This comparison doesn’t take into account the Huawei P20 or Huawei P10 Plus.
Price and availability
The P20 is a tad more than the P10 was at launch, but not by much. The P10 launched at £569, a competitive price at the time. It’s now available for just £349 from Carphone Warehouse. The UK prices of the Huawei P20 and P20 Pro via Carphone Warehouse are £599 and £799. You can get the P20 and P20 Pro from networks including EE, O2 and Three.
Design and build
The P20’s glass and metal design is a big change for Huawei. The P10 was sandblasted aluminium that if anything looked a little like a more utilitarian iPhone 7. By contrast, the P20 looks like an iPhone X with its vertical dual cameras, glass back, notch and lack of a headphone jack. The P10 may have those bigger bezels, but some people don’t mind a normal display without a notch. And it has a headphone jack unlike the P20. But the P20 certainly feels more premium than the P10. It’s sleeker and slicker in the hands (which admittedly makes it easier to drop). The slickness is interrupted by the camera bump though, an unfortunate design considering the P10’s sensors were flush with the case. It’ll be down to a matter of taste if you like the P20’s notch and lack of a headphone jack, but it’s the better-looking device in many respects. The wild colours of the P20 including the lovely colour shifting twilight are also head-turners compared to the black and white of the P10 (though if you can find the rarer gold, green and blue P10s then you may not mind).
Features and specifications
Here’s a table comparing the specs of the Huawei P20 and Huawei P10: As you can see, there are many differences. The most noticeable is the switch from a regular 16:9 display in the P10 to a taller 18.7:9 screen in the P20 – the latter complete with a notch to hold the selfie camera but give as much screen as possible either side of it. A notch can be a dividing feature and some people hate it. In recognition of this, Huawei lets you hide the notch in the settings by setting a black strip across the top of the screen. The P10 of course has no such trouble, but has a smaller 5.1in screen because of it. Both phones have LCD screens. On the P10’s bottom bezel is a fingerprint sensor, which also makes its way to the P20 but in smaller form. The P20 is one of the first notched phones to have a fingerprint sensor on the front of the device. We like that it has stayed there and it’s smaller than on the P10. You can use the sensor as a navigation tool with swipe and presses on both phones, allowing you to remove the on-screen Android navigation keys. The P20 is the more powerful phone with a Kirin 970 processor as opposed to the Kirin 960 on the P10. As well as being faster, the 970 offers added AI support in apps like the camera to help you shoot better pictures. That isn’t to say the P10 is a slow phone, it’s just a generation behind the P20. Both the P20 and P10 have 4GB RAM, but the P20 drastically improves the on-board storage with 128GB. This is great to see as a base number, as the P10 has either 32 or 64GB. Luckily both are expandable to 256GB if you buy a microSD card, though. While the cameras on both phones have 20Mp monochrome and 12Mp RGB colour sensors, the P20 improves the set up. Its 20Mp sensor is f/1.6 and 12Mp colour sensor is f/1.8, whereas the P10’s sensors could only work to f/2.2. This should improve the photography on the P20, though it’s notable that the P20 has no physical OIS built in. The P10 did have OIS, so it’s worth pointing out that Huawei trusts AI-assisted stabilisation completely on the newer P20. The selfie camera on the P20 is improved massively too to 24Mp from 8Mp from the P10. Rejoice, but be sure to turn off Huawei’s annoying beauty modes on both phones as it airbrushes you considerably. The P20’s battery is larger at 3400mAh vs 3200mah, and both charge via USB-C. Neither phone has wireless charging, a shame on the glass P20 which technically could have it. Both phones can fast charge with the included charger.
Software
Even if you buy the P10 today, it’ll likely ship with Android Nougat 7.1 and EMUI 5.1, and an update to Oreo isn’t guaranteed in your region. The Huawei P20 ships with Android Oreo 8.1 and its EMUI 8.1 skin. EMUI changes stock Android more than most other skins, and looks a lot like Apple’s iOS. From our point of view, it’s best to go for the P20 as the newer EMUI experience is better than that you will probably find on the P10, but you should take a look whether EMUI in general is to your tastes given the changes Huawei makes. This is down to the Kirin 970, and means the Huawei P10 will never receive these features. If you want the latest features and updates, you should go for the P20. Henry is Tech Advisor’s Phones Editor, ensuring he and the team covers and reviews every smartphone worth knowing about for readers and viewers all over the world. He spends a lot of time moving between different handsets and shouting at WhatsApp to support multiple devices at once.
