We compare three premium flagship Android smartphones today: The Huawei Mate 20 Pro, the Google Pixel 3 XL, and the Huawei P20 Pro
The smartphone market today is saturated with affordable, budget-focused, and mid-range Android smartphones. But buyers still admire the premium Android handsets from Huawei, Google and other makers. Flagship smartphones from such manufacturers have the best of the features and top-end hardware. Today we compare three such smartphones, and surprisingly, Huawei makes two of these: Huawei Mate 20 Pro, Google Pixel 3 XL, and Huawei P20 Pro.
First up is the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, the latest flagship smartphone from Huawei. The premium Android handset packs the next-gen Kirin 980 chipset and other top-end specifications. Meanwhile, Google’s Pixel 3 XL is the latest in the line of the Google Pixel Series. It packs all the relevant hardware and significantly improved features that run on Android 9 Pie OS. The third contender is the Huawei P20 Pro. It is the only Huawei smartphone on the list that isn’t launched recently. However, the imaging capabilities of this smartphone are astonishing. Hence, let’s compare these three flagship Android smartphones that carry an equally impressive price tag, but do not make any compromises.
The Huawei Mate 20 Pro has just launched. It is available in a single variant with 6GB RAM + 128GB internal storage. The smartphone reportedly costs Euro 1049 (Rs. 89,000 approx.). The smartphone is yet to arrive in India, and given Hauwei’s track record, it might take some time.
The Google Pixel 3 XL price for the Indian market starts at Rs. 83,000 ($799 in the US) for the 64GB storage variant and Rs. 92,000 ($899 in the US) for the 128GB storage model. Incidentally, both the variants come with 4GB RAM.
The Hauwei P20 Pro is perhaps the most affordable smartphone in the list. Not only is the smartphone available in India, it currently retails at Rs. 64,999 on Amazon India. The price is valid of the 6GB RAM + 128GB internal storage variant.
The Huawei Mate 20 Pro come with a 6.39″ curved OLED 19.5:9 HDR display with a notch, and an in-display fingerprint scanner. Incidentally, the display boasts of 2K resolution of 1440 x 3120 pixels. The premium handset has an IP68 rating for water and dust resistance.
The Google Pixel 3 XL has a 6.3-inch P-OLED notched display, with QHD+ resolution (1440×2960 pixels) and screen density of 523 Pixels Per Inch. The display gets Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection. It also has HDR compliance as well as IP68-certified body for dust and water resistance.
The Huawei P20 Pro has a 6.1-inch Full HD+ AMOLED panel with a 1080 x 2240 pixels resolution with a notch and chin bezel. It is the least impressive display in the list. There’s no mention of HDR10 compliance as well.
The Hauwei Mate 20 Pro is the first smartphone, along with the Mate 20, to feature the next-gen HiSilicon Kirin 980 chipset. The processor is clocked at 2.6GHz, but more importantly, Huawei has built the chipset on the industry-leading 7nm fabrication process. The processor works with Mali G76 GPU. The SoC gets 6GB RAM and 128GB onboard storage. If that’s not enough, the processor also feature dual NPUs for blazing fast AI performance.
The Google Pixel 3 XL gets Qualcomm’s current flagship, the Snapdragon 845, that is made on the 10nm fabrication process. Being a Google smartphone running stock Android 9 Pie OS, the smartphone has some of the best software optimizations. The optimizations ensure the device works flawlessly with just 4GB RAM.
The Huawei P20 Pro comes with Kirin 970 SoC, which is a powerhouse in its own right. The powerful processor gets to work with 6GB or 8GB of RAM, and 128GB or 256GB of internal memory. Although the processor is a little old, it is way faster than most of the processors of its generation, and it challenges the Snapdragon 845 SoC.
This is the area in which each smartphone excels in its own right. Moreover, each flagship Android smartphone has some unique and amazing imaging capabilities.
The Hauwei Mate 20 Pro has the “Square Leica Three-shot” camera setup on the back. The triple-camera setup comprises of 40MP primary sensor which has wide angle 27 mm lens with f/1.8 aperture. There’s a 20MP sensor ultra-wide angle 16mm lens, and f/2.2 aperture. There’s also an 8MP 3x telephoto 80mm lens, and f/2.4 aperture. The camera setup has dedicated OIS for clear and shake-free images. There’s a single 24-MP front-facing camera alongside the components that enable 3D Face Unlock, 3D Live Emoji, and 3D object scanning.
The Google Pixel 3 XL has a radically different approach in the imaging department. Google is obviously betting big on the AI prowess of it software. It has embedded a single 12.2MP camera on the back. The camera is paired with a wide-angle lens (28mm), dual-LED flash, dual-pixel phase detection auto-focus, OIS and HDR+. On the other side, the Pixel 3 XL has two front-facing cameras. Of the dual 8MP sensors, one has a wide-angle lens and another one has an ultra-wide angle lens.
The Hauwei P20 Pro, too, has a powerful triple camera setup on the back that comprises of 40MP + 20MP + 8MP sensors. The camera sensors can capture images with a 3x optical zoom. Incidentally, Huawei has borrowed and subsequently improved several camera aspects from the P20 Pro, for the Mate 20 Series. The smartphone packs the same 24MP front-facing camera as well. The P20 Pro can easily be considered as one of the best camera smartphones of its generation. The device is perhaps bested only by the Mate 20 Series.
The camera deployment on the Google Pixel 3 XL may seem rather odd, but Google is undeniably relying heavily on AI to improve and optimize the photos, whereas Huawei’s approach is quite opposite, wherein it relies on capturing a lot of visual information.
The Hauwei Mate 20 Pro packs a large 4,200mAh battery that gets charged by Huawei’s 40W charger. The smartphone supports SuperCharge technology. The Handset runs on Android P-based EMUI 9.
The Google Pixel 3 XL has 3,430mAh battery pack. Although the capacity may seem small, the smartphone gets Fast Charging as well as Fast Qi wireless charging support. It is the only premium Android smartphone on the list to run on stock Android 9 Pie OS. The benefits of using a stock and pure Android OS need not be reiterated. With a clean interface and no custom skin, the Pixel 3 XL can perform almost all the tasks faster than any other competing flagship smartphone with a custom OS layer. Moreover, being a Pixel device, the smartphone will receive the latest security and OS updates before majority of the Android smartphones.
