Huawei Mate 20 Pro: Hands-on review

The Mate 20 Pro was announced today, it’s shaping up to be a beast.

Huawei has finally announced the Mate 20 Pro today in London, it literally takes everything you would want and smashes it into one phone. It has three rear cameras, like the V40 and P20 Pro. It has an in-display fingerprint sensor, iPhone X like 3D face scanning and a 6.4-inch OLED display.

It’s obvious that the Mate 20 Pro is a direct competitor to the Galaxy Note 9, even going to lengths to convince us that the software is a lot better on the Huawei. Huawei claims that it has 22% higher stability in gaming and 14% better power efficiency. The Mate 20 Pro also ditches the monochrome sensor and has three different lenses with different focal lengths. It also adds a wireless charging feature that allows the phone to wireless charge other devices…

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro sees the 7nm Kirin 980 processor make its first appearance in a phone. It claims to have much better performance than the 2018 Snapdragon 845, built in AI capabilities, LTE capable of reaching speeds of 1.4 Gbps and optimizations to help stop performance degradation.

The new device does feature a notch, it’s basically an industry standard this year. However, the Huawei actually has a good use for it. The Mate 20 Pro has its own 3D face scanning for better security, basically the same as the iPhone X. At least the notch is justified in this device; Huawei even had a dig at iPhone as their notch is smaller.

It also features an in-display fingerprint sensor, fitted into the screen allowing you to unlock the phone with a press of the screen. While I haven’t been able to test it thoroughly, I love the technology and it gives it a different dimension to other phones.

The screen of the Huawei Mate 20 is a 6.4-inch panel with a 3120 x 1440 resolution. This makes it sound like a massive device but it is around the same size as a Google Pixel 3 XL, making it easy to hold in one hand. It also features a ‘Hyper Optical Pattern’ on the back of the device, giving it more grip and fewer fingerprint smudges.

The Mate 20 Pro has three cameras on the back of the device, all serving different purposes. It has a 40-megapixel normal lens, 20-megapixel super wide angle lens and an 8-megapixel telephoto lens. It is the same as the LG V40’s set up, giving you more flexibility in the shots that you can capture. The front-facing ‘selfie’ camera is a 24-megapixel sensor.

Huawei has also implemented Master AI 2.0 image processing, allowing it to segment sections of photos and process them differently. It allows the phone to detect which part is the sky and process that different than people in the photo. They have stacked the cameras on the back into a square block, featuring the flash. I for one do like this design implementation and I think it makes it stand out.

One feature that I didn’t expect to see is the ‘reverse’ wireless charging. It allows you to wirelessly charge other devices from your Mate 20 Pro, for example, you could put an iPhone XS on the Mate 20 Pro and charge it. It’s great for wireless earphones or if a friend needs a top up.

It won’t be a problem for the 4,200mAh battery, one of the biggest in the flagship marketing right now. This will make the battery life last a long time, especially with the new software optimizations.

Huawei also released a new Micro SD card called the Nano SD card, it is the same size as a sim card, allowing you to expand storage up to 256GB more.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro will be available from £899, the base model includes 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.