Today Huawei has announced a slew of devices including the Mate 20, Mate 20 Pro and and 7.2 inch screen Mate 20 X, all phones combine basically every desirable features of modern smartphones into a sort of spec-checklist device. The Mate 20 Pro has three cameras on the back and also the ability to charge other devices wirelessly. The Mate 20 Pro has an in-display fingerprint sensor and like the iPhone X and Oppo Find X, the Mate 20 Pro has a so-called 3D face unlock for more secure authentication. And like Samsung’s Galaxy Note 9, the Mate 20 Pro has a high-resolution 6.4-inch OLED display.
The Note 9 is definitely the phone Huawei is aiming to outdo with the Mate 20 Pro. Back to wireless charging, 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. It’s obviously not going to be fast, and it’s probably not going to be super practical, but the Mate 20 Pro does have a sizable 4,200mAh battery, and the ability to share that out in an emergency still counts as a pretty cool feature.
A 7 nanometer (nm) processor
The 7nm Kirin 980 processor that Huawei announced at IFA in September is making its official debut in the Mate 20 Pro. This chip should have better performance and efficiency than the prevalent Snapdragon 845, faster LTE with a Cat.21 modem supporting speeds up to 1.4Gbps, and a ton of AI processing capabilities baked right into the design. Exactly as with Apple’s A12 Bionic in the iPhone XS, the Kirin 980 has 6.9 billion transistors and includes dedicated neural processing units to assist with AI tasks. The main uses of AI on Huawei’s phones include system optimizations to minimize the device’s performance degradation over time — a common complaint with Android phones — and to do scene detection and automatic image processing in the camera.
5 cameras
Withe the 5 array cameras (3 at the back and 2 in the front), Huawei as ditched its monochrome sensor, instead, the company is implementing three different focal lengths, with one 20-megapixel camera for super wide shots, one 40-megapixel shooter in a conventional wide-angle, and one 8-megapixel telephoto camera. The end result, which includes an adaptive dual-tone flash, is the distinctive quad-circle array on the back of the phone. One of the cool evolutions in Huawei’s Master AI 2.0 image processing with the Mate 20 Pro is the ability to segment a photo into sections and treat each one differently.
Let’s talk Notch
Like most Android flagships this year, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro has an iPhone-like notch at the top of its screen, but on this occasion, the notch serves the same purpose as on the iPhone. Huawei has built its own version of the iPhone’s Face ID, and it’s gone further by also implementing a fingerprint sensor into the Mate 20 Pro’s display, which the iPhone lacks. Both of those features will require in-depth testing to see how well they work, but they’re undoubtedly good to have.
Availability and pricing
The Mate 20 Pro also has an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance, so that provides an extra layer of reassurance. Huawei is introducing a new ridged finish with a subtle texture on the phone’s rear that makes it less fingerprint-prone and easier to grip.
he Huawei Mate 20 X will retail for €899 when it’s released on October 26th.
