Galaxy S20 vs Huawei P40: Which is better?

Is your heart spinning between the Samsung Galaxy S20 and Huawei P40? To help you make your choice, PhonAndroid offers a comparison between the two brands’ new “affordable” high-end smartphones.

At the end of March, Huawei officially announced the launch of the P40 series in Europe, a few weeks after the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S20. The two great masters of the Android mobile industry meet again on a new platform. above the line with three devices each. In this comparison we focus on the cheapest and most compact models, namely Galaxy S20 and Huawei P40.

data sheets

Design

both smartphones very similar to each other. For the front panel, there are thin borders that surround the screen, which are thicker than the higher-end models of their series, but barely noticeable. There is no notch on the Galaxy S20 or P40, the manufacturers chose the punch to house the front sensors. We found A hidden hole in the axis of the S20As in Note 10. Much more imposing on the cell phone. Huawei since home two modulesin the upper left corner.

On the back, Samsung and Huawei have chosen to install this famous “cooking plate” made up of pretty ugly photo sensors we know from the iPhone 11 and Pixel 4. It’s hard to decide between one or the other here, the differences are pretty anecdotal.

More importantly, the format, ease of use and pocketability of smartphones, which have a significant impact on the use of mobile phones. most S20 is slightly longer and P40 is slightly wider. But the difference is played out on the Samsung device with much less thickness. That’s a big plus point for the latter, which is 12 grams lighter.

Screen

Yield

Samsung and Huawei are the only Android smartphone manufacturers to manufacture their own chips through their semiconductor subsidiaries. Galaxy S20 includes a SoC Exynos 990 Engraved with 7 nm+, P40 is a Kirin 990 5G Carved at 7 nm+, it’s the same one powering the Mate 30 Pro we tested a few months ago. Right now Samsung is being criticized because in most of the markets their S20 has Snapdragon 865 which is more efficient than Exynos 990.

Anyway, as we saw in our tests using Geekbench, 3DMark and PCMark, the performance of the Samsung SoC is slightly better than the performance of the Huawei processor. But it’s played on a pocket handkerchief, and in use the two smartphones compete for power. By finally saving money without Qualcomm chips, the two manufacturers admit to losing performance and being on par in this area. Neither offers a smartphone as fast as a smartphone equipped with Snapdragon 865.

Memory

Both the Galaxy S20 and Huawei P40 offer 8GB of RAM and 128GB of UFS 3.0 storage natively. But Huawei has embraced its own form of storage expansion, with Nano Memory (NM) cards replacing traditional microSD in its smartphones, including the P40. Also note that the storage of the S20 can be expanded up to 1.5TB versus just 256GB for the Huawei phone.

Battery and autonomy

Samsung has tended to lag behind in battery-related tech for a few years compared to Chinese manufacturers, but it’s starting to flex its muscles in this regard. The S20 is proof of this, with a capacity of 4000 mAh versus 3800 mAh for the P40. Autonomy tests will tell us more, but we can expect the P40 to go the distance better: the QHD+ definition and the S20’s 120Hz refresh rate are very power-hungry specs. Thus, the Samsung smartphone loses almost 20% of its autonomy when 120 Hz is activated. Software optimization will also play an important role for the autonomy issue.

In wired charging, the two offers are close to each other: 25W for the S20 and 22.5W for the P40. On the other hand, Samsung’s smartphone has 15W fast wireless charging with 9W reverse charging function to charge other devices. The Huawei P40 is not equipped with any wireless charging options.

Camera

Our Galaxy S20 test will tell you more about its photo capabilities. We will soon publish the model of the Huawei P40 so that we can compare the two models. In the meantime, let’s analyze the technical characteristics of different sensors.

A triple photo sensor on both sides. The P40 features 8 MP, f/2.4, OIS telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom and 50 MP, f/1.9 and OIS main module supported by a 16 MP, f/2.2, AF ultra-wide-angle sensor. All Leica certified, as usual on Huawei flagships.

The S20 offers a main sensor of 64 MP, f / 2.0, OIS telephoto lens and 3x hybrid zoom and 12 MP, f / 1.8, OIS associated with a 12 MP, f / 2.2 ultra wide-angle module. That’s why Samsung relies on hybrid rather than optics for zooming with its 64MP sensor.

On the video side, there is no photo. The features we have listed below are available on the Galaxy S20 and not on the Huawei P40: optical image stabilization, 4320p recording at 24fps, HDR10+, stereo sound.

Software

We will not tell you the full history of the case, but we do know that Huawei is prohibited from using Google Mobile Services on its new smartphones. All apps from the Play Store and Mountain View company are therefore not pre-installed and have been replaced with Huawei equivalents. It is possible to install Google services from the backdoor, but the user experience suffers. Under these circumstances, it is very difficult for the P40 to compete with the S20, which does not have these problems.

Otherwise, both smartphones are based on Android 10 with One UI 2 for Samsung and EMUI 10.1 for Huawei. The two interfaces are complete and intuitive, pleasant to use. It is up to everyone’s taste to choose between them. If you haven’t had a recent Samsung smartphone and have bad memories of the brand’s skin, keep in mind that One UI is far superior to previous Samsung Experience and TouchWiz.

Price

The suggested retail price of the Galaxy S20 when launched in France is 909 euros. That’s a lot higher than the 759 Euro price of the Galaxy S10e the previous year.

The Huawei P40 is priced at 799 euros, a difference of more than 100 euros compared to the S20. This is exactly the same amount as the P30. Note that if you pre-order (buy before 20 April 2020), you can get a Huawei Watch GT 2 46mm Sport linked watch as a gift.

Solution

Samsung and Huawei have chosen a different strategy for their “gateway” smartphones than the S20 and P40 series. On the one hand, Samsung has clearly aimed for the high end, with relatively little difference between the S20 and higher models (S20+ and S20 Ultra). Meanwhile, Huawei has chosen to less equip its P40 to reserve the best technologies for the P40 Pro and P40 Pro+. In contrast, the Chinese brand’s offering is cheaper than its South Korean competitor. It’s up to you to guess whether the superiority of the Galaxy S20 is worth just over 100 euros.