Huawei Mate 20 Pro Review – Should You Upgrade?

We’ve had the Huawei Mate 20 Pro for weeks already and tested everything from its display down to its performance, battery, and more. After almost a month of usage, hows is the Mate 20 Pro? Does it deserve the hype it has been getting and is it a worthy upgrade? Let’s find out here.

Watch the full video review down below.

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Display

The new Huawei Mate 20 Pro packs a 6.39-inch curved AMOLED display with 1440 x 3120-pixel screen resolution and amazing 538 ppi density. One thing that sets the Mate 20 Pro from its predecessors is the stunning curved display. Though, smartphones with curved edges aren’t technically new since Samsung has been releasing devices with an infinite display for years already. The curved display on the Mate 20 Pro really made the handset look sexy and also made it look and feel like the top flagship in town.

Looking at the notch, it’s a little bulkier than the Mate 20’s drop-like notch and even the P20 Pro’s. If you’re not a fan of the black bar, Huawei always adds an option to get rid of it, just head to settings.

Going to its viewing experience, the device’s display produced vibrant images. Also, the color doesn’t change when viewed from different angles. We also tried taking some shots outside and we didn’t have any issues with looking at the screen. Moreover, the curved AMOLED display made the viewing experience more enjoyable.

Design

Again, the curved display on the Huawei Mate 20 Pro looks good and is definitely an eye-catcher. Going to the back panel of the handset, you’ll notice the unique camera setup. From the vertically aligned triple camera setup of the P20 Pro, the Mate 20 Pro’s cameras are placed in a square form together with its LED Flash. Personally, I don’t like how Huawei Placed the cameras on the new Mate. It might take time for some people like me to get used to it.

For the buttons and ports, the volume rockers and power/lock buttons are located at the right side. At the bottom bunk of the phone is the speaker grille, microphone, SIM tray and the USB Type-C port, while up top is the audio port and a secondary microphone.

Camera

Huawei flagship smartphones are known for their Leica lenses that has superb AI capabilities. The P20 Pro received a lot of hype from the masses for its hybrid zoom that can shoot clear photos even with the zoom set at 10x. Now, the Mate 20 Pro has better cameras and an addition of an ultra-wide zoom sensor.

As mentioned, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s cameras are AI enabled and it will instantly recognize the scene and automatically enhance the photo. For these two shots, the Leica lenses of the Mate 20 Pro recognized the seen as “sky” and made the necessary color adjustments to brighten up the photo and made it more vibrant.

Similar to the P20 Pro, this Mate device can shoot clear photos even with the zoom set at the maximum level. See for yourselves.

The portrait mode on this device also works like a charm. The bokeh effect does not look artificial in any way and also has sharp edges to make the subject pop out of the background.

Heading to the night shots. It’s undeniable that the Mate 20 Pro can capture amazing night shots. The master AI technology will automatically detect the scene as night and will take the photo with long exposure. It’s amazing how we can take long exposure shots without having the need for a tripod.

The Mate 20 Pro can not only take great rear-camera shots but selfies as well. Similar to other Android handsets, this smartphone has an AI beautification feature, portrait mode, and more. You can tweak the AI beauty mode to your liking but personally, I like my selfies to look natural and not beautified. As for the portrait mode, the bokeh effect is great too.

Performance/User Experience

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro carries the company’s latest HiSilicon Kirin 980 chipset, which is said to be more powerful than any other 10nm chipsets. Along the new processor, there’s Mali-G76 MP10 GPU and this handset runs on an EMUI OS based on Android 9.0 Pie out of the box. Furthermore, the EMUI 9 supports GPU Turbo 2.0. Media playbacks are enjoyable on this handset for their color accuracy, sharp details, and large display.

Upon testing, the Mate 20 Pro is extremely great for gaming, as expected. No lags of some sort were encountered while playing Asphalt 9 and PUBG, Rules of Survival, and more heavy games even at max settings. Loading in-game is fast on the Mate 20 Prov and it’s because of the faster and newer chipset.

Going to the security, Huawei added an in-display fingerprint sensor on the Mate 20 Pro and got rid of the physical fingerprint scanner that was on the previous Mate 10 and P20 series. Setting up the in-display fingerprint scanner will take a few minutes of your time, unlike other handsets with the same feature. Despite the long finger-registration time, the process is worth your time since the feature works accurately and efficiently.

We also tested this handset using the following benchmarking tools and here are the results:

Battery

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro packs a large 4,200 mAh battery and enjoys Huawei’s 40W SuperCharge. We were surprised by how fast this handset charges. From 10% battery, in a matter of 14 minutes, we already have 40% of battery juice. It took only less than an hour to fully charged the battery.

Going to its battery life endurance, this smartphone can last around two days of full web browsing, medium media playback, and light gaming.

Audio

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro produces louder audio with its stereo speaker, also not scratchy even in maximum volume. However, the speakers are slightly uneven. You might notice this when watching music videos.

Verdict: Should you upgrade?

If you recently bought a P20 Pro, we don’t advise you to get yourself a Mate 20 Pro since they have almost the same cameras, both offers great performance and almost at par when it comes to gaming. But if you’re looking for a new Android phone or thinking if you should switch to this Huawei Mate 20 Pro from your old iOS handset or from a few years old Android device, the Mate 20 Pro is the best choice as of the moment. The Huawei Mate 20 can easily be stated as 2018’s top smartphone.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro is priced at PHP 49,990 and is now available nationwide.