Huawei Mate 20 Pro review

In the future, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro has just enough features to stand out from the crowd. It's a powerful smartphone with three rear cameras and a distinctive style, but it's a handful of neat tricks you'll see next year.

In many ways, it's a superlative device that gamely competes with Samsung Galaxy Note 9, Google Pixel 3 and iPhone XS. But its top-tier specs and features require the Mate 20 Pro costs £ 899 (AU $ 1,599, $ 1,049, about $ 1,150), making it one of a couple this year to break the four-digit price point.

That lump of change could get you a powerful laptop, DSLR, budget motorcycle or modest vacation. The Mate 10 Pro released last year started at £ 699 ($ ​​799, AU $ 1,099), but the new Mate 20 Pro has joined a few of this year's other flagships to become one of the most expensive consumer phones on the market.

Now, the Mate 20 Pro is about the question: is it worth all that money?

The short answer is yes, Whatever else happened in 2018, which makes the Mate 20 Pro's minor improvements and additions more impressive.

But let's delve into the specifics to see why this is so great phone book.

Mate 20 Pro release date and price

The Mate 20 Pro release date is October 26 in the UK, and November 1 in Australia, it costs £ 899, € 1,050, AU $ 1,599 (about $ 1,150). We have not heard release dates for other regions, and there are no plans to release it in the US.

There's only one version of the Pro (for now) with 6GB RAM and 128GB of storage. But the other versions in the Mate 20 line – like the 7.2-inch screen Mate 20 X and 8GB RAM and up to 512GB Porsche Edition .

Have you been with Huawei, do not expect this flagship phone to hit US shores – unless you buy an unlocked version from overseas and find a carrier that will support it.

Key features

If you missed the Huawei P20 Pro this year, you're in luck: the Mate 20 Pro is a better version in nearly every way.

Where the P20 had a hand camera, 3x telephoto zoom and monochrome lens, the Mate 20 Pro kept the trainer and added a color ultra-wide lens. While this may be its predecessor on the low-light edge and nighttime shots, the Mate 20 Pro is no slouch there, and you'll love having the option to 'zoom out' with the ultra-wide.

The Mate 20 Pro inherits the 24MP f / 2.0 front-facing camera from the P20 Pro, but expands the front camera suite with more sensors. This stretches its notch to the iPhone XS-levels of width, but that's the price for more dynamic photos.

At 157.8 x 72.3 x 8.6mm, Huawei's latest phone is just a couple millimeters bigger (and almost a millimeter thicker) than the P20. That makes its 6.39-inch OLED screen larger, too, with resolution that's higher than the Google Pixel 3 and better than the Samsung Note 9, at least on paper.

One of the biggest braggable points, of course, is the Kirin 980 processor, which is debuting on the Mate 20 Pro and its sibling devices. It's the first 7nm chip on Android and second in the market after Apple's formidable A12, which came packed in the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max.

The Mate 20 Pro's 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage have been improved from the P20 Pro, though you can expand the storage through a new proprietary "nanoSD" card format to a maximum of 256GB. But if you opt to plug it into a slot, you'll have to slot it in one of the two SIM slots (cleverly stacked in an over / under tray inserted next to the USB-C port) and give up dual SIM functionality.

These specs are about us by other flagship smartphones, though the Kirin 980 is speedier than Snapdragon 845 which first appeared in March. Do not worry about sapping the battery while you're putting the new chip through its paces: the Mate 20 Pro comes with a 4,200mAh battery, which lasts as long as you'd think.

The Mate 20 Pro has a couple things today, but they're more party tricks than market-upending features. The first is something phone has been eager to try out: an in-screen fingerprint scanner. In theory, this makes it easier to unlock your phone while it's resting flat than using a back-mounted fingerprint button or facial recognition.

The second new trick is likely to be used, but it's a pinch, it's a godsend: the Mate 20 Pro can wirelessly charge other Qi-charging phones or devices. There's nothing more heroic than lending a hapless friend some juice when their phone is at death's door.

Design

Looking at the Mate 20, this is a two-way affair, and it's a signature look – but only from the back. Which is not to knock its high-resolution, curved-edge screen and thin-but-wide notch; we've just seen them before.

The top tier of the smartphone market requires differentiation, and Huawei thing to let its cameras do the talking. The Mate 20 Pro collects all three of its rear-facing cameras and its flash in a light-raised block on the phone's backside. With the rear fingerprint sensor gone, this gives the phone a clean, semi-symmetrical look that's better in person than in pictures.

Individuality aside, there is no way to go long and thin this phone is. The Mate 20 Pro dimensions are still several millimeters smaller than beastly flagship phones like the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, but it is one of the larger phones on the market.

As a result, using the Mate 20 One-handed Pro went out the door during our testing. We found ourselves relying on the serviceable facial recognition rather than the in-screen fingerprint sensor (located 2/3 down the front) to unlock the phone. The thinner edges made it difficult to type or swipe around one-handed, and the sleek front-and-back surfaces combined with the very tall ratio (19.5: 9) made it a bit hard to use the phone casually, like if I wanted to flip it out to check the weather.

In other words, it feels like a pricey phone that is easy to use for a little extra screen space, which is great for whoever is fine with two-handing their device. To be fair, there are a couple of things to help you, but the most useful things in the world, it's a good thing.

The phone itself comes in a few colors, but it does not make it easy. These include a standard Black, a cream-colored Pink Gold and the signature Huawei blue-fading-to-purple Twilight.

The last two hues, Emerald Green and Midnight Blue, have something else: an ever-so-slightly textured back. Remember holofoil trading cards and comics from your childhood? Huawei claims, resisting fingerprint smudging.

But it's so subtle that it might just be cool when you run your finger across it. (As "cool" a muted zipper sounds, anyway.) In other words, it's one of many small things that contribute to the Mate 20 Pro's a pricey, elite phone.

The other instant giveaway, of course, are the three rear cameras, arranged in a 2×2 grid signature. A Huawei spokesperson reckoned that the camera would suddenly tip you off your phone's make and model, and they are not wrong.

The Mate 20 Pro has a full IP68 water and dust resistance rating, which is the standard industry these days. And lastly, if you are lamented when the Mate 10 says the headphone jack, hopefully you've got some Bluetooth headphones in the interim: the Mate 20 Pro does not have a 3.5mm port, either. If that's a dealbreaker, consider the vanilla Mate 20 or the gamer-focused Mate 20 X – both of which include the standard audio port.

Screen

Mate 20 Pro's OLED 6.39-inch screen is gorgeous, plain and simple. It helps that the Mate 20 Pro says the Mate 10's bottom-front button for a seamless display. Its bezels are pretty thin, especially with a lower speaker grille: instead, it comes out of the bottom-facing USB-C port. (Do not worry, its output is not dampened when it is plugged in.)

The display has an impressive 19.5: 9 ratio 2K + resolution (3120×1440), which is about 537 pixels per inch. That puts it ahead of the Google Pixel 3 at 439ppi and just past the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 at around 514ppi. While there is no way out of the box – and, sadly, there's no out-of-the-box option to split the screen between two windows – it's still a sharp and vibrant display.

If you want to shift the color temperature to the light blue, there are options in the settings to tweak those to your preference. If you want, you can even downgrade the Mate 20 Pro resolution to full HD or lower, which drops battery drain, though that feels like a Harrison Bergeron-level injustice. Even dialed down to HD +, the expansive screen looks good.

The Mate 20 Pro display's edges curve down in this-looks-expensive style straight out of Samsung's playbook. Even if it does not come with any interactive elements (like the squeeze-to-activate HTC U11 Edge Sense), the curved screen is a classy, ​​if unoriginal, look.

Speaking of following trends – yes, the Mate 20 Pro has a notch. It's about the XS for the same reason: in front-facing camera and sensor package. If you find the notch hideous, you can hide it with an effect that shifts the 'ears' into dark mode, which decently simulates a full black bar at the top.

It's a good bet that the OLED screen is brighter than the 820 nits its less-powered sibling, the Mate 20, is capable of, but we do not have an official word from Huawei. Suffice to say, it can get bright. Very bright.

The in-screen fingerprint sensor does work, and pretty reliably … so long as your finger is placed in the small target area. A fingerprint area pops up when the screen activates, which means you'll either have the screen 'awake' to find your target or guess where the sensor is. That's much harder to do when you grab your phone from a pocket.

Even then, it's not perfect at recognizing fingerprints, and is so-so at reading portions of fingers. While the in-screen sensor certainly makes the Mate 20 easier to unlock than a back-mounted sensor or facial recognition when it's resting flat, the feature is more cumbersome than a dedicated physical button.

Still, Huawei is ushering in the age of in-screen fingerprints, which deserves praise for keeping the front screen lean and clean.