Huawei Mate 20 Pro Review: 2019’s Best Still Impresses in 2020

Huawei Mate 20 Pro Review: 2019’s Best Still Impresses in 2020

Huawei’s rise to leadership within the global smartphone market has been astonishingly fast. For years, the conversation has been dominated by Samsung and Apple. In 2018, Huawei asserted itself as a category leader in flagship smartphones. The Mate series represents the top of Huawei’s efforts in smartphone innovation, while the P series has made a reputation for itself with reference to camera improvements. The company’s improvements are so speedy that it's essentially forced market leader Samsung to reply to its innovations.

Huawei Mate 20 Pro Forums

The first Huawei flagship I used was the Huawei P20 Pro. In my review, I praised its camera performance in low light, which set the stage for computational photography-powered night modes in phones. The Huawei P20 Pro was followed by the discharge of the Huawei Mate 20 and therefore the Huawei Mate 20 Pro in October. The Mate 20 Pro acts because the top-end flagship of Huawei’s lineup, and on paper, it's nearly all of the specifications it must compete with even 2019 flagships. Meaning, of course, that it's an upscale price to match.

Does it fulfill its potential of being a market leading flagship? With only fortnight left before the announcement of the Huawei P30 and P30 Pro, should readers still have an interest in Huawei’s current-generation Mate series flagship? During this review, we'll take an in-depth check out the Mate 20 Pro to work out this.

About This Review: I even have the Indian LYA-L29 6GB RAM/128GB storage variant of the Huawei Mate 20 Pro for review. The unit was provided alongside the 15W Huawei wireless charger by Huawei India for reviewing purposes.

Huawei Mate 20 Pro Design

In terms of build quality, the Mate 20 Pro finds itself during a crowded company of phones. The phone has an aluminum frame, which sandwiches glass on the front and back. The standard durability caveats which apply to phones with glass backs also apply to the Mate 20 Pro. However, it seems the ship has long sailed for metal unibody flagships, so I won’t waste much time here. The aluminum frame of the Huawei Mate 20 Pro is thinner than the Huawei P20 Pro, because the phone has curved sides and a curved back.

While it's nothing special when it involves the build quality, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s look and feel are some things different. On the front, we've a 6.39-inch OLED display with a good display notch. The notch contains all the specified components for 3D face recognition, including a dot projector, IR camera, and flood illuminator.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro has curved display edges like Samsung’s flagship phones. This suggests that side bezels are virtually non-existent. Although a curved display reduces screen land, it also has the advantage of creating the phone narrower. At 72mm wide, the Mate 20 Pro is one among the narrowest flagships I’ve used thus far, and this features a positive impact on ergonomics, which are excellent. The chin is additionally small, which ends up within the Mate 20 Pro having an honest screen-to-body ratio of 87.9%. There’s no physical fingerprint sensor on the front or back, as Huawei uses an optical in-display fingerprint sensor. We’ll discuss its speed and accuracy within the Performance section.

On the top, we discover an IR blaster and therefore the microphone. At now , Huawei is that the only major device maker that continues to incorporate an IR blaster in its flagship devices, so if users look after this feature, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro is more or less the sole option.

The power and volume buttons are situated on the right-hand side. I had no complaints regarding the buttons in terms of stiffness. They’re easy to press, requiring the proper amount of pressure. Their location is perfect also.

On the left-hand side, we discover the SIM tray. The dual-SIM variant of the Mate 20 Pro features a hybrid SIM tray which takes either two nano-SIMs or a nano-SIM and a Nano-Memory (NM) card, which is of an equivalent size as a nano-SIM. Unfortunately, Huawei hasn’t launched NM cards in India yet, so we can’t test their performance. Generally, NM cards will take an extended, long while before they ever get as popular as microSD cards, and that they also are currently lagging behind in terms of capacity. (The highest capacity NM card users can currently get is 128GB, while 1TB microSD cards are going to be available soon.) Huawei’s decision to travel with this format here is perplexing to ascertain. (In India, Huawei sells this phone in just one 6GB RAM/128GB storage configuration, but an 8GB RAM/256GB storage configuration is out there in other markets.)

The bottom of the Huawei Mate 20 Pro is minimalist as there are not any visible speaker grilles. Instead, a speaker is contained inside the USB Type-C (USB 3.1) port. (The earpiece acts as a secondary speaker.) The Huawei Mate 20 Pro lacks a 3.5mm headphone jack, forcing users to use less convenient alternatives.

The back of the Mate 20 Pro is where things get interesting. First of all, we've the colour scheme. Huawei sells this phone in Twilight, Emerald Green, Emerald Blue, and Black. In India, Huawei opted to bring only the Twilight and Emerald Green colors. The Emerald Green and Emerald Blue colors have a vinyl-like coating and a special texture, but I couldn’t test this as I even have the Twilight color for review.

The Twilight color features a three-color (blue, purple, and black) gradient design, which is commonplace lately but was pioneered by Huawei itself. I’m not an excellent fan of gradient color schemes, but it’s undeniable that they are doing make the Mate 20 Pro stand call at a crowded sea of phones. The phone’s design is never understated. If users need a color that stands out less, they will accompany the Emerald Green variant.

In terms of texture, the Twilight color has the quality glossy finish which attracts tons of fingerprints. The finish also leads to the phone being incredibly slippery, which isn't a surprise. It might be nice if Huawei could make matte-finish glass back variants of its phones within the future to eliminate these issues, as we've already seen matte-finish glass make a reputation for itself on the Pixel 3 XL, OnePlus 6T, and LG V40 ThinQ.

The triple camera setup is laid out prominently at the middle on the rear inside a square camera module. I worry that it makes the phone stand out a touch an excessive amount of. On the positive side, the camera bump here is negligible despite the presence of the large 40MP 1/1.7-inch sensor, which is sweet to ascertain.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro has an IP68 rating for water resistance, up from the IP67 rating of the Huawei P20 Pro.

In terms of ergonomics, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro is one among the simplest feeling phones I even have ever used. Build quality is competitive with its major competitors. Despite having a tall 19.5:9 display, the phone fits easily within the hand. The curved sides make the phone appear to be thinner than it actually is, and therefore the curved back also helps tons here. The sole arguably negative feature here is that the glossy finish of the glass back. Ultimately, it’s hard to argue with Huawei’s design efforts, because the company goes from strength to strength during this area.

The box package of the phone contains a 40W Huawei SuperCharge 2.0 charger, a transparent TPU case, a 3.5mm-to-USB Type-C adapter for wired audio, and Huawei’s digital USB Type-C on-ear earphones. The 15W wireless charger is sold separately in India for ₹3,999 ($57).

Huawei Mate 20 Pro Display

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro features a 6.39-inch Quad HD+ (3120×1440) OLED display with a 19.5:9 ratio. The display’s dimensions are 147 mm x 68 mm. Huawei sources the display alternately from LG Display and BOE Display. It should be noted that some LG Display panels on the phone have suffered from green tint issues. The panel has LG’s DDIC, while the BOE display board uses a DDIC supplied by Synaptics.

The Mate 20 Pro unit I even have has the BOE display with Synaptics DDIC. The panel itself might not be ready to compete with the Samsung Galaxy S10’s Dynamic AMOLED HDR10+ display in every respect, but it’s no slouch in its title.

By default, the display’s resolution is about to Full HD+ (2340×1080), but it are often increased to Quad HD+ (3120×1440). Increasing the display resolution increases the display’s effective pixel density from 403 to 538 PPI, which suggests per-inch sharpness is increased by over a 3rd. Huawei’s text rendering in EMUI 9 has noticeably improved as even Full HD+ resolution is ok to my eyes (despite the very fact that the display uses a PenTile matrix). Increasing the resolution to Quad HD+ does make text appreciably sharper, though.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s display presents no issues with reference to brightness. Manually, the display’s brightness can go up to 400+ nits. The display also has a lively High Brightness Mode (HBM) which enables it to automatically boost brightness in sunlight up to 550+ nits for an indefinite period of time. This suggests that sunlight legibility may be a major strength of the display. Even under direct sunlight in Mumbai, I had no issues with readability on the Huawei Mate 20 Pro. The display also doesn’t suffer from a CABC (Content Adaptive Brightness Control) issue of automatically decreasing brightness across the system UI and user apps when using manual brightness. This issue was something I had observed in EMUI 8.1 on the Huawei P20 Pro. (The EMUI 9 update fixes the difficulty on the older Huawei flagship as well).

As the display is an OLED panel, contrast is theoretically infinite. Black crush is additionally not a big issue, albeit it's going to not be ready to match Samsung’s flagship displays during this area. On the opposite hand, viewing angles of the BOE display board are phenomenal. There’s a negligible angular color shift, and brightness doesn’t degrade across changes in angles. The display easily outperforms cheaper Samsung-sourced AMOLED panels during this respect.

When it involves color accuracy, a couple of things should be noted. Firstly, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s display doesn’t support Android’s native color management system. (Some competitors like the Google Pixel 3 and Samsung Galaxy S10 do support this.) Out of the box, the display shows inaccurate colors with reference to the sRGB gamut, because the default color mode is Vivid mode. Vivid mode is calibrated to the DCI-P3 D65 gamut, albeit with a noticeably bluish white point. The white point are often corrected by choosing the nice and cozy color temperature mode. The shortage of color management means Vivid mode is merely fitted to viewing DCI-P3 content, and not for viewing sRGB content.

The Normal mode with Default color temperature, on the opposite hand, is calibrated to the sRGB gamut. Grayscale, saturation and gamut coverage are all on point. The white point is on the brink of 6504K, and as a result, the traditional color mode satisfies color accuracy concerns. Within the future, Huawei should make this the default mode, and add support for color management to handle DCI-P3 content.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s display supports HDR10 content. It also features a Natural Tone feature that competes with Apple’s True Tone feature on the iPhone XS. Natural Tone calibrates the display’s white point consistent with ambient light temperature. In my testing, this works well, but it does have the expected effect of reducing white point color accuracy.

The wide display notch is sort of distracting, far more so than the notch of the Huawei P20 Pro. Notification icons get reduced in number, and unfortunately, there's nothing we will do about it. Huawei does provide a superb implementation of the notch hiding feature that adds the right corner radii of the synthetic rounded corners. Quite few device makers fail to match the corner radii when it involves adding rounded corners, so it’s good to ascertain Huawei not making such an error.

Overall, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s BOE display board is astounding. it's a couple of minor issues associated with the shortage of support for Android’s color management system and therefore the bluish white point of the Vivid mode, but there's not much to complain about. Note that the LG display board can have different panel characteristics. Unfortunately, buyers need to affect different components during this key area.

Huawei Mate 20 Pro Performance

System Performance Benchmarks

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro is powered by Huawei’s own HiSilicon Kirin 980 SoC. After two relatively lackluster generations of SoCs with the Kirin 960 and therefore the Kirin 970, HiSilicon has bounced back with the Kirin 980. The chipset features a 2+2+4 CPU core arrangement, making use of Arm’s DynamIQ. The chipset has four Arm Cortex-A76 cores, two of which are clocked at 2.6GHz. They act because the “big” cores. Two Cortex-A76 cores clocked at 1.92GHz act because the “medium” cores. Finally, four Arm Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 1.8GHz act because the “little” cores.

The SoC features Arm’s Mali-G76MP10 GPU, which is additionally utilized in the Exynos 9820 (although the Exynos 9820 uses a wider 12-core version of the GPU). Things are rounded off by dual Neural Processing Units (NPUs), the IP that has been provided by Cambricon. Despite the presence of dual NPUs on the Kirin 980, Qualcomm still states that the Snapdragon 855’s AI Engine is quite twice as fast as Huawei’s offering when it involves AI performance. The jury remains out among experts on the way to test this performance aspect properly.

The Kirin 980 is fabricated on TSMC’s 7nm FinFET process, same because the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855. This also means it's an efficiency advantage over the Exynos 9820, which is manufactured on Samsung’s 8nm LPP process.

When it involves CPU performance, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro (and by extension, all Kirin 980-powered phones) is during an excellent spot . The Cortex-A76 cores are a big generational upgrade over the Cortex-A75, which Huawei skipped entirely. The A76 cores are two-generations newer than the A73 cores featured within the Kirin 970. It’s worth noting that the A75 was said by Arm to possess a 34% performance improvement over the A73 in Geekbench, while the A76 was said to feature a 35% performance improvement over the A75 within the same benchmark. Therefore, even in comparison against 2019 SoCs like the Snapdragon 855 and therefore the Exynos 9820, the Kirin 980 is well set to compete.

The weak link in HiSilicon’s SoCs has been the GPU, with the Kirin 960 and therefore the Kirin 970 being prime examples here. The Kirin 980 features a way improved Mali-G76MP10 GPU which still, unfortunately, falls behind the Adreno 630 within the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, to mention nothing of the improved Adreno 640 within the Snapdragon 855.

We address a group of system, CPU, and storage benchmarks. Note that each one benchmarks were run with Performance mode enabled.

Let’s start with PCMark, which is an industry standard system performance benchmark. PCMark holistically tests performance across common use cases like web browsing, photo editing, writing, and more employing a range of Android APIs. For instance, the Writing 2.0 test uses the AndroidEditText view and therefore the PDFDocument APIs. It measures the time to open, edit and save a PDF document.

The PCMark Work 2.0 performance figure for the Mate 20 Pro is chart-topping. It’s better than the OnePlus 6T and substantially before the Xiaomi POCO F1, two high performing Snapdragon 845 phones.

The Web Browsing 2.0 test shows the Huawei Mate 20 Pro to outperform all of its competitors. This is often impressive in itself. Within the Video Editing test, most devices are separated by very small margins. The Mate 20 Pro still performs respectably here. It’s before the OnePlus 6T and behind the POCO F1. The Huawei Mate 20 Pro falls behind the OnePlus 6T within the Photo Editing 2.0 test and manages to post a rather higher score than the POCO F1. The Writing 2.0 test is currently the foremost important a part of PCMark. The Huawei Mate 20 Pro is at the highest of the charts here, slightly before the OnePlus 6T and significantly before the POCO F1. The info Manipulation score behaves similarly to the Video Editing test as all competitors are spaced out closely. The Mate 20 Pro beats both the OnePlus 6T and therefore the POCO F1 to say the primary position.

Judging by benchmark results posted online, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro outperforms the Exynos 9820 variant of the Samsung Galaxy S10 in PCMark. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 variant of the Samsung Galaxy S10, however, is neck-to-neck in most benchmarks. The Google Pixel 3—generally hailed to be one among the highest performing Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 phones—posts a rather lower overall score than the Huawei Mate 20 Pro.

We Advance to Speedometer 2.0 to Check Web Performance:

In the Android world, the Cortex-A76 cores are currently the simplest CPU cores on the market, which suggests the Kirin 980 finds itself at the highest of the chart. (The Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 also uses A76-derivative cores.) The Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s score in Speedometer represents a big generational skip Cortex-A75 derivative Snapdragon 845-powered phones.

Geekbench isn't a test of system performance, but it’s an honest synthetic test of the Kirin 980’s CPU performance. The Kirin 980 easily outperforms the Snapdragon 845 in both single-core and multi-core scores. Relative to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, the Kirin 980 is slightly behind in single-core but falls behind significantly within the multi-threaded score.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s storage consists of 128GB UFS 2.1 NAND. AndroBench results are better than most 2018/2019 flagships, particularly with reference to sequential reads and random writes, where Huawei’s storage solution seems to be best-in-class at now in time. The speeds are shown within the screenshot.

UI Performance, Unlocking Speed, and RAM Management

Huawei’s phones are known for having excellent real-world performance, and therefore the Mate 20 Pro is not any different during this area. Scrolling performance is superb, as scrolling through long lists and sites on Chrome presents no issues. I even have no complaints with touch and scrolling latency. Heavy-hitting tasks on Android, like updating multiple apps on the Play Store directly, navigating the Play Store’s app listing pages, or navigating Google Maps can bring even flagship phones to the purpose of stutters and dropped frames. The Huawei Mate 20 Pro, however, passes such tests with flying colours .

In terms of real-world UI performance, the Mate 20 Pro does manage to differentiate itself from Qualcomm Snapdragon 845-powered flagships like the OnePlus 6T, the Google Pixel 3, and therefore the POCO F1. While the OnePlus 6T and therefore the Google Pixel 3 are ready to strongly compete in terms of smoothness, they fall slightly behind the Huawei Mate 20 Pro when it involves app launch times. Launching apps is so fast on the Huawei Mate 20 Pro that it’s almost unbelievable. Affordable flagships just like the Xiaomi POCO F1 are somewhat behind in terms of smoothness. It remains to be seen how well Qualcomm Snapdragon 855-powered flagships behave during this area. The Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s frame drops across the system UI and even across third-party apps are negligible.

This is also the section where we discuss the phone’s unlocking speed. To place it simply, the Mate 20 Pro’s optical in-display fingerprint sensor may be a major downgrade from the Huawei P20 Pro’s physical capacitive fingerprint sensor, which was the fastest fingerprint sensor I even have ever used. The Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s sensor is slower to unlock, requires more pressure, and is significantly less accurate. The sensor isn't always-on, which is another issue to affect as users need to move the phone for the fingerprint sensor icon to be shown on the display. Because the sensor is an optical one, it also requires light. The last two constraints discussed above don’t apply to an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor, which is employed within the Samsung Galaxy S10. The accuracy rate for the Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s on-screen fingerprint sensor is around 70-75% whereas it should be around 99%. In terms of the general experience, it's very almost like the in-display optical sensor found within the OnePlus 6T, as all of those sensors are roughly within the same generation. Huawei will hopefully include a far better sensor within the P30 Pro.

3D face recognition, on the opposite hand, is a completely different story. It’s ready to compete with and even beat Apple’s Face ID tech on the newest iPhones. Huawei provides a choice to directly unlock the phone after successful recognition of a user’s phone, which makes it superior to Apple’s Face ID. Huawei also provides an alternative choice to permit the phone to unlock even when the user has their eyes closed, although the corporate warns that this feature is a smaller amount secure.

On the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, 3D face recognition works alright. There are not any problems unlocking the phone within the dark. The accuracy rate of the technology is around 99%, which is impressive. While it's going to not be as convenient as a back-mounted capacitive fingerprint sensor, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s implementation of 3D face unlock is superior to its optical in-display fingerprint sensor. The wide display notch is arguably worthwhile just to possess this seamless implementation of secure face unlock. Users just need to press the facility button, point the phone at their face, and it'll unlock virtually instantly. While I’m sad about the removal of the physical fingerprint sensor, 3D face unlock may be a good substitute.

RAM management on Huawei phones has been a standard issue, because the company features a default policy of aggressively killing apps within the background. However, I didn’t face any issues with apps being closed or any wonky behavior on my 6GB RAM variant of the Huawei Mate 20 Pro. Users can have multiple apps, browser tabs, and services open within the background simultaneously. If an app does keep getting killed within the background, Huawei provides an choice to manage its app launch manually, which can let it run within the background without being killed.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s thermals also are not a problem. Ultimately, real-world performance may be a strength of the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, and it'll still be a strength even after more Qualcomm Snapdragon 855-powered phones arrive within the market. Huawei also uses “AI-based features” in EMUI 9 that are said to assist keep the phone running smoothly, but I can only discuss this after using the phone for an extended period.

GPU Performance

The HiSilicon Kirin 980 features the Mali-G76MP10 GPU. At the announcement of the SoC, Huawei stated that its GPU would be 46% faster than the GPU of the Kirin 970. Doing the maths means it still wouldn’t be ready to compete with the Snapdragon 845’s Adreno 630 GPU if Huawei’s claims clothed to be true. So as to check this, we address 3DMark for an artificial GPU performance benchmark that tests peak GPU performance:

In 3DMark Sling Shot Extreme, we discover the Mate 20 Pro outperforming the POCO F1 and getting outperformed by the OnePlus 6T within the OpenGL ES 3.1 version of the benchmark. The graphics score is less than both the OnePlus 6T and therefore the POCO F1, while the physics score is above both of them. Within the Vulkan version of the benchmark, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro interestingly outperforms both of its competitor’s altogether three scores.

However, 3DMark doesn’t tell the entire story. GFXBench 5.0 results posted by users show that the Mali-G76MP10 GPU is slightly slower than the Snapdragon 845’s Adreno 630 GPU, which successively is 20% slower than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855. The Exynos 9820’s Mali-G76MP12 GPU is additionally faster than the Mate 20 Pro’s GPU. In comparison against the last-generation Exynos 9810’s Mali-G72MP18, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro goes up ahead.

Of course, peak GPU performance in synthetic benchmarks isn't adequate to real-world gaming performance. We’ve already seen the Kirin 980 on the respect View 20 do an excellent job when it involves playing games. The Mate 20 Pro should be ready to achieve an equivalent performance, so buyers don’t have much to stress about here. It’s more a case of future-proofing, as it’s undeniable that the Mate 20 Pro’s GPU is slower than even affordable flagships like the POCO F1, and therefore the gulf will only widen when the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 makes it’s thanks to lower cost points.

Huawei Mate 20 Pro Camera Performance

Camera Specifications

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro features a triple rear camera setup, which is branded the Leica Triple Camera. (The optics are sourced from Leica.) The first sensor is that the 40MP Sony IMX600, which features a 1/1.7-inch sensor size, 1.0μm pixel size, f/1.8 aperture, and 27mm equivalent focal distance. It doesn't have OIS. The secondary camera is an 8MP sensor with a 1/4-inch sensor size, OIS, f/2.4 aperture, and an 80mm focal distance. This lets it provide nearly 3x optical (lossless) zoom relative to the 27mm focal distance of the first camera, and it also features a 5x hybrid zoom option.

While the Huawei P20 Pro had a 20MP monochrome tertiary camera, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro retires it in favor of a fresh 20MP ultra-wide angle camera. The ultra-wide angle sensor has an f/2.2 aperture, 16mm focal distance, and autofocus (!). Autofocus has traditionally been missing in ultra-wide angle cameras (as seen on LG’s flagships and therefore the Samsung Galaxy S10), therefore the Huawei Mate 20 Pro positively distinguishes itself during this respect.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s 40MP primary sensor is that the same because the Huawei P20 Pro’s primary sensor. It uses a Quad Bayer filter rather than a typical Bayer filter, which suggests that it's less color resolution as compared to smartphone cameras that use standard Bayer filters. The camera uses 4-in-1 pixel binning to effectively have 2.0μm super pixels with 10MP resolution (which is that the default resolution). Pixel binning is employed to scale back noise, increase dynamic range, and improve per-pixel detail.

All three cameras use Huawei AI Image Stabilization (AIS). AIS is that the technology that permits Huawei’s night mode to be used without a tripod. The Leica Triple Camera setup features 4D autofocus (contrast detection, phase detection, laser, and depth detection).

Having all three cameras with different focal lengths enables flexibility on an unprecedented level (unlike the Nokia 9 PureView’s penta-camera setup, which follows a special imaging philosophy). The 16mm ultra-wide-angle has 0.6x the focal distance of the first camera, while the 8MP telephoto camera enables 3x optical zoom and 5x optical zoom. Despite not having an interchangeable lens camera, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro achieves an equivalent goals by using different means. It’s truly impressive to consider.

The monochrome camera won’t be missed an excessive amount of, as Huawei’s low light capabilities have increasingly been driven by pixel binning and AIS, rather than being driven by monochrome cameras. It should be noted here that the telephoto camera has an 8MP resolution, but photos taken by it even have a 10MP resolution because they combine the output of both the telephoto and therefore the primary cameras.

Last year, Huawei’s 40MP sensor was unique. This year, however, Sony’s IMX586 48MP 1/2″ sensor has achieved significant popularity, finding its way within the Honor View 20, Xiaomi Mi 9, and even the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 Pro. The elemental approach is that the same, because it uses 4-in-1 pixel binning with 12MP resolution to realize 1.6μm super pixels from the 0.8μm pixel size. This sensor is newer than the IMX600, and it are often expected to seek out its thanks to other phones also. We expect Huawei to use a 40MP sensor within the P30 Pro, however.

Camera App and User Experience

Camera App

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s camera app is mildly improved from the Huawei P20 Pro’s camera app. The camera modes visible on the most screen are Photo, Video, Portrait, Aperture, Night, and Pro. The remaining modes are Slow-mo, Panorama, Monochrome, AR lens, light painting, HDR, Time-lapse, Filter, 3D panorama, Watermark, Documents, Underwater, and Super macro. Users also can enable Moving Pictures, which is Huawei’s combat Google’s Motion Photos and Apple’s Live Photos.

Most of the camera modes are self-explanatory. The slow-motion mode allows users to record 720p video at 960fps for 0.2 seconds. This is often not real 960fps video, though, because the Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s sensor doesn’t have a DRAM die, unlike the Samsung Galaxy S10. Instead, it uses software interpolation. The ultimate result still looks good as long as there's many light.

The Night mode uses handheld long exposures. It takes 4-5 seconds to require multiple exposures then stacks them together, using AIS to attenuate motion blur and camera shake. We’ll assess it within the image quality section.

Despite not having a monochrome camera, users can still take monochrome photos directly from the camera app. The portrait and aperture modes are well-familiar to us, and therefore the distinguishing factor between them is that portrait mode is employed for taking photos of individuals, while aperture mode should be wont to get the bokeh effect while taking photos of objects. The HDR mode is merely there as a formality because there's no need for it. (10MP samples using pixel binning have class-leading dynamic range, making HDR unnecessary.)

The Super macro mode is interesting, however. It allows users to require photos of close-range objects going as low as 2.5 cm. As far as I can tell, this is often a singular feature within the smartphone market, and it works remarkably well.

Camera User Experience

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro uses its speedy Kirin 980 chipset to urge a quick and smooth camera user experience. Focusing is fast and accurate. Taking photos is fast. Shutter lag is tangibly but the Huawei P20 Pro, and that I assume this is often due to the many improvements in processing power. In low light, there's still no “zero shutter lag” mode almost like “HDR+ on” mode in Google Camera, but the trade-off in better image quality is worthwhile across the board.

The “Sharpening the photo… Please steady your device” message now appears only in low lighting conditions, which is how it should be. The camera preview also maintains a high frame rate, although I do wish that it had a better resolution. I also wish that it might be more representative of the ultimate photo in terms of lighting.

Master AI, first introduced within the Huawei P20 Pro, returns on the Huawei Mate 20 Pro. It can now recognize more scenes and objects. Huawei has significantly improved the performance of Master AI, to the purpose where I like to recommend leaving it switched on. The “Blue Sky” and “Greenery” scene modes are significantly diluted in terms of saturation and exposure, and over-saturation of colours isn't a problem anymore. It can still misidentify scenes, but the frequency of this issue has gone down. Master AI now also speeds up when it involves switching between scenes. The probabilities of a photograph being taken within the wrong scene mode are lower now. Of these improvements need to be commended.

As before, Master AI also can be entirely disabled. Once it’s disabled, there'll be a big impact on image quality, and it'll probably be negative in terms of dynamic range and exposure. Huawei, therefore, is on the proper track, and only a couple of trifling issues are left to be solved with reference to user experience.

Image Quality Assessment – Daylight

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro may be a star performer in daylight when taking photos with the first camera at the default 10MP resolution. Photos have superb exposure, accurate colors, and class-leading dynamic range. Huawei continues to lag slightly behind in terms of detail retention, however. i think that this is often a conscious design that was taken by the Huawei imaging team to completely eliminate noise. In daylight, image samples haven't any noise in the least in most cases at the starting ISO level. Shutter speeds are up to the mark also, which suggests that the camera are often used for capturing fast paced objects under natural light.

I also believe, however, that the choice to possess slightly less fine detail in favor of completely eliminating noise may be a misguided one. The Google Pixel 3’s Google Camera software (and by extension, any phone with a properly working unofficial Google Camera port) follows precisely the other approach, and as a result, its 12MP photos have more detail whilst it can’t compete in terms of exposure (the Google Pixel’s photos are predominantly underexposed.) The Google Pixel opts to let luminance noise remain even in daylight photos to retain a better amount of fine texture detail in natural objects like trees, plants, grass, etc. Both approaches have their pros and cons, but the Google Pixel’s approach is best on behalf of me.

Dynamic range, on the opposite hand, may be a different story. The Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s 10MP photos have the simplest dynamic range I even have seen on a smartphone camera thus far. The Google Pixel 3 can’t really compete here (despite Google Camera’s workflow prioritizing dynamic range) thanks to its loss of exposure. Other phones just like the Samsung Galaxy S10, Xiaomi Mi Mix 3, OnePlus 6T, et al. are ready to expose scenes better, but their dynamic range remains far behind the Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s dynamic range. The Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s dynamic range is so good that photos of scenes like sunrise and sunset are handled properly, with just the proper amount of tone and color detail because of Master AI’s help.

The dynamic range advantage means photos of high-contrast scenes are not any problem for the Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s camera. The problems of image processing artifacts and corner softness also are nowhere to be seen. Because of the superb exposure (although some samples do suffer from overexposure), accurate colors, and excellent dynamic range, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s photos have the very best chances of manufacturing a “wow effect,” which may be a socially-beneficial technical achievement.

Can the marginally inferior fine detail issue in 10MP samples be solved by taking photos in 40MP resolution? The solution thereto question is nuanced in nature. 40MP samples taken in daylight do have more detail in most cases than the 10MP pixel binned samples, although this is often not always the case. Using the 40MP resolution option presents its justifiable share of caveats, though. The primary is file size, which isn’t an insignificant issue on its own. The second is that in 40MP mode, all zoom options are disabled—users need to jump back to the 10MP option so as to use the ultra-wide angle and telephoto cameras. The third—and the foremost serious—issue is that the incontrovertible fact that the 40MP samples have a dramatic deficit in dynamic range and exposure, losing the wow-factor of the Mate 20 Pro’s camera.

Without pixel binning, dynamic range and exposure become disadvantages for the Mate 20 Pro’s camera in 40MP mode. Most samples begin underexposed. Dynamic range is lost to the purpose where most competing flagships manage to outperform the Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s 40MP mode during this area. When taking these factors into consideration alongside the very fact that the advantage intimately isn't enough to mitigate these negatives, we reach one recommendation: Use the 10MP resolution option in nearly all cases, even in daylight.

  

The Honor View 20 has an AI Ultra Clarity mode which takes multiple 48MP exposures over the course of 4-5 seconds then stacks them together for a sharper, more detailed photo. Huawei hasn’t given such a capability to the Mate 20 Pro yet.

  

The portrait and aperture modes on the Mate 20 Pro are good, but their caveats should be kept in mind. Beautification should be turned off immediately, but even after turning it off, portrait mode samples taken indoors have less detail than standard photos. Portrait mode remains ok for taking photos of individuals when there's enough light, but I’m more impressed by the aperture mode. This permits users to require photos of objects with the bokeh effect, and intrinsically, it proves useful in product photos. The extent of bokeh also can be chosen from f/0.95 all the thanks to f/16.

  

Huawei’s telephoto camera on the P20 Pro was notable in 2018 for providing unparalleled 3x optical zoom and 5x hybrid zoom. It’s now March 2019, and yet, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro (which has an equivalent telephoto sensor because the P20 Pro) retains a competitive advantage during this respect. 10x zoom cameras are on the horizon (with Huawei’s own P30 Pro being reported to possess such capability). While the Samsung Galaxy S10, Xiaomi Mi 9, and therefore the LG V40 ThinQ/LG G8 ThinQ have 2x zoom telephoto cameras, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro features a 3x zoom telephoto camera.

  

The image quality from the telephoto camera remains nearly as good as ever in daylight. The framing opportunities provided by a telephoto camera make its inclusion worthwhile. The potential of an 80mm equivalent lens shouldn’t be underestimated, and even 5x hybrid zoom samples have good image quality. It also can be noted here that despite Google’s efforts, Super Res Zoom on the Google Pixel 3 falls behind Huawei’s 3x optical zoom on the Mate 20 Pro in terms of detail retention.

  

Let’s advance to the ultra-wide angle camera. The 20MP camera lives up to its potential. It’s more or less the sole game in town, as LG’s ultra-wide angle camera on the LG V40 ThinQ suffers from poor image processing and lack of autofocus. The ultra-wide angle sensor on the Samsung Galaxy S10 seems to be significantly better, but it suffers from distortion thanks to its 123-degree field-of-view. The Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s ultra-wide angle camera, on the opposite hand, has none of those problems.

In daylight, it takes superb photos with well-defined detail, good exposure, and slightly saturated colors. The inclusion of autofocus means every photo won’t need to be crazy focus set to infinity. The 16mm focal distance means the coverage of the ultra-wide angle sensor is a smaller amount than the Samsung Galaxy S10’s ultra-wide angle sensor, for instance. The downside is that you simply get fewer objects within the frame. The upside is that the probabilities of distortion are much lower.

Here are some additional image samples that were taken by XDA Contributors Eric Hulse and Max Weinbach within the U.S. They showcase an equivalent great characteristics of fantastic exposure and dynamic range.

Overall, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro is one among the simplest smartphone cameras when it involves taking photos in daylight. Three different cameras with three different focal lengths provide flexibility in composition. Image quality from the telephoto camera continues to be a step above the competition. The ultra-wide angle sensor’s output is additionally better than its major competitors. With reference to the first camera, its pixel binned 10MP photos are outstanding in every single aspect apart from detail retention, where it cedes the highest spot in favor of an area within the top tier of smartphone cameras.

  

As we move indoors, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s camera strengths are still highlighted. However, the reduction in light levels also brings forth the main liability of the Mate 20 Pro’s image processing. The camera opts to scale back noise an excessive amount of, which features a negative effect of reducing fine detail. This is often apparent when taking photos of individuals under artificial light. Skin tones are artificially processed, making them look inauthentic. In stark contrast, the Google Camera HDR+ software of the Google Pixel 3 reproduces such detail faithfully, and therefore the Google Pixel’s photos are sharper indoors as long as there's enough artificial light.

  

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro still performs well indoors, but the noise reduction issue was something that I had highlighted back within the Huawei P20 Pro’s review, and it still hasn’t been solved here. Fine texture detail is deteriorated to the purpose where the Huawei Mate 20 Pro gets demoted to second position behind the Google Pixel 3. It’s still a far better camera indoors than phones just like the OnePlus 6T, LG V40, Vivo NEX S, and POCO F1. The Samsung Galaxy S10 also will probably fall behind here.

  

Overall, Huawei must improve its noise reduction algorithm indoors to let luminance noise remain in favor of retaining more detail. Such an approach would probably make the Huawei Mate 20 Pro a best-in-class indoor smartphone camera considering its strengths in terms of sunshine capture and dynamic range. As it is, it remains within the top tier.

  

Huawei Mate 20 Pro Audio

I am disappointed by the Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s speaker. The first speaker is hidden inside the USB Type-C port, with the earpiece acting because the secondary speaker. The speaker isn’t as loud because it should be, although its clarity is ok. In terms of loudness, it's a regression from the Huawei P20 Pro’s speaker. It also gets outperformed by quite few cheaper phones that cost 1/5th the worth of the Mate 20 Pro. The Huawei Mate 20 Pro supports Dolby Atmos, which can't be disabled in speaker mode.

The story doesn’t improve once we discuss wired audio. The Huawei Mate 20 Pro doesn’t have a 3.5mm headphone jack, unlike the quality Huawei Mate 20. It’s a funny kind of situation where the “Pro” variant doesn’t have a feature that was once described as ubiquitous while the quality variant does have this feature. Huawei has done this with the Mate 10 series before, though.

I have made my stand on the absence of the headphone jack documented in prior reviews, so I don’t believe there's much point in going over it again. I’ll just say this: It’s an excellent disappointment to ascertain that Huawei and therefore the remainder of the Chinese vendors have followed Apple’s lead here. The Samsung Galaxy S10+’s inclusion of the three .5mm headphone jack along side a 4,100mAh battery and an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor shows what’s possible. Unfortunately, Samsung and LG are the sole major vendors left selling flagship phones with 3.5mm headphone jacks.

For what it’s worth, Huawei does bundle a 3.5mm-to-USB-Type-C adapter within the box, which is an absolutely essential component of the box package for those that have 3.5mm audio equipment. The Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s USB Type-C port supports audio accessory mode, which suggests that aside from supporting USB Type-C digital earphones, it also supports analog USB Type-C earphones or an analog (pass-through) USB Type-C adapter. The OnePlus 6T’s analog USB Type-C adapter works on the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, then do the OnePlus Type-C Bullets earphones. a minimum of that’s a positive aspect, considering phones just like the Google Pixel 3 support only USB Type-C digital audio. (As an aside, Bluetooth earphones also work fine.)

  

Ultimately, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro posts a rather disappointing showing in audio. It seems there's not much hope of a turnaround during this aspect with reference to 2019 flagship phones. Phones just like the Samsung Galaxy S10, LG V40 ThinQ/LG G8 ThinQ, and POCO F1 are still around for now, though.

  

In terms of software, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro runs EMUI 9 on top of Android Pie. EMUI (short for Emotion UI) may be a polarizing UI interface that tends to divide opinions, but I didn’t have many issues with EMUI 8.1 on the Huawei P20 Pro and that I have even fewer issues with EMUI 9 on the Mate 20 Pro. It works, and what’s more, it works well. Currently, my Huawei Mate 20 Pro unit is running EMUI 9.0.0.183, with the January 1, 2019 security patch. (Huawei tends to be slow with security patch updates.)

Fans of the Google Pixel’s interface will probably be overwhelmed by EMUI’s interface, but I found it to be logically laid out. EMUI is an incredibly feature-rich UI that contains more features than i will be able to ever use. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate their presence, though. Let’s take a glance through few of them:

Starting with the gestures, Huawei has sensibly opted to not adopt Android Pie’s gesture navigation system. Instead, the corporate uses its own full-screen gesture navigation system that really saves screen estate, and therefore the system itself is extremely almost like MIUI‘s gesture navigation system. Users can swipe up from rock bottom to travel home, swipe from the left or right sides of the display to travel back, swipe up and hold from rock bottom to access recent apps, swipe up diagonally from rock bottom corners to enter Huawei’s Mini Screen View, and optionally swipe up from rock bottom corners to enter Google Assistant.

All in all, it’s an honest system, albeit there's some room for improvement. I prefer MIUI’s implementation of gestures because its finger tracking is smoother. Huawei’s implementation also doesn’t work optimally if you employ a third-party launcher. When the default launcher are some things aside from Huawei Home, users will not be ready to swipe up from rock bottom to exit the recent apps list (they will need to tap anywhere to exit it), and therefore the animations are lost too. MIUI’s navigation system doesn’t suffer from this issue. On the opposite hand, mini screen view remains easily accessible on EMUI albeit you employ gestures, unlike MIUI, which forces the user to modify back to three-button navigation.

On the worldwide variants of the Huawei Mate 20 phones, users can change the default launcher to a third-party one, which isn’t possible on the China software. The Huawei Launcher itself is an inoffensive launcher in its title. It’s fast and smooth, and it comes with quite few customization options. The sole thing it’s missing may be a swipe up gesture to enter the app drawer. Other competitors do provide this feature, and it adds to the perception of speed and immediacy.

The recent apps view is that the same as stock Android Pie, but as EMUI doesn’t support Android Pie’s navigation system, users can’t quickly jump back and forth between apps. The row of suggested apps is additionally missing. The remainder of the UI adheres closely to Material Design 1 principles. The aesthetics of the fast settings drawer are changed from blue text on black to blue text on a white background. It’s a little change, but it makes an enormous difference.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro supports always on display, but it’s disabled by default. System-wide dark mode are often enabled, and eye comfort mode is additionally supported with scheduling options.

EMUI 9 retains support for Huawei’s Easy Projection feature, which may be a competitor to Samsung’s DeX. Easy Projection also can work wirelessly on EMUI 9. It also has more features like Scheduled Power On/Off, App Twin, Private Space, Simple Mode, Ride Mode, and more. When using three-button navigation, users can customize the amount and placement of the navigation buttons. They will also prefer to hide the navigation keys entirely by adding a hide navigation bar button. Huawei’s mini screen view (one-handed mode) also continues to be a welcome addition, especially because the feature still doesn’t exist available Android.

Motion control gestures and knuckle gestures return also. While knuckle gestures are a gimmick, motion control gestures contain simple flip, pick up, and lift to ear gestures. Especially, the flip gestures add convenience.

EMUI does something called “Smart tune-up” that’s said to regularly update app configuration data to enhance app performance. It also automatically cleans junk files after 14 days, consistent with Huawei.

EMUI’s list of bloatware is non-existent, which is sweet to ascertain. Huawei uses Messages because the default SMS client and Google Chrome is that the only pre-installed browser. Huawei’s system apps (such because the Calculator, Calendar, Gallery, and Phone app) also are clean, well-designed, and feature-rich. The corporate also has its own version of Digital Wellbeing that's called Digital Balance.

Conclusion

Let me be clear about it: the Huawei Mate 20 Pro may be a phenomenal phone. Its list of positives far outweighs its list of negatives. Let’s briefly summarize various aspects of the phone:

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s design is sweet. Huawei continues to progress with gradient schemes and general look and feel. While the Mate 20 Pro doesn’t have something just like the Honor View 20’s shimmering glass effect, it’s quite hard to call the Twilight color understated on its own. Build quality and ergonomics still be excellent.

The BOE Display OLED display is great. The display posts excellent leads to all fields starting from resolution, brightness, contrast, viewing angles, and color accuracy. The LG display board may have different characteristics, but the BOE display board may be a strong contender for one among the simplest flagship smartphone displays.

The Kirin 980 may be a fast, power efficient SoC, and therefore the Mate 20 Pro benefits from it. The SoC is quite a match for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 in terms of CPU and system performance, and judging from preliminary results, it’s faster than the Exynos 9820 in terms of system performance. The GPU still remains a comparatively liability in terms of peak GPU performance, but Huawei is during a far better place this year. Overall, the Kirin 980 is one among the fastest SoCs out there.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro features a superb camera that posts best-in-class leads to several areas like low light photography, ultra wide-angle sensor image quality, and dynamic home in daylight. It’s no major weaknesses aside from aggressive noise reduction in indoor conditions. Video has also been significantly improved, to the purpose where it’s competitive with the simplest out there.

In terms of audio, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro doesn’t manage to inspire in any way. The speaker is quiet, and therefore the decision to get rid of the three .5mm headphone jack remains a remarkably poor one. The phone does support USB Type-C analog audio, which is one redeeming factor.

EMUI 9 is far improved from its past iterations. The added features it provides are an honest differentiating factor relative to stock Android. EMUI is straightforward, fast, and smooth on the Mate 20 Pro, and that i genuinely just like the full-screen navigation gestures.

The battery lifetime of the Mate 20 Pro might not be class-leading, but it’s still ok. I feel that there's more potential left within the 4,200mAh battery, but because it is, the battery life is currently within the upper tier of flagship phones. In terms of charging, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro runs rings round the Galaxy S10 and therefore the Pixel 3, and it really has few competitors generally. The 40W SuperCharge 2.0 standard is amazing, there's little question about it. 15W fast wireless charging is additionally a pleasant bonus.

When we reach the event section… Unfortunately, there's no development section to talk of. The bootloader of the Mate 20 Pro can’t be officially unlocked, as Huawei has stopped giving official bootloader unlock codes. We still remain disappointed by Huawei’s decision and hope that the corporate reverses its policy within the future.

Finally, we turn our attention towards pricing, competition, and therefore the value proposition. The Mate 20 Pro is sold for ₹69,990 ($1,000) in India. It’s not officially available within the US, but the worldwide variant are often currently bought on Amazon without warranty for ~$842. The phone is probably going to receive a price cutting within the weeks after the launch of the Huawei P30 series.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s primary competitor is that the Samsung Galaxy S10+. The Samsung Galaxy S10+ is slightly costlier than the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, and therefore the two competitors are very closely matched in terms of specifications. The Exynos international variant of the Samsung Galaxy S10+ features a slightly better display, pill-style display cutout versus wide notch, a faster GPU, more RAM in India (8GB vs. 6GB), a microSD card slot, 4K@60fps video, ultrasonic versus optical in-display fingerprint sensor, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The Huawei Mate 20 Pro, on the opposite hand, has its own advantages: a far better CPU with faster system performance, better rear cameras, 3D face recognition, much faster wired charging (40W versus 15W), better battery life, and a less expensive tag.

The Huawei P30 Pro is one to observe out for. At launch, it'll probably be costlier than the Huawei Mate 20 Pro. Prospective Huawei Mate 20 Pro buyers should, therefore, await the Huawei P30 Pro’s launch to profit from the likely price cutting that the Huawei Mate 20 Pro will enjoy.