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00:00Hey, how's it going? Dave2D here. So the P20 and the P20 Pro are phones that you probably know of by now because of their cameras.
00:10The P20 Pro in particular has the highest score in the smartphone market right now.
00:14So I'm going to focus most of this video on the P20 Pro, not so much the P20.
00:18Still a great phone, still a great camera, but my experience that I want to talk about is with the P20 Pro.
00:23Okay, before I get into the camera, I want to spend like a minute talking about the phone as a whole.
00:27AMOLED screen is really nice. It's bright and the colors are on point.
00:31At first, I was disappointed at the lower resolution. It's not a 1440p screen, it's a 1080p screen,
00:36but I think they made the right choice because for one, it extends battery life and the image looks really, really good on the screen,
00:41despite the lower resolution. The other thing I really like about this phone is the battery life.
00:45They claim it to be a two-day battery. I wouldn't go so far as to call it that,
00:48but it'll easily pass one day of battery life, even with heavy use.
00:52The Honor 970 in here isn't the fastest chip out there. The Snapdragon 845 is faster, but it is still a really fast chip.
00:58If I'm being honest though, I feel like this chip does gimp the camera a little bit.
01:01You lose stuff like image stabilization at higher frame rates and higher resolutions,
01:05but it is a fast and powerful chip otherwise.
01:08The software EMUI, I don't love it. There's still some duplicate apps, but for a skin, it's not bad.
01:13The last thing I want to talk about is the color of the device.
01:15So a lot of the publications and videos that you've seen have the twilight color,
01:19which looks really good in photos and even better in videos,
01:22but realistically speaking, it's a very obnoxious color.
01:25Like if you're thinking of actually buying one of these things for personal use,
01:27I'd go for a black or blue and maybe skin it, because that twilight color is just, it's loud.
01:32Okay, the camera. The reason why I even got this phone was because of the camera.
01:37It's gotten a ton of praise from publications, and based on the DXO mark,
01:40it's going to be a better camera than the Pixel 2 XL and the Galaxy S9+.
01:44But after using this thing for three weeks, I gotta say, it's a great camera, but it's not for me.
01:49Let me explain why.
01:50Now first, there's one really cool thing about this camera system.
01:53It's the low-light photography.
01:55A lot of companies talk a big talk when it comes to low-light photos,
01:58but the P20 Pro is phenomenal for low-light images.
02:01It uses something called Night Shot,
02:03and the way that it works is that you hold your camera still for a little bit,
02:06it collects some image data, software analyzes it, and it turns into this really clean image.
02:11It's really impressive to me, and it seems pretty simple, but it's super smart.
02:14I wouldn't be surprised if other phone companies just rip this idea off, because it is really good.
02:19Now, the camera on the whole is a very good camera,
02:22but the image processing can be way too aggressive for my taste.
02:25Whenever there's a face in the photo, in portrait, or even in photo mode,
02:28whatever they're applying to the image just doesn't look good to me.
02:31The faces look really plastic to me, and even the skin tone feels off.
02:35The Pixel 2 and the S9+. cameras have this nice warmth to the skin.
02:39Not that it's, like, a reddish warmth or anything like that,
02:41there's just, like, there's something about the skin that looks more natural, I guess,
02:45on the S9 and the Pixel 2 XL cameras.
02:47On the P20 Pro, there's this greeny, waxy tint to the skin,
02:51and these issues are even more pronounced with my kid.
02:53Now, he's really young.
02:54A lot of facial expression when you're young comes from the subtle lighting differences on the skin,
02:58and the P20 Pro removes a lot of it, and this is with the beauty level set to zero,
03:02which I honestly think is the big problem.
03:04If it's set to zero, it should be zero, like, it shouldn't exist at all,
03:08but you can't remove it, like, you can't disable that beautifying feature from the automatic modes.
03:14You can remove it if you're willing to shoot RAW in Pro mode,
03:16but that means you have to spend the time to dial in each photo,
03:19and then tweak your RAW file in post, but that's just not what most people want.
03:22That's certainly not what I want.
03:23I want a camera that can take a good photo, particularly of skin, in automatic mode,
03:28and this camera just doesn't do it very well.
03:30Now, I've been told that in the Asian market,
03:32there's this obsession with having perfect skin when it comes to smartphone cameras,
03:36so they have this big emphasis on skin smoothening,
03:38but there should be the ability to turn it off completely, and there isn't,
03:41because even at zero, there's a pretty thick coat of, like, beauty sauce,
03:45or whatever they're putting on this thing.
03:46Now, the camera in daylight photos is also a little over-sharpened sometimes,
03:50and I'm going to crop in again to show it,
03:52but if there's an area of very high contrast, something just looks off.
03:55It's just too sharp. It just looks artificial,
03:58and it's a look that I think some people might like, but again, it's just not for me.
04:01Fortunately, this isn't in every photo.
04:03Most of the daylight photos it took looked really good,
04:05but I wouldn't say that they looked significantly better than the photos it took
04:08on the Pixel 2 XL or the Samsung S9+,
04:11which was a little weird because that DxO mark was just so much higher than the other two cameras,
04:16so I thought there would be a significant difference, but I didn't really find there to be one.
04:19I'm not saying that the P20 Pro is a bad camera or a bad phone.
04:23Far from it. I think it's a great camera. I think it's a great phone,
04:26but I think that DxO mark score is not really representative of how good the camera actually is.
04:31So, when you look at DxO mark, I mean Marques did a great video on this,
04:34but it's like they're trying to create an objective rating for smartphone cameras,
04:39but it has its limitations.
04:40The processing that you're seeing in this camera clearly excels at scoring well in the test,
04:44but for the images that I take, I just don't find the images to look all that pleasing.
04:48So if you're someone that takes a lot of low-light photos, this is a great camera.
04:51It's probably the best camera for low-light photos,
04:54and if you're someone that takes photos and you don't mind some heavy-handed processing,
04:57also a great camera, also a great phone,
05:00but if you're someone that takes a lot of photos of people, like if you have family members, friends,
05:04or if you're a parent and you take a lot of photos of your kids,
05:07I just don't think it's the ideal camera for it.
05:09I would recommend the Pixel 2 XL or the Samsung S9+,
05:12because those have better cameras to me for human skin.
05:15Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it.
05:18See you guys next time.