Huawei has built a shrinking ray. That’s the only explanation as to how it managed to cram so much tech into a smartphone so little.
Listing all the features of the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro would take days, but in short you get four cameras (with an insane total of 92-megapixels), one of the fastest smartphone brains ever made, a curved pin-sharp screen and a design that would make Apple‘s Jony Ive hot under the collar.
Throw in some choice extras: such as an in-display fingerprint sensor, artificial intelligence and a new wireless charging trick, and this might be the greatest phone on the planet.
Huawei Mate 20 + 20 Pro: is it pretty?
Huawei has always had an obsession with Apple. It references the company in most of its launches, it uses Apple’s devices to benchmark its own, and generally can’t resist poking fun of the world’s largest technology company. That said, there has always been something slightly derivative to Huawei’s best devices (generally in the design department), but this year’s devices seem different.
Both the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro stick to the smartphone design trends of the year (glass back, aluminium sides, a large notch on the front of the screen) but there’s something a little different. The back, for example, looks smooth but has small bumps and ridges on it. The cameras have been totally re-arranged, with all three rear-facing cameras (on the Mate 20 Pro that is) now sat in a square formation.
The standard Mate 20 has a big 6.43-inch screen, while its bigger brother rocks a 6.39-inch one. While that might seem the wrong way round (traditionally, the more ‘pro’ models generally have the bigger screens) the difference comes down to the quality. The Pro model gets a 2K+ OLED, while the Mate 20 rocks a standard LCD screen.
Huawei Mate 20 + 20 Pro: what’s under the hood?
The Mate 20 Pro rocks Huawei’s Kirin 980 processor under the hood. If you don’t speak tech, that means it’s super speedy. Apps launch faster, the camera loads quicker, and it will flip through web pages in a flash.
What’s far more noticeable – at least to a casual user – is the EMUI 9.0 software that powers both these mobiles. It doesn’t look all that different to previous versions, but it feels a lot faster.
From a camera perspective, the Mate 20 Pro is the real winner. It rocks three backwards-facing cameras a 20-megapixel wide-angle camera, a 40mp f/1.8 lens and an 8-megapixel zoom lens with optical image stabilisation. On the front, you also get a 24-megapixel selfie cam. All of that photographic tech is bolstered by Huawei’s clever artificial intelligence, which makes taking great snaps a bit of a doddle.
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Elsewhere, the Mate 20 still rocks three cameras on the back and one on the front. This time around, you get a 16-megapixel f/1.8 lens, a 12-megapixel wide angle lens and the same 8-megapixel 3x zoom lens.
Oh, and the Mate 20 Pro is also a wireless charging device. Yes, that’s right. Hold the Mate 20 Pro back-to-back with another wireless-compatible smartphone, and it will start juicing the other device.
Huawei Mate 20 + 20 Pro: worth the price?
Huawei has kept quiet on the exact cost of both these models in the UAE, so let’s go with a rough approximation. The Mate 20 should cost around AED3,600 when it arrives towards the end of the month, while the Pro model will go for around AED4,500 (for comparison sake, the iPhone XS and XS Max retail for AED4,230 and AED4,650 respectively).
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What you do get from Huawei’s new flagship phones is top-notch technology that isn’t going out of date anytime soon. The cameras will no doubt be class leading (although we can’t say that for sure until we get a unit to review), and there’s no doubt these things will run like the clappers.
We doubt these new devices will bother the Apple faithful (who generally disregard anything Android-based, regardless of specs) but we reckon these two new models are making a few people at Samsung a tad nervous.
