Before this video begins, you'll notice that there is a little bit of flickering that shows
up on the screen of the Mate 20 Pro.
That's not an issue with the phone, it's how my camera records the screen.
I tried a bunch of different recording settings but it didn't make the flickering disappear.
It's not an issue with the phone.
You might also notice a Christmas tree in the background of some of the shots, that's
because it's currently December so there's just a little bit of nice lighting in the
background.
On with the video!
The Huawei Mate 20 Pro is the company’s latest and greatest.
Featuring a fantastic display, under the screen fingerprint reader and high-resolution camera
system, the Mate 20 Pro is a big step up from the Mate 10 Pro from last year.
The design of the Mate 20 Pro is great, it’s an all-glass construction but feels great
to hold and isn’t slippery.
The design does appear to take some “inspiration” from Samsung’s Galaxy line of products with
the curved display, but the overall design of the Mate 20 Pro is still very much a Huawei
phone.
It is also IP68 dust and water resistant.
The phone isn’t a huge phone, but it still manages to pack in a 6.4” display whilst
still being comfortable to hold and use.
The sides of the phone are a polished metal, which looks very nice and complements the
glass on the front and back quite well.
There’s not much on the sides of the phone, as all the buttons are on the right-hand side.
Despite the power button being a different colour, which helps highlight it, I found
myself accidentally pressing the volume down button quite a lot instead of the power button
to lock the phone.
Personally, I would’ve preferred to see the volume rocker buttons on the left-hand
side, but that’s me being quite picky.
It’s not a deal breaker by any means.
On the bottom of the phone, there is a USB-C port.
There’s no headphone jack, like last year’s model, but there is a pair of USB-C headphones
and headphone adapter included in the box.
Some phones have been removing their IR blasters, but the Mate 20 Pro has one on the top of
the device to give you the ability to control a TV.
Jumping back to the bottom of the device is the SIM and Nano-Memory card slot.
You have the choice between having a second SIM card in your device, or you can use Huawei’s
Nano-Memory card to expand the devices inbuilt storage by up to 256gb.
On the back, is the rear camera array that features three different lenses.
I shall talk about the cameras in a moment, but the positioning and design of the array
help the phone sit well on a surface and it doesn’t wobble around.
You may have noticed how I haven’t mentioned a fingerprint reader yet, there isn’t one
on the back and there isn’t a visible one on the front either.
The Mate 20 Pro’s fingerprint reader is housed underneath the display and works even
when the device is sleeping.
It isn’t perfect, but it works fairly well and is relatively responsive and fast to recognise
my fingerprint too.
The fingerprint sensor isn’t the only way to unlock the phone.
The Mate 20 Pro also has a face unlock system that works like the iPhone’s own Face ID
system.
The system is housed in the notch for the device and works in the dark, too.
The face recognition system is very fast, and I was very impressed by it.
I really wish that my personal phone had this as it is just so convenient.
The recognition system starts looking for your face as soon as you pick up the device.
Pick up the phone, swipe up and it’s unlocked.
The display on the Mate 20 Pro looks great.
Coming in at 6.39” with a 1440p resolution, the display provides a large and crisp viewing
experience that is great for watching movies and playing games.
The display is an AMOLED panel that curves around the body of the phone.
This means that there are deep and rich blacks and whites and it is also well saturated and
vibrant, but not oversaturated.
The display also supports HDR, so you can expect a great experience watching TV shows
and movies.
If you’re someone that likes an always-on display, there’s an option in the Mate 20
Pro’s settings app to enable it.
You can also hide the notch if you don’t want the screen to display any pixels around
it.
The Mate 20 Pro comes with Android 9 Pie running Huawei’s EMUI interface on top of it.
EMUI still feels like an odd hybrid between iOS and Android but it isn’t awful.
EMUI, for example, doesn’t have an app drawer by default like Android phones such as the
Google Pixel.
Instead, it uses a layout system like iOS.
The app drawer can be enabled in the settings app, but it’s little things like that which
make it seem more like a hybrid than simply just Android.
The Mate 20 Pro, unfortunately, comes with some bloatware and unnecessary apps installed
too.
I would have preferred for no third-party apps to be installed by default as I or the
consumer purchasing the device may not want to use those apps.
The Mate 20 Pro has your typical Android navigation buttons on the bottom of the screen, but you
can also switch those out for gesture navigation if you want to.
The gestures are okay, but they aren’t as smooth as they could be.
I still think this is an improvement on my previous experiences with Huawei software,
but there are still small tweaks and improvements that could be made to improve it.
Smartphones these days aren’t really laggy or slow anymore, and the Mate 20 Pro is certainly
not lacking in the spec department.
The Mate 20 Pro is powered by the Kirin 980 processor, which is a Huawei processor.
This gives Huawei a performance advantage over other Android phones as they are designing
a processor for the software, like Apple and their mobile processors.
Graphics are handled by the Mali G76 MP10 graphic processor.
The Mate 20 Pro performs well, being able to quickly load apps and use the phone without
any stutters switching between multitasking.
Games also perform well thanks to the graphics processor.
This is thanks to the 6gb or 8gb of RAM, which comes on the respective 128gb or 256gb models
of the phone.
The device also has good connectivity options, with good connectivity to Wi-Fi, 5G-ready
and Bluetooth 5.0.
Face recognition is also fast and recognises me well.
The speakers on the device also sound surprisingly good with a good amount of bass.
The speaker setup is split between the earpiece and the “bass” speaker.
The bass speaker is located inside the USB-C port which is an interesting move and the
treble speaker is in the earpiece, so it provides good stereo separation when listening to audio.
The Mate 20 Pro has three different cameras; a wide, ultrawide and telephoto camera each
with a megapixel count of 40, 20 and 8 respectively.
The quality of the photos the phone takes is very good.
There’s a good amount of dynamic range and sharpness, this is the best camera system
on a Huawei phone I have used to date.
Landscapes look great with a good amount of detail without over-sharpening, there’s
also a good amount of detail in the shadows.
The camera also has a night shooting mode, which takes a 3-second-long exposure that
gives impressive results.
I was concerned about how sharp a long exposure would be, and I have to say that I am pleasantly
surprised, they’re not as sharp as normal photos – but considering the conditions
they are pretty good.
The night shooting mode is also handy if you want to take a landscape, but have even more
detail picked up in the shadows.
Night mode isn’t magic.
It’s not going to work in the pitch black, it still needs a minute amount of light to
work.
Like previous Huawei devices, the Mate 20 Pro can shoot 1080p video stabilised which
is very smooth.
The amount of stabilisation that this phone can do makes the camera feel like it’s on
a gimbal.
It can also shoot 4K and higher-framerate 1080p video non-stabilized.
The one downfall of the Huawei cameras is that I find the skin smoothing is so aggressive,
even when set to 0.
It’s a shame because otherwise, this is such a great camera system.
The front-facing camera is very good, if you ignore the skin-smoothing, but if you’re
planning on recording video with it – it does crop in quite a lot.
The camera app is also pleasant to use, with buttons to quickly switch between the different
camera lenses on the back.
The Mate 20 Pro has a huge battery, coming in at 4,200mAh – which is bigger than the
battery on the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, which I recently reviewed.
The battery lasts all day easily on typical usage – which is browsing on some social
media apps, listening to some music and maybe watching some videos.
The device’s battery could last two days easily if necessary.
There’re also some extra power saving modes as well.
The Mate 20 Pro supports fast wireless charging and fast charging, so if you’re running
low on power it won’t take long at all to get you charged up again.
Specifically, it takes half an hour to charge back up to 70%.
So, to summarise.
The Mate 20 Pro is a fantastic phone and a great choice if you’re shopping for a phone.
It’s been out for a month or so, at the time of writing, and it has a high-quality
display and a great camera.
It’s not the cheapest phone out there at £899 off-contract, but it’s cheaper than
many of the other high-end flagships that are being released this year from Apple and
Samsung.
I’d highly recommend the Mate 20 Pro and it’s a fantastic phone to consider.
So that's been it for this video, thanks for watching.
Thank you to Vodafone for sending out the phone to review.
I will leave a link in the description if you're interested in picking it up.
But otherwise, that's been it for this video.
Thanks for watching and I will see you in the next one.