The Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro are out with some of the most impressive 2018 flagship specs – triple cameras with up to 5x zoom, Android’s first 7nm chipset, crazy fast 40W charging, and both in-display finger reader and 3D face-scanning biometry. The Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro are out with some of the most impressive 2018 flagship specs – triple cameras with up to
Glass with traction, gradient colors, higherst screen-to-body ratio on a flagship with the Mate 20 The Mate 20 and the Pro come with the now-trademark gradient colors of the glass body they are housed in, but there is a new and welcome twist. Huawei calls it hyperoptical pattern, and it makes the phones less slippery in the hand than smooth glass, aiding traction if you are using them without a case. It’s only on the Midnight Blue, Emerald Green and Twilight color options, though, the Black and Pink Gold versions skip it. The OLED panel of the Mate 20 Pro is with plastic substrate and is curved on the sides similar to Samsung’s flagships, adding to the pleasant aesthetic impression but not much else. Any aesthetic advantages from the curved screen are offset by the wide top bezel protrusion that houses Huawei’s answer to Apple’s TrueDepth camera kit. It does have all the 3D-sensing and flood illuminator components needed to reliably unlock the phone or authorize payments with your face, plus engage in some animated emoji action. Given that the Mate 20 Pro also has an in-display finger scanner, placing an extra biometric option sounds like what it probably is – Apple has it, so we can’t let our buyers feel disadvantaged. The Mate 20 has a much tinier notch that houses the front camera only, which Huawei calls a dewdrop, and means a much higher screen-to-body ratio on a phone that rivals the XS Max in screen diagonal. This is also achieved by a thinner bottom bezel compared to the Mate 20 Pro, even though the latter comes with that Wild West of notch bearing. The Mate 20 is a bit taller and much wider than the Mate 20 Pro, though, which would make its more expensive brother a bit more comfortable to hold and carry around. The Mate 20 Pro has a large 6.3″ 1440p OLED display with 19.5:9 ratio, while the Mate 20 a humbler LCD one, but with larger, 6.53″ diagonal, FHD+ resolution, and a quirky 18.7:9 aspect ratio brought to you by a dewdrop notch at the front and a thinned-out bottom bezel. The LCD one is with an extra white pixel in an RGBW matrix which, as usual, means a big boost to peak brightness levels – Huawei cites up to the whopping 820 nits. Both displays support the wide DCI-P3 color gamut, and are certified for whatever HDR movie Netflix throws their way. First 7nm chipset on Android, first phones with Cat. 21 LTE downloads of up to 1.4Gbps
The first Geekbench result of Huawei’s Kirin 980 chipset, built with the 7nm production node was 3390 points on the single-core test and 10318 on the multi-core. That’s way above the best scores that 10nm chipsets like Samsung’s Exynos 9810 in the Android’s 7nm processor era is now upon us, with the introduction of Huawei’s Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro. As we witnessed with Apple’s A12 Bionic in the iPhone XS and XS Max, the era will be fast, and it will be powerful, all without taking a further toll on battery life. The first Geekbench result of Huawei’s Kirin 980 chipset, built with the 7nm production node was 3390 points on the single-core test and 10318 on the multi-core. That’s way above the best scores that 10nm chipsets like Samsung’s Exynos 9810 in the Galaxy Note 9, or a Snapdragon 845 in OnePlus 6, have to offer on this test, and yet is below what the iPhone XS and XS Max score with smaller amounts of RAM. Still, benchmarks aren’t that indicative of real-life performance anyway, plus we are likely talking about pre-release versions of the Mates, so the results might get higher when it is launched for retail users with finalized software. The Mate 20 Pro comes in 6/8GB RAM versions with 128GB of storage and special nanoSD card support up to 256GB, while the Mate 20 starts lands with 4GB/6GB RAM, a 128GB storage option, and the same nanoSD support. Last but not least, the Mate 20 and 20 Pro come with Huawei’s fastest cellular modem in the Kirin 980 chipset, capable of heretofore unseen Cat. 21 LTE download speeds of up to 1.4Gbps. That’s if your carrier can provide those, of course, but even if not, the modem is using plenty of aggregation technologies to make the phones the fastest downloaders among all 2018 flagships announced so far. The Pro is perhaps the most feature-laden flagship for the whole of 2018, and if you don’t believe us, just read on what’s on offer for the price of… well, a Note 9 or an iPhone XS Max, Huawei isn’t underestimating itself here. Here’s, however, the pretty unique hardware you will be getting for this tag:
Here comes the interesting part. Huawei introduced the world’s first triple-camera phone with a 40MP sensor last year with the P20 Pro, and, instead of raising the sensor count as Samsung does, it improved on the existing setup. On the Mate 20 Pro, gone is the monochrome sensor from last year’s kit, as Huawei says that software algorithm improvements made it unnecessary. It is replaced by an 8MP camera with a wide-angle lens. The third camera is still telephoto, but with a 20MP resolution now, and 3x « optical » zoom, paired with digital for up to 5x magnification like on the P20 Pro
The 40MP sensor is combined with a f/1.8 aperture and a new technology called “FusionMind” which does 4-in-1 pixel-binning in a new way that is supposed to improve low-light shots even further. You can also combine the info from all sensors to form ultra-macro shots, and Huawei promises you will be able to get clear images from a distance of just an inch or so.
The Mate 20 sports a humbler 12MP main + 16MP wide-angle + 8MP telephoto kit that is, however, still a triple-camera setup that does 2x zoom and can accommodate all the landscape you want to fit into the frame. A 24 MP front-facing camera on both rounds up the stellar Mate 20 and 20 Pro photography chops.
‘s FHD+ screen, Huawei increased the battery capacity to 4200mAh on the Mate 20 Pro. The Mate 20 is with a no-less generous 4000mAh, and, with an FHD+ display, we expect it to be the actual screen-on time champion. That’s what Huawei may be expecting, too, as it included an ultra-fast 40W charging option on the Mate 20 Pro, and left the Mate 20 with its typical fast 22W charger. This is still one the most capable setup out there this side of the OnePlus Dash Charge or Oppo’s VOOC, but SuperCharge 2.0 is something else entirely. To back up the roughly 30% more pixels on its 2K display compared to the Mate 10 Pro’s FHD+ screen, Huawei increased the battery capacity to 4200mAh on the Mate 20 Pro. The Mate 20 is with a no-less generous 4000mAh, and, with an FHD+ display, we expect it to be the actual screen-on time champion.
