Honor launched its View20 flagship in its home market, having already showcased a number of the smartphone’s technology innovations.

The device went on sale on 28 December, with a CNY2,999 ($437) price tag. The company also confirmed the global launch will take place in Paris on 22 January 2019.

The company reiterated there are “limits to what can be done” with notched displays, which became common in 2018 as a means to offer higher screen-to-body ratios. View20 adopts an in-screen front camera, with a 4.5mm hole created in the top left hand corner to house the lens – but instead of drilling through all layers of the screen to create a hole, the display “retains a few layers” to reduce the impact on the structure to improve durability and cut down interference of light to improve image quality.

Honor also said View20 is the first smartphone to use Sony’s IMX586 stacked CMOS sensor for its main camera, delivering 48 effective megapixel resolution on a ½-inch sensor. It also said the Kirin 980 chipset (developed by parent Huawei) enables improved image and camera processing quality, through its dual-NPU (neural processing unit) and dual-ISP (image signal processor).

Also in the smartphone’s imaging armoury is a 3D Time of Flight camera, which calculates distance based on the time taken for a light signal to travel, for functions such as depth sensing, skeletal tracking and real-time motion capture.

In addition to its standard version, Honor has also partnered with fashion house Moschino to create a “bold crossover that will revolutionise the fashion experience of younger users around the world”.