- This video is sponsored by Dollar Shave Club.
Folks, I don't know about you,
but I'm finding it harder and harder
to get excited about thousand dollar smartphones,
and here are the two biggest reasons why.
The Honor View 20 and OnePlus 6T are
each incredible in their own way,
and hovering around the $600 mark,
they're far cheaper than the latest Samsung Galaxy
or iPhone flagship.
Which one is better for you depends
on how much you use your camera,
and also where you live, but by the end
of this video, I'll tell you which
one I'd recommend to most folks,
and which one I'd take home myself.
(energetic music)
Let's start with hardware, because good gravy, folks,
it's been two weeks since I first laid hands
on it, and I cannot take my eyes
off the Honor View 20 still.
Photos cannot do this back plate justice.
Video barely can.
Honor calls this an Aurora Nanotexture finish.
I call it the most stunning glass phone
I've seen in a long time.
In short, tell 'em, counselor.
- It's a great honor.
- [Michael] Now, the OnePlus 6T gets points
for minimalism, and it's denser
than the hollow-feeling View 20, but even the McLaren
and the Thunder Purple versions lack the eye grabbing power
of Honor's bobby-dazzler here.
Even if you don't care about aesthetics,
Honor still has some hardware wins to claim.
Unlike the OnePlus, the View 20 offers a headphone jack.
It's also got an IR transmitter, and most importantly to me,
an old-fashioned fingerprint sensor is here, too.
OnePlus's under-display reader is much cooler looking,
but for now, the old type is faster and more reliable.
It also enables some convenient shortcut gestures.
Let's tackle the selfie camera, next, not because
I wanna wade into the whole notch-versus-hole punch debate.
I'm more interested in how the cameras themselves compare.
Honor follows parent company Huawei's habit
of just packing pixels into its front-facing shooter,
and just like on those Huawei phones,
the result is not great.
Now, both of these photos are overexposed,
but the OnePlus managed to keep
more color in the shot while also
not imposing as much beautification,
beautification that I didn't ask for.
And when we turn the lights down,
I'd still take the OnePlus selfies.
(upbeat music)
Flip the phones over, and Honor benefits
from a much more capable and powerful primary camera,
topping out at 48 megapixels.
Like Android Central's Alex Dobie says,
you can set the Honor to full resolution,
take a photo, and just zoom in forever,
hitting details that OnePlus's 16 megapixel camera
just can't match.
While each phone also sports a night mode,
Honor's is substantially superior.
It's better at bringing out the details
on this Klingon Bird of Prey, and it sticks
to truer colors in this lobby, as well.
Of course, cameras are complicated,
and there are situations where I prefer the OnePlus.
Any shot with a blue sky in it, for example.
The 6T also retains better color,
or at least more color, in video,
and it has more options for framerates, as well,
but the View 20 has better audio quality and video,
and honestly, based on capability alone,
Honor's gotta take this one.
The huge sensor, the crazy night mode,
the 3-D stuff made possible by
that time-of-flight sensor around back,
at the end of the day, you can do a lot
more with the View 20's shooter.
So far, we've got Honor leading
in hardware, design, and camera,
and it also ekes out a win on battery life.
Now, the OnePlus 6T is no slouch here.
As I said in my review, it seems
like black magic how long it can last
on a 3,700 milliamp-hour battery.
But the Honor brings 4,000 milliamp-hours,
and it uses some software trickery
to make it, in the words of Alex Dobie,
again, one of the all-time best.
Now, I'll admit I haven't had as much time
with the View 20, but Alex's experience is important.
This is a guy who used the View 20 at CES in Las Vegas,
which is rough on any phone battery,
thanks to network conditions,
and just crazy amounts of photo and video.
And yet, despite all these feathers
in the honors cap, I'd still take the OnePlus home.
And if you've been paying attention
to the categories covered thus far,
you'll know it's mostly because
of the one major thing we haven't covered yet,
the interface.
I'm gonna try to say something a little different
about this contentious category.
Do me a favor, stick with me through the break
and I'll try to live up to that promise.
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(dance music)
Folks, I've said for years that Huawei's EMUI is
not my bag, and Honor's so-called Magic OS is
just a rehash of the same thing,
but in order to avoid a rehash
of my own, I'm not gonna tell you
for the ninth time why I don't like Huawei's software.
It's actually kind of irrelevant.
You see, whether it's EMUI, or the Samsung experience,
or ColorOS, lots of companies paint
over Android with their own customizations.
OnePlus stands out not just for going the
other way, for sticking as closely
as possible to stock Android, but the changes
it does make are all things that make Android better.
And while that claim is inherently subjective,
I haven't really ever found anyone who disagrees.
I go into specifics in my 6T review,
but they broadly boil down to this.
OnePlus offers the fastest, cleanest,
sharpest Android experience on the market.
No matter what corner of the OS
you tap your way into, that refinement,
and restraint, and speed making using
it an absolute pleasure.
The Honor View 20 can do more, yes,
but at the expense of clutter and cruft,
not all of which is easy to paint
over, even with a custom launcher.
When you think about it, it's kind
of amazing that these both come from Chinese manufacturers.
From a software standpoint, they
really couldn't be more different,
and that's evident in the marketing, too.
Honor has always tried a little
too hard to come off as a cool guy brand
for hip kids, while OnePlus, having had
more time to get past those awkward early days,
today seems much more comfortable
with itself, and confident in its messaging.
I was reminded on my last review video
that you folks like your spec sheets,
so I'll leave this up for you to compare the numbers
that are important to you, while I hit the lingering details
that are important to me.
To wit, the OnePlus 6T has an AMOLED screen
instead of an IPS panel, and its higher brightness
and darker blacks are appreciated.
Each of these comes with a fast charger
in the box, and they're also tied in another way,
the single speaker output is just about the same,
as mediocre as the vibration motors.
And finally, there's the critical issue of where you reside.
One of these can be readily purchased
in the United States, while the
other takes effort to import, and then to support.
But I don't think the OnePlus is better
just because it's easier to get, or because it's cheaper.
At the risk of repeating myself, the 6T feels more even.
There's an intention and a thoughtfulness
to it that's lacking
on the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink View 20.
I do wish the OnePlus camera was
as capable as Honor's, and that the casing was as striking.
And I'll say again that platinum dropped
on either of these is money well spent,
but for me, the OnePlus 6T's more cohesive,
complete package make it my top pocket pick
in this comparison.
(dance music)
I'm sure you noticed I borrowed liberally
from Android Central's review footage for this one, folks.
Head on over to their full review
at the link in the description
if you wanna know more about the Honor View 20.
See my OnePlus 6T review at the theMrMobile
on YouTube, and please subscribe if you haven't already.
Until next time, thanks for watching,
and stay mobile, my friends.