2018 is a good year for Huawei as the company not only released the successful Huawei P20 series which is a game changer but also different mid-range smartphones such as the Nova series. But before we end the year, the company has also launched the Huawei Mate 20 Series which is the company’s most powerful and smartest smartphone ever. Not only that, the smartphone’s camera is still its main highlighted feature. Interested? Then check on our review of the Huawei Mate 20 Pro review below.

Design and hardware

Huawei has always wanted to have the best-looking smartphone in the market and they never failed to impress us with the twilight color of the Huawei P20 Series and also its design and with the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, we’ll be getting a square camera design that houses the Leica Triple Lens camera and also a flash. But of course, the aesthetics of the Huawei Mate 20 Pro is something really pleasing.

With the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, we’ll be getting a 3D smooth glass on the front and also a curved glass back. The one that we got comes in twilight color and unfortunately, this one doesn’t come with a texture, unlike the Emerald Green which adds friction and adds a non-slip and anti-fingerprint surface. But don’t worry because the design of the Huawei Mate 20 Pro is really ergonomic to hold.

At the top of the smartphone is an IR blaster that you can use for different appliances such as TV and air conditioners and then on the right we got the volume rocker and the power button which has a red hue. Below, you can see the USB-C port and also the card tray in where it can house a sim card and a nano-memory card which is Huawei’s newest external memory solution.

Missing here again is the 3.5mm headphone jack but don’t worry because the smartphone does come with a dongle. You can also use the headphone included in the smartphone which is a USB-C headphone. Another thing you might notice that is missing in the smartphone is the fingerprint scanner, well, it’s because the Huawei Mate 20 Pro now uses an in-display fingerprint scanner and it was pretty damn fast. Actually, it’s the fastest in-display fingerprint scanner that I’ve tried.

Unlike the Huawei Mate 20, this one has a larger notch which gave way for more sensors that you can use for facial recognition. In our experience, it was fast and most of the time, I don’t even use the fingerprint scanner anymore. And yes, the facial recognition of the smartphone works even at dark conditions.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro also features IP68 certification which means that the smartphone is dust and water resistant so you don’t have to worry about the smartphone dipping in the pool or some annoying dust and sand. But of course, I would still suggest that you stay away from dipping the Mate 20 Pro on salt water.

Display

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro has the company’s best smartphone display. It might be smaller than the Huawei Mate 20 and the Mate 20X but the curved glass of the Mate 20 Pro is just lovely and it’s really screaming that it’s a smartphone that emphasizes beauty and elegance. Well, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro features a 2K+ OLED display and it does not disappoint. The colors of the display of the smartphone are really well and the colors are really well on the smartphone.

The smartphone’s display is also bright enough to be used at direct sunlight and I really appreciate that the Mate 20 Pro’s curved display doesn’t really warp much of the images, videos, and in gaming. Thankfully, the notch of the smartphone can be turned off and the notch doesn’t block much of the games that I’ve played including Ragnarok Online M: Eternal love.

Performance

inside the Huawei Mate 20 Pro is a Kirin 980 chipset which is the most advance chipset that the company has ever made. It’s fabricated at 7mm which is also the most advance in the industry today. It has a far more advance AI compared to the previous generation but could mostly notice that when you open the camera.

When it comes to performance, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro doesn’t disappoint as it delivers everything that you need on gaming. We played different games on the smartphone including PUBG Mobile, Asphalt 9, Real Racing 3, and Ragnarok Online M: Eternal Love and we got a decent experience on all of them and I was able to play all games at decent FPS. Unfortunately, Gamebench on our PC had an issue connecting to the smartphone.

When it comes to benchmarks, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro has definitely amazed us with its powerful prowess, the smartphone got the highest score on Antutu in all of the smartphone that we’ve tested and while the smartphone doesn’t have the highest score in GPU in Antutu, we’re still amazed that the Huawei Mate 20 Pro managed to break the 300k mark in Antutu. The other benchmark scores really showed that the CPU of the Kirin 980 is really powerful. We didn’t include 3DMark as the benchmarking application isn’t working well on the smartphone.

Another amazing thing about the Kirin 980 chipset of the Huawei Mate 20 Pro is that it was able to display EMUI desktop on an external display wirelessly and then I can use the smartphone as a keyboard or a touchpad. Pretty powerful huh.

The battery life of the smartphone was pretty amazing too as were able to get a score of 10 hours and 38 minutes in PC Mark 2.0 Battery tests and in our real life usage, the smartphone was able to last up to a day with around 15% battery left before going to bed with average use of gaming, heavy social networking site usage, and average usage of camera.

Camera

My oh my, the camera of the Huawei Mate 20 Pro is something that will really blow your mind. One of the amazing things that the Huawei P20 series has introduced is the handheld night shot mode of the smartphone and with the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, it gets better as the Huawei Mate 20 Pro features a better color saturation at night and it’s more vivid during night shots. Since we’re getting a wide-angle lens on the smartphone, we’re getting wider shots and yes, you can also do night shots on the smartphone’s wide-angle lens. Check out the shots that I took using the smartphone below.

The shots that I took were better than the Huawei P20 series which holds the highest score in DxOmark but the difference between the P20 Pro and the Huawei Mate 20 Pro isn’t really that big but it’s really noticeable. Most of the shots were sharper too and better on the Mate 20 Pro.

Another cool thing about the Huawei Mate 20 Pro is the smarter Kirin 980 chipset which allows us to capture videos in portrait mode and it can separate the objects from the background and it lets you have a cool effect on the videos.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro is definitely the best Android smartphone for photography that you can now officially purchase in the Philippines.

Verdict

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro didn’t fail to impress us. The smartphone actually exceeded my expectations and I was really amazed at its design and also its performance. The camera setup has been changed but the camera quality of the smartphone has been improved over the P20 series. The display is a lot better too and with the curved display, it looks sexier. The Kirin 980 chipset inside is also a lot powerful in benchmarks compared to other chipsets.

However, we still don’t have a headphone jack on the smartphone and you might be turned off with its usage of Nano memory card in which Huawei has introduced. Despite that, we still love every aspect of the smartphone.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro is now available for Php49,990