launch of the V20 is happening in Beijing on 26 December. Meanwhile, the global launch is set to take place on 22nd January 2019 in Paris.

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