Hands-on with the 3-camera Huawei P20 Pro

For the first time in a long time, the big deal with a "pro" phone comes down to more than just its size.

Huawei  on Tuesday announced the P20 and P20 Pro, two Android phones with high-end specs and riveting colors. While the P20 looks promising on its own, it's the P20 Pro that steals all its thunder. 

The Huawei P20 Pro costs £799 (which converts to $1,110 and AU$1,450), while the Huawei P20 will cost £599 (about $848 and $AU1,093). Neither phone will sell in the US.

The top attention-grabbing feature? One, two, three camera lenses on the back -- the most of any phone on the market. They're not just there for show, either. The P20 Pro has a 40-megapixel main camera, a 20-megapixel monochrome lens to add richness and detail, and an 8-megapixel telephoto lens, which helps in taking portrait mode shots and zooming in tight.

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The Huawei P20, on the other hand, has a 12-megapixel main camera and no telephoto lens (the two do share the monochrome sensor, though).

The P20 Pro also has super slow-motion video (like the Galaxy S9), portrait photo mode, portrait selfie mode and all sorts of lighting effects for those portraits, similar to the iPhone X. Other big tricks will automatically apply "best" settings to your scene. There are over a dozen scenes, including food shots, night mode, close-ups, group pictures and photos of your cat or dog.

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If you're weighing the P20 and P20 Pro, know that there are differences between the two handsets across the board. This isn't just a case of the Huawei P20 Pro being the larger, pricier, slightly heavier phone, although there's that, too.

The P20 Pro has a totally different screen technology. It uses an OLED display rather than an LCD display. OLED is widely regarded for its bright whites and deep blacks -- you also find OLED displays on the Galaxy S9 phones and the iPhone X.

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You do see differences in height and weight, battery capacity and RAM, and the P20 gets one more color that the Pro does not -- champagne gold. There's even a difference in how water-resistant the two phones are. While the P20 Pro's IP67 rating means it can survive submersion in a meter of water for up to 30 minutes, the Huawei P20's IP57 rating means it's splash-resistant. Definitely inch it away from the pool edge.

I actually applaud Huawei for making the P20 and P20 Pro different enough phones to justify the existence of both. That's the view when you look at the specs, anyway. In real life, the day-to-day differences may or may not be as stark. That's what we'll find out when CNET gets a chance to review both new Huawei phones.

Meanwhile, read up on all the Huawei P20 and P20 Pro's camera specs, eye-catching design and notch design -- it isn't what you think. And see how the hardware of the two phones line up and diverge in the specs chart below.