Huawei Mate 20 Pro: you might want to get one

The year 2018 is perhaps one of the most exciting of Huawei so far. Almost like the scenario of a Hollywood blockbuster, the year began with a tragedy that seemed to be a death sentence for the protagonist. He left his hero in a period of uncertainty, his future uncertain. But as the real star of its history, Huawei's perseverance has reacted with revenge by offering smartphones that consumers will want to seize, but can not, because of circumstances beyond their control.

That was the case of the Huawei P20 Pro, the first of the market to sport three cameras on its back. With the new Mate 20 Pro, Huawei seems to have adopted the strategy of giving homeowners everything they need, apart from the kitchen sink in its most advanced flagship product to date. Has this strategy been successful or has it weighed down the Huawei Mate 20 Pro to the point of sinking? I've been testing the Mate 20 Pro since I arrived in London, and at the risk of spoiling the surprise, I can honestly say it's one of the best phones in the world.

Design

You might forget to neglect the talents of the Mate 20 Pro at first, or even after holding them in your hands. While high-end smartphones seem to be characterized by their size and weight, Huawei goes in the opposite direction, which paradoxically worries some users for its robustness and resilience.

That said, the Mate 20 Pro is easy to grab and hold in your hand, thanks to the way the front and back sides curve at the edges. They come together with a thin but sturdy aluminum frame. Despite its big screen of 6.39 inches, the phone is still handy, but you can still use both hands for good measure. The 19.5: 9 aspect ratio of the OLED panel, large enough, is narrow enough that I can reach most of it with the thumb.

On the front, the Mate 20 has an almost conventional look with its screen almost without glasses and its large screen, which we will come back to later. Turn it over and you'll meet the most iconic design element of the Mate 20. Yes, thankfully, it still has only three cameras and three cameras. Now, however, they are arranged in a square, with the flash, which, Huawei explains, alludes to the phone's intended use in portrait orientation. Huawei said he hoped the layout would make the back of the Mate 20 Pro more distinctive for those around you. because of their partnership with Porsche Design, the design is reminiscent of the manufacturer's LED headlights.

In contrast, the Huawei P20 Pro has been designed to look like a point-and-click digital camera. Aside from the wider notch, the Mate 20 Pro also stands out from the Mate 20 by the absence of a fingerprint reader on the back. There is always one, of course, just hidden under the screen.

Specifications and performance

You think you've heard everything about the specifications of high-end smartphones this year, but Huawei still has some things on the way. For example, although you have 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of usual storage, you also have a Kirin 980 octa-core processor. Huawei's latest silicon boasts not only raw power and energy efficiency thanks to its 7-nm processor, but also two brains for your artificial intelligence needs, most of which are for the camera. . It should be noted that, for the moment, only Apple and Huawei offer smartphones using a 7 nm chipset.

In short, the Mate 20 Pro is a power plant. Aside from the controversies relating to benchmarks, the actual and theoretical speed of the smartphone still places it at the top of the list. For a smartphone maker who has been designing and using its own processor for only a few years, it's a pretty impressive feat. Even without looking at the numbers, the speed and power of the Mate 20 Pro will not leave you wanting more. But if you want to regain your strength with your game, you can still activate the Performance mode at the expense of battery life.

Even if this is not possible, the Mate 20 Pro has a proven track record, whether it is to import or process 5,7k 360 videos shot with the Insta360 camera, passing through the simple streaming of Netflix. Huawei had provided a device for international specification, although I had no problem using it with Google's Project Fi. The AT & T and T-Mobile networks were not problematic; Verizon will work, but with limited coverage.

The 6.39-inch 3120 × 1440 OLED display is flush with the other OLED displays on the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and Google Pixel 3 XL. They are brightly lit and alive for everyday tasks. I found that Huawei's automatic mode for display tends to get in the way when you increase the colors to a slightly artificial tone. Side by side with the iPhone XS Max, the Huawei does not quite reach the same brightness. The default value of the Mate 20 Pro is FHD + resolution to find a compromise between sharpness and battery life. I did not see the difference in battery life by letting the system automatically select the resolution of the display, so I chose to leave it at WQHD +.

Now comes the fun part, where Huawei tries to find his way and, in some cases, misses. Audio is one of the areas in which society has tried to be different for little gain or reason. You will quickly notice that there is no speaker grille on the Mate 20 Pro, giving it a tighter and more uniform appearance. Instead, the sound is routed to the USB-C port, a conduit that has never been designed for audio output. Although it is audible, the sound it produces lacks a certain weight. It's more on the metallic side, on the bass and volume side. The worst is when you plug a USB C cable for charging but, unsurprisingly, chokes the sound. You can not easily bend the laws of physics to match your design.

Huawei is also trying to bend the market as it sees fit with its new nano SD card or "NM Cards". It may be time for the market to adopt a newer, smaller memory card, but rather than trying to make it a standard, Huawei is instead locking its own users into a problem of their own. Your existing microSD cards will not work in the Mate 20 Pro; you will not be able to use these NM cards on phones other than Mate 20 Series phones. Since NM cards will probably not be widely available for some time, it may be better to simply consider the Mate 20 Pro with a fixed amount of storage.

In talking with Huawei, I can understand what they think even if I prefer a standard microSD. There simply was not enough room for that, so the decision was made to create a smaller memory card or to leave out the expandable storage. At least, if you choose not to use the slot for an NM card, you can use a second SIM card.

biometrics

Unlike the "waterdrop" notch of the Mate 20, the Mate 20 Pro is one of the widest on the market, though luckily it is not the highest. This is not without reason, because Huawei needed to store some components. The 3D depth detection camera not only gives life to 3D Live emoticons, but also activates 3D face recognition. This part is probably not new to Huawei fans, as the company has been singing its 3D face identity powered by AI since last year. In fact, it also works, quickly and accurately, at least most of the time, I have tested it in various lighting conditions. If you wear sunglasses, it is probably best to test them before buying the phone and avoid very reflective glasses.

Despite this success, even Huawei does not advocate its use in secure transactions such as mobile payments. This is not because the facial recognition is not secure: Huawei insists that this is the case, with the identity of the face of Apple, where the camera TrueDepth records 30,000 points on the face. Currently, 3D face recognition is only used for mobile payments in China, pending Google's approval for the rest of the world.

For now, you are stuck with the fingerprint reader for this. The Mate 20 Pro offers its first fingerprint reader on the screen. Located slightly higher than most on-screen fingerprint (FoD) sensors, the Huawei version is about as fast as the OnePlus 6T. Even slower than the most popular optical fingerprint sensors, that's true, but it's the price to pay for adopting a young technology. Do not forget that it may take a few attempts in cold weather or if you have dry skin on your fingers.

Camera

Although it may not be the only feature of the smartphone, the Mate 20 Pro's camera technology is still in the spotlight. In fact, this is the biggest major change made by Huawei since the launch in 2016 of its first dual cameras on the Huawei P9. Nearly every two-camera configuration, then three cameras from the Chinese equipment manufacturer included a monochrome sensor for increased depth. and bright information. For the Mate 20 Pro, the monochrome camera is no longer a solution, because Huawei considers that mobile camera sensors are powerful enough to be autonomous. I tend to agree and, for what it's worth, the ultra-wide camera with an angle equivalent to 16 mm is well worth it and is much more useful day-to-day.

Instead of dedicating a lens to a rarely used monochrome sensor, Huawei offers three color sensors. The main sensor is a 40 megapixel f / 1.8 wide angle camera; As a replacement for the monochrome sensor, a 20-megapixel RGB camera with an ultra wide-angle f / 2.2 lens also functions as a "macro zoom". The third member of the group is a humble 8-megapixel shooter, compensating for its relatively low pixel count with a telephoto lens that can achieve optical zoom up to 3X.

In practice, three is not a crowd. The number of shots you can capture is now more versatile, from the "ultra-wide 0.6x zoom" to macro close-ups, and the results are staggering. Certainly, the Mate 20 Pro seems to prefer saturated colors, responding perhaps to a trend that favors bright and lush shades compared to a more accurate color reproduction, but more modest in comparison. There are some tips involved, however. You will not take, for example, 40 megapixel photos by default, but 10MP images from an oversampled 40 megapixel raw output. The 40 MP sensor also helps eliminate noise and noise from zoom levels above 3x.

Much of the magic of the Mate 20 Pro's camera is via software, thanks to the artificial intelligence of Huawei's camera. Paradoxically, you must first enable it in the camera settings, then identifying the main subjects and adjusting the settings to the scene are then taken into account. . This AI is also responsible for Huawei's breathtaking Night Mode, which takes several shots in about four seconds and combines them into a very impressive image.

Like any other AI, it is not foolproof – even if it has been significantly improved since the Huawei P9 Pro. More than the incorrect detection of scenes, the master artificial intelligence of the Mate 20 Pro can sometimes exaggerate the settings, resulting in unrealistic images. You can always turn off artificial intelligence and change the settings yourself in the phone's powerful manual mode, but sometimes I've noticed that the moment has already passed.

Personally, the utility of the ultra-wide lens appears every day much more often than a dedicated monochrome mode. For example, I often take interior photos of cars, including looking through the windshield and encompassing everything from the dashboard to the steering wheel. LG has tried to offer the same capabilities with the ultra-wide-angle rear camera as on its recent flagship products, but I have found that it tends to soft to fuzzy outlines. On the other hand, the Mate 20 Pro uses its artificial intelligence to solve these problems, in addition to a better optics of Leica.

In contrast, the macro lens option is another impressive result for Huawei. I've tested it for close-ups of the materials used in cars and timepieces, and I'm amazed at how good the sharpness of the image is.

Battery and wireless charging

Let's move on to the final round of Mate 20 Pro. Its battery is bigger than normal, with its 4,200 mAh beating the oversized power supply of the Galaxy Note 9. With a little attention, it is not difficult to extend the life of the battery to two days, especially if you do not activate the Performance mode.

Huawei has pushed charging modes extremely fast in its recent handsets, and the Mate 20 Pro is less impressive. On paper, the promise goes from zero to 70% in thirty minutes. In the real world, I was able to work all day on events using the Mate 20 Pro as the main camera, come back with about 30% of remaining battery, plug in 30 to 45 minutes before dinner, and then go back to background. accused. 0 to 100% takes about 80 minutes, although you need to use the adapter provided by Huawei.

This is not the most interesting part, though. The Mate 20 Pro is the first phone in the world to offer two-way wireless charging: Huawei not only supports wireless charging, but can also be a wireless charger for other devices. Admittedly, this is less convenient than it seems, because the phone will never match the output of the slowest dedicated wireless charger. Ultimately, though, it could help you win a friend. Just make sure your new friend's sliding glass phone does not fall out of the slippery back of your Mate 20 Pro.

pack

It's easy to think of the smartphone market as a two-horse race between Apple and Samsung, at least in terms of brand recognition and numbers. OnePlus, although worthy rivals, faces a difficult climb in terms of reach and shipments around the world. Huawei proved he was in a perfect position to break this duopoly, and the Mate 20 Pro of course ticks almost every box on my wish list.

Unfortunately for US consumers, the most important box is not checked: availability. For the moment, whether this is attributable to the US government or other reasons, there is no official plan to bring Mate 20 Pro into this market. It's a shame, and I would certainly say it's worth looking for Amazon, eBay or other resellers to get your hands on what could be the most impressive phone of the year.

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