Huawei's cheap P20 Lite has a notch, is up for preorder
Huawei already invited us to a March 27th event, where it is expected to unveil its next flagship - the P20 - and its P20 Pro and P20 Lite sidekicks, as has become its habit in the last few years. What piqued our interest in the first leaked renders and images of the devices, is that one of them, dubbed to be a prototype, showed a very iPhone X-esque cutout at the top bezel, and a vertical dual camera set on the back, again resembling Apple's finest handset so far.
Well, that notch-y presence has bee confirmed by official renders that leaked not long ago, and today, the P20 Lite went for preorder in the country of Poland with all of its specs and features listed, pegging it squarely as Huawei's affordable alternative to the iPhone X. At the equivalent of $440, the phone hosts a 5.84" LCD (yes, LCD) screen with 1080 x 2280 pixels resolution, returning the robust 423ppi pixel density - well, apart from the top screen cutout, of course. The notch has allowed Huawei to keep the dimensions of the P20 Lite very, very compact at 5.85 x 2.80 x 0.29 inches (148.6 x 71.2 x 7.4 mm), with a rather bearable 5.11 oz (145 g) of weight.
It also houses the 16MP selfie snapper and sensors that allow Huawei to implement a Face Unlock feature of sorts, logging in 96 face points. The company claims that the its face-detection system sports anti-cheating algorithms, and will probably blame some sort of AI for this. The selfie wonders don't stop here, though, as Huawei also offers Studio Light Effects, similar to Apple's feature that is still in beta, and it even made a reference to its studio-level portraits in this teaser video below.
There is a 16MP main camera at the back as well, which is paired with depth-sensing 2MP shooter for "bokeh". Unfortunately, the middling Kirin 659 processor gets confirmed, which is a midrange 8 x Cortex-A53 2.4 GHz endeavor, but the phone had to earn its price somehow, too. There are no compromises with the memory situation, though, as the phone will ship in a 4GB/64GB setup, or with the software level, as it comes with the latest Android 8.0 Oreo.
The fingerprint scanner is slapped conveniently at the back of the handset, and a decent 3000mAh battery capacity with fast 2A charging make the P20 Lite a very well-rounded midranger for its price, notchwithstanding. Do you like what you see with Huawei's newest P-line entrant, or are you miffed it is going the copycat way designwise?
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