Huawei Mate 20 Pro Review – Best looking feature-packed Android smartpone of 2018!

Huawei Mate 20 Pro Review.

For the last few years Huawei has been improving and improving its smartphone manufacturing skills, so much so that its latest flagship handset is currently one of the most appreciated phones of 2018. And for good reasons!

We’ve been thoroughly testing the Mate 20 Pro for the last couple of months in an everyday use scenario, so that we can present to you our opinion on maybe the best smartphone of 2018.

Let’s find out together if Huawei delivers the best flagship smartphone experience this year.

Design / Display

Without a doubt Mate 20 Pro is Huawei’s best ever made smartphone even though some might say its design is inspired by the competition (wink at Galaxy S9 phones design), overall the phone delivers a luxurious glass design with slightly curved edges (both at the front and the back) to the premium smartphone market segment. The elegant glass housing comes with an interesting and distinctive texture (at the back) which makes the phone a little less slippery in the hand (we still recommend an original Huawei TPU protective cover), and yet is water-resistant (IP68 certified).

In addition to its fancy glossy and glassy design Mate 20 Pro gets a bold red coloured Power button, which we like a lot.

The display in the Mate 20 Pro is an 6.4-inch OLED panel of highest quality delivering top-of-the-line viewing experience even with that notch at the top that houses the Face Unlock technology and the selfie snapper (which we will get into later in the Camera section). This is the first Huawei flagship phone to feature Quad HD+ (1,440 x 3,120 pixels) screen resolution, it comes with 19,5:9 aspect ratio because of the top of the OLED panel cutout, but we love it, because Android Pie allows us to hide it via software feature that blacks out the notification bar, thus hiding the notch.

Mate 20 Pro display is HDR10 ready and DCI-P3 colour standard technology equipped. If you are pixel per pixel fan, then know that this OLED panel delivers 538 PPI.

Hardware

Huawei equipped its 2018 flagship smartphone with Kirin 980 chipset build on 7nm process platform delivering a powerful CPU which includes all new ARM Cortex-A76 cores promising up to 75% extra performance and is up to 58% more energy-efficient in comparison to its previous Kirin 970 chipset. Kirin 980 chipset also integrates two neural processing units dedicated to artificial intelligence, which makes this smartphone an active behind the curtains virtual assistant to help the user.

Throughout our tests Mate 20 Pro behaved exceptionally well thanks to Huawei’s HiSilicon chip that is backed up by 6GB of RAM and 128GB internal storage (but you can buy it with 8GB of RAM + 256GB ROM as well). The games run smoothly on this handset, and the UI is fluid, no lag anywhere. Everything opens and runs buttery-smooth.

In our benchmark tests Huawei Mate 20 Pro scored 233,962 points in AnTuTu application, 3,346 single-core points and 9,801 multi-core points in Geekbench 4 app. Although, benchmark results are less and less relevant nowadays.

Huawei Mate 20 Pro has all the connectivity you may or may not need: from 4G LTE (speed up to 1.4Gbps if the mobile network allows it to Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, GPS and even an infra-red sensor to be able to use the phone as a universal remote control for your TV and any other household appliances.

This particular flagship delivers stereo speakers audio experience (like all premium phones should) although the quality is pulled back a little due to Huawei decision to hide the bottom speaker behind its USB-C v3.1 port, which you can easily cover with your hand by accident, especially when gaming on the Mate 20 Pro. Another deal breaker for some might be the lack of a 3.5mm headphones jack, but you do get Dolby Atmos audio experience with the included USB-C in-ear buds Huawei offers alongside its premium smartphone.

Software

On the software side Huawei ships the phone with Google’s latest Android 9.0 Pie mobile operating system, but with its own Emotion UI v9 (skin) on top of it, which some may love, others not so much. The great part about its software package is, of course, the Dark Theme (saves even more battery energy) and the never-ending customization options to make the phone your own: Themes, icons, wallpapers, fonts etc.

EMUI v9 is fluid allowing users to smoothly navigate through its menus, switching the settings or transition from one app to another either with on-screen buttons or through gestures, you have it all.

The in-display fingerprint sensor technology is surprisingly good at unlocking the phone, considering that it’s a newly optimized and brought to the mainstream users biometric tech. Get ready for it to fail once every 7-8 tries to unlock the phone with your fingerprint, but it’s not like the physical fingerprint sensors were not failing at least one time in ten attempts. Besides, Apple is still behind in this area, although they were supposed to launch such technology first (in 2017), but failed miserably.

The overall look and feel of Google’s Android Pie with Huawei’s EMUI on top, is similar to Apple’s iOS. We are certain you’ll feel the influences within menus and icons.

Camera

One of the highlights in the Mate 20 Pro is its Camera. Equipped with three sensors (Leica lenses/technology), each delivering different focal lengths, the camera setup allows us to capture exceptional photographs even in low-light conditions.

we have the main 40MP sensor with f / 1.8 aperture, PDAF and LASER-based autofocus for wide-angle photography (the equivalent of a 27mm lens with manual shooting option and RAW format);
then we have the 20MP sensor with aperture f / 2.2 and ultra-wide angle;
and last but not least, the 8MP f / 2.4 aperture sensor for depth (to achieve that bokeh effect in portraits).

Besides, the Camera app offers a plethora of shooting modes:

Not satisfied with the Auto Photo mode, you should try the Pro mode, which gives you manual control over ISO, AF and all the other DSLR-like functions
RAW mode (you can shoot RAW only in Pro mode)
Portrait mode delivers that cool bokeh effect (blurred background), and Mate 20 Pro has several variations of the bokeh effect
Night Mode allows us to capture high-quality photos with the phone in low-light conditions, and MAte 20 Pro is doing it pretty good
Mono mode replaces the Monochrome sensor we’ve seen in the P20 Pro. Basically, we benefit from a software version of the physical sensor.
Wide shooting mode is useful in creating beautiful landscapes, panoramas, or capturing indoor images (indoor building architectural design), taking advantage of Leica’s 5x optical zoom.
HDR mode is hidden in the Camera settings, but you still have it
Aperture mode is useful when we want to blur the background, thus highlighting the subject we are shooting and make the photos look more professional. This mode comes with a number of effects for us to choose from.

The main triple camera is capable of capturing 4K (2.160p) video at 30 frames per second, Full HD at 60 frames per second, HD at 960 frames per second.

Below you’ll find a photo gallery created with Mate 20 Pro main camera.

The front-facing camera in the notch features a single 24MP f/2.0 (equivalent to a 26mm wide lens) sensor capable of Full HD video playback at 30 frames per second. It also features HDR function.

Battery

If I am to describe the battery life in the Mate 20 Pro in one word, I’d say it is impeccable! Equipped with a 4,200 mAh non-removable battery, you can finally get through a day very relaxed. You can even squeeze up to two-days of use on one charge out of the Mate 20 Pro, if you are not a heavy user.

Huawei’s SuperCharge fast charging technology will recharge the battery from 0 to 70% in only 30 minutes. It is really impressive how fast the battery gets filled up with energy, considering that it comes in 4,200mAh capacity. And the coolness of this phone is not stopping here. Huawei equipped the Mate 20 series Pro model with 15 watts wireless charging (from 0% to 30% in just 30 minutes) and reversible wireless charging. The latter makes the phone act as a Power Bank for other phones/devices embedded with wireless charging technology. Such technology in a smartphone is in its early stages of development (you can consider it a gimmicky feature), hence the slow charging. But such technology could be useful in the near future once it gets better and faster at charging.

Conclusion

Huawei Mate 20 Pro is almost the perfect phone in 2018, hence its popularity among Android users who voted it the best Android smartphone of the year. The phone offers a beautiful waterproof design, top performance hardware and software, a more than capable camera including low light conditions, a battery that keeps you two days if you are not the type of heavy user and a series new technologies such as the integrated display sensor, a 7nm chipset with two neural processing units (a global premiere) and reversible wireless charging that allows the phone to behave like a Power Bank.

The Mate 20 Pro phone and the rest of the models in the Mate 20 series are already available in the UK and across EU.