The Mate 20 Pro is a beautiful smartphone, there’s no question about it. My colleague Basti was reminded of the Galaxy S8 when picking up the new Huawei smartphone, but I don’t quite agree. The Mate surfaces feel different, higher quality. The fine pattern on my blue test device shimmers considerably, creating a striking contrast with the red highlights of the power button. The craftsmanship is perfect.
I’ve also been using the Huawei P20 Pro again in the past few weeks, which I had for a long time in the spring. The two smartphones are very similar in size, but the Mate 20 Pro is a little longer and a few millimeters narrower. With the slimmer frame and the curved glass surface combined, the Mate 20 Pro feels and fits better in the hand than the P20 Pro, even considering the similar size. The textured finish on the back of the Mate 20 Pro also makes the phone less prone to fingerprint smudges, but not necessarily more slip-resistant.
The fastest Huawei smartphone
The Mate 20 Pro is the fastest Huawei smartphone I’ve ever used. Apps open much quicker than they do on the P20 Pro and everything runs a little bit more smoothly. The work that Huawei put into faster response times was worth it. This is not only thanks to EMUI 9, because it already runs on my P20 Pro. This means that the Kirin 980 chipset is performing better than the Kirin 970 from last year.
Speaking of the EMUI: I like the current Huawei software better than the previous version. The UI has become cleaner, everything looks a bit rounder, more modern and more pleasing to the eye. The look is still a matter of taste, of course. It’s nice that you can decide if you want to use an App Drawer or not. But it would be even better if the drawer could be opened from bottom to top via the now popular wipe gesture, instead of having to use an icon.
What I dislike is the notch – it’s pretty wide and doesn’t offer much space for icons in the small display areas to the left and right of it. It’s especially annoying that there’s no way to hide the NFC icon or the Bluetooth icon to make room for current notifications.
Huawei needs to improve face unlock
The Notch not only contains the front camera and the earpiece, but also the hardware for the new, 3D-based infrared face recognition. It works quickly, even in the dark, but there’s one small issue: It can’t tell my face apart from that of my colleague Christopher. You can read more about this here. It’s probably a software issue that Huawei should fix as soon as possible. The in-display fingerprint sensor, on the other hand, works flawlessly.
The Mate 20 Pro’s camera is really fun thanks to the new wide-angle lens. I’ve always loved that feature on certain LG phones. The Huawei phone’s camera also offers two focal lengths, giving you even more ways to take great, creative pictures. Macro mode, which uses the 16mm focal length, is quite enjoyable too. Expect more on this later in the camera test of the Mate 20 Pro.
The battery life is excellent so far and the charging is extremely fast with 40 watts. The NM Card as a memory extension takes getting used to, but it’s better than nothing. We will reveal more in the coming days. The Mate 20 Pro has a lot more features that are worth discovering.
What do you think of the Huawei Mate 20 Pro? Let us know in the comments.
I have seen some reviews on this phone. All of them are positive and also about the mindblowing performance.
Awaiting to test my myself when it will be available on my area!
None of the new hot top or midline phones are coming to the US.
Would you? Given how ZTE & Huawei were kicked to the curb? I still say this was more "fear mongering" than anything else. Shoot, the alphabet agencies in the USA probably do as much or more spying than the Chinese do LOL. I think this was more about apple/samsung NOT wanting any competition in the USA, and they moved a ton of money around to protect their turf. Most people in the states buy overpriced phones because they still walk into carrier stores to buy them. Walk into a carrier store in the USA and it’s like walking into an Apple store. Apple apple apple everywhere with a smattering of samsung. To get into a carrier store, you have to have carrier branding, so you can offer these overpriced things, for X number of months at no interest. Keeps the price high and the manufacturer profits high. I don’t think Apple or Samsung would like some "Chinese" phones coming in at a lower price, forcing them to compete in an open playing field.
Soon as the Mate20 price comes down, I might opt for the international version, since it SHOULD work on the LTE frequencies in the USA market. I just hope the IMEI’s from them are not BLOCKED from working. I’ll let others take that plunge first.
I’ve had 3 Huawei phones, never had an issue with any of them.
They also have poor support for US bands. There is enough import market that they’d make some money by using a more complete modem. So even the modem choices seem a bit odd. Business travelers in those other countries still want their phone to work on trips to the US too.