Huawei has come a long way when it comes to making smartphones. The Mate 20 Pro is such a compelling product that it rivals its parents, both the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and the iPhone X. After two weeks of reviewing this device I had to ditch my Galaxy phone and switched to the Mate 20 Pro– this is a technological breakthrough or in other words its a spec and camera monster. The Mate 20 Pro is also miles far an upgrade from last year’s Mate 10 Pro.

The specs

At launch, Huawei stressed how much better its Android software is than Samsung’s, including claims of 22 percent higher stability in gaming performance and 14 percent higher power efficiency in the Mate 20 Pro than the Note 9. Take this from a Samsung fanatic, Huawei’s software has really improved and is as butter smooth as the iPhone thanks to the new Kirin Chip, AI features and more software optimization. The new Mate device also has fast wireless charging, like Samsung’s, but Huawei goes a step further by also offering reverse wireless charging to Qi-compatible devices. That’s to say, you can use a Mate 20 Pro to wirelessly charge a Note 9 or an iPhone X / XS (more on this later).

SoC – HiSilicon Kirin 980

RAM – 6GB /8GB

Storage – 128/256 GB + Nano memory

Display – 6,39 inches (3120 x 1440) HDR OLE

Camera 1 – 40 MP f/1.8 Primary

Camera 2- 20 MP f/2.2 Ultrawide

Camera 3 – 8 MP f/2.4 telephoto

Front Camera  – 24 MP f/2.0

Battery – 4,200 mAh

Inputs/Outputs – UCB – C, Infrared transmitter

OS – Android 9 Pie + EMUI 9.0

IP – IP68 water and dust resistance

All the above specs are packed in a much slicker package than several phones released this year. It available in 5 colours including Huawei’s trademark Morpho aurora.  I played it safe and used the black phone, but this has turned out to be a huge fingerprint magnet just like on many other flagship devices. But when you get your hands on the hyper Optical blue  and green trims, these will not be as disappointing as they have very light layer applied to their glass backs which makes them more resistant to fingerprints and easier to grip. Our black unit was very slippery and its best you get yourself a screen protector and a cover casing for it.

Display

The screen itself is is really nice. It’s a huge 6.4 inch OLED at 19.5:9 aspect ratio at 2k resolution — so its little taller than normal. It’s a pretty bright great looking screen on first impression, that is curved on the corners and bleeding over the slopes of the edges just like most galaxy phones. And moving over to the sides, you get a colored power button which I love to see, my black version had a red accent power button, and you know how here at Techjaja we are suckers for red colors.

Useful notch

In less awesome news for some of you, the 2k OLED screen is is topped off by a notch and bottomed out by a small chin. The notch isn’t just there for the selfie camera as on so many phone, but also for Huawei’s new 3D face scanning hardware which should make face unlock more secure than on Android phones that only use the camera. If you are like me and you prefer a fingerprint sensor, you got that too. No, not on the back, and no not below the display, but beneath it. This is the first phone I will be using with an Optical fingerprint sensor built into the screen. While I can already tell you it’s not as fast or accurate as the traditional one I love that fact that Huawei has made it possible to have the same screen size bezels above and below.

Battery life

So is the the Mate 20 Pro worth all the hype? Well, its start with the huge battery. At 4,200 mAh, its 5% larger than last year’s Mate 10 Pro which is still one of the longest lasting phones. It comes with a 40 W supercharger that shoots its from 0% to 70% in just 30 minutes. Last year’s glass back was just an opportunity to scratch your phone up, this year it’s justified.

So what does 4200mAh mean in day -to-day use. As a power user, I spend a lot of my time during the day on my phone. Browsing, watching YouTube videos, chatting, emails, and less of calls but after all that this phone manages to take me throughout the day until the next day without topping up any more juice. I couldn’t achieve this with my Samsung s9 plus and I have to commend Huawei for the great battery optimization.

Huawei has finally wireless charging and if that not enough, you can flip a switch in the setting to reverse that wireless charging as I mentioned earlier. This means your phone becomes a wireless power bank. Unfortunately the curved back glass surface won’t allow you to rest  phone comfortably also you will have to remove both phones from their protective cases every time you have to help someone charge their phone. So for now I will summarize this feature and put it in gimmick territory. But you have to admit that its a pretty awesome feature.

A 3 sum of AI cameras

Also awesome, the potential of the three cameras on the back. The phone as a big triple camera centered module with a huge flash in there and a Leica branding on top. This is a similar arrangement to Huawei’s P20 Pro released early this year. The primary camera is 40 megapixel sensor with and f/1.8 aperture which uses pixel binning to enable night shots that you will be hard pressed to get from any other phone. Next to that is a 3 times telephoto zoom (8 megapixel, f/2.4) with optical image stabilization for long distance captures and next to that is is something new for Huawei.

The company’s usual monochrome sensor has been swapped out for a camera with an Ultra-wide lens which comes in at 20 megapixels at f/2.2. This feature opens up so many options for photography and I tried it with Huawei’s night mode and the results were spectacular. You can check out our sample photos below.

Huawei is also leaning on Artificial Intelligence (AI) to not only just to make the camera better but to make the whole phone better too. AI helps on scene recognition thanks to the new Master AI 2.0 feature that helps recognize more things in the camera more accurately and tweek your photos based on  what you are taking a picture of, but also Kirin 980 Chipset which based on 7 manometer process to make your phone more efficient. Apparently AI also looks at the scene you are pointing at with the camera and actually switch you automatically to the wide-angle camera if it thinks you will need it. I personally prefer manual control of the camera , but understand some people may be into this AI stuff. The camera also comes with features like Night shooting and Ani-moji.

My Concerns

EMIU

Let me wrap-up with some concerns, but even many of these have mitigating positives hiding underneath. Am never happy with heavy custom user interfaces but at least Huawei has built its EMUI on the latest version of Android 9. Which is more than I can say for most Android Phones our local market now. Of course keeping this phone updated for the next 3 years – well that’s another story.

Nano SD card

Also this phone takes the unusual step of adding a different non-standardized storage card format. Huawei calls it a nano memory card. You now have the option of either putting two SIM cards or a nano memory. This means the Nano SD card is in the shape of a NanoSIM and can handle up to 256 GB external storage. So where can a son of man get themselves one of these Nano “thingies”? Well the answer is no where at least for now, but I feel it’s better than not having any expandable storage at all which has been the case for Huawei up to now. On another positive, the base devices comes with over 128 GB of storage space enough for you not to crave the Nano memory card, at least for now.

Headphone Jackless

The lack of a 3.5mm headphone Jack, which itself is softened by adapter included in the box. I was able to use my Samsung AKG headphones with this dongle and they sounded far better than Huawei’s included USB -C headphones.  

Price

The biggest worry I have of course is the price, including Ugandan taxes this phone can set you close to UGX 3.7 million. But is this worth it? Honestly I think the answer is a definite yes. This is not an entry level smartphone for sure, but it has escalated to iPhone and Samsung Note 9 standards and it deserves the premium pricing attached to it. Now look as I don’t think phones should even cost more than UGX 1.5 m, but what its claims to do, the Mate 20 Pro does well and beats the competition like Samsung in battery life and low light shooting.