The sleek Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro appear to give other high-end phablets a run for their money, so it’s too bad we won’t see them in the US.
Huawei is still having difficulty selling its products in the US, and that’s a shame because it keeps putting out quality devices. Case in point: the promising new Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro. Both phones come with powerful specs and features intended to compete with high-end US models like the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, to which they bear more than a passing resemblance. We got a chance to check them out ahead of Huawei’s launch event in London.
On the design front, the Mate 20 and Mate Pro feature all the current stylings. That means you’re looking at all-glass bodies with curved glass on the front and back, multiple rear camera sensors in a distinctive square-shaped array, a big screen notch for the Pro, and a more subtle one for the Mate 20. Both are sleek, attractive phones that are easy to reach across with your thumb, but perhaps a bit too tall to comfortably pull down the notification shade. Color options include black, blue, green, pink, and twilight (which gradually shifts shades).
There are some design differences between the two devices. The Pro model has a 6.39-inch, 3,120-by-1,440 OLED display with a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. In person, the colors look rich and saturated, with dense, inky blacks. The rather large notch on the top bezel resembles the iPhone XS Max, and with good reason—the Pro also features genuine 3D face unlock. It uses a dot projector and 24MP front camera for depth information in scanning your face, setting it apart from the more basic face recognition you find on most Android phones.
Also setting the Mate 20 Pro apart from its sibling is that it doesn’t have a rear fingerprint sensor. But that doesn’t mean it relies solely on face recognition. Instead, the Mate 20 Pro has an in-display fingerprint sensor, the first major phone to launch with this feature.
The Mate 20 sticks to a more traditional layout with the fingerprint sensor on the back, under the camera array. The front is home to a 6.53-inch, 2,244-by-1,080 display with HDR support and an 18.7:9 aspect ratio. The notch is only for the earpiece and front camera, as there are no fancy face unlock features under the hood.
Both phones are IP68 dust and water resistant.
Under the hood, the phones are powered by a Kirin 980 processor, which is a 7nm chip with a 20 percent speed improvement and 40 percent power efficiency improvement over its predecessor. Like the Kirin 970, it has a dedicated AI core to perform all machine learning tasks. Where things get interesting is that it’s a tri-core system with a layout of 2-by-2.6GHz, 2-by-1.92GHz, and 4-by-1.8GHz, giving you a high, medium, and low power core setup. This improves CPU performance by 75 percent according to Huawei, along with a 58 percent boost to power efficiency. That also makes for a dual NPU (neural processing unit), allowing both phones to more than double their processing of AI tasks.
The camera was quick at recognizing cars and people when I used it, faster than other AI-powered phones I’ve tested like the LG G7. There are other cool features, such as AI predictive focus, automatic switching between camera sensors, and video bokeh.
The Pro has a massive 4,200mAh battery, 200mAh larger than the Note 9, which outlasted our 12-hour battery test with juice to spare. The Mate 20 has a 4,000mAh cell, and both devices support Huawei’s SuperCharge fast charging standard, letting them charge to 70 percent in 30 minutes with a compatible adapter. However, only the Pro supports 15W fast wireless charging. It can even double as a wireless charging pad, letting it share power with other Qi-enabled devices.
Connectivity specs include LTE Cat 21 and dual-band Wi-Fi.
We don’t have pricing and availability details yet, but the Mate 20 and Pro likely won’t be sold in the US, at least not through traditional retail channels. We’ll update this story when we have more information, but if you’re looking for a similar option in the US, check out the aforementioned Samsung Galaxy Note 9, the iPhone XS Max, the LG V40 ThinQ, and the brand-new Google Pixel 3 XL.
