Chris a with a phone that doesn't really need an intro it's had so much coverage, and rightly so they mate 20 pro from, Huawei is a top, Android flagship phone it has to be in the top five it has a six point three nine inch OLED, screen, with a resolution of thirty one twenty by 1440p. My. Version has eight gigabytes of RAM and 128, gigabytes. Of superfast, storage, that breaks 900. Megabyte reads, that's, really quick in fact the fastest I have seen the, build looks a lot like, my Samsung Galaxy S 9 plus but, I would have to say that it actually feels in hand a little, bit more refined and the building ever, so slightly bitter the same goes for the screen there now, those cameras on the rear we have a three, times optical, zoom sensor. Which, is a two megapixels, and it takes a good photo it's great for getting in close very, handy, just like the two times optical I have on my samsung galaxy s 9 plus a 40, megapixel, main sensor, and then, we have a also. Very handy, wide. Lens. On there which is 20, megapixels. Now the cameras, as a package, when you look at it as a package, factoring, in focus. Video. Bitrate. And audio. Quite. Disappointing. In terms of video quality as you see later on in this review I feel that's a massive letdown, one of the weaknesses of WoW, is mate 20 Pro so what do you get in the box you get their super charger this is rated with a maximum output of 40, watts, which is massive, for this charges the phone in just one hour in 10 minutes in my testing, from completely. Flat in 30, minutes you get around 68. Percent, so that's exceptionally. Quick, you're gonna instructionally, fit there that one's all in Chinese because I have the Chinese version you, get a clear case some. In-ear. Headphones. And of. Course the type C charger, cable. And then. A type C 2 3.5, millimeter, adapter mate. 20 Pro comes out to be eight point six millimeters thin, and weighs 190. Grams but that's not bad considering, it has a 4200. Milliamp hour battery so. We do have a little bit of a top bezel and of course we have that wide, notch, now this notch is not as ridiculous as the Google pixels threes notch which I laughed, at when I first saw install but here we've got a 24, megapixel. Camera the, earpiece there, is a bunch of other sensors on here so there's a dot projector, and everything else they need for, that 3d, face unlocking, and of, course if you really hate that knotch then you can hide it because it's got an OLED screen the blacks look very dark and it looks pretty, much like the, top bezel you get on the samsung galaxy s 9 plus as you can see up.
The Top you will find an IR transmitter great, to have this on here two antenna lines and then one of three microphones, this is use the course for noise cancellation and. In video and our, buttons these are on the right side so we have a red power button in the volume up and down they are both made out of metal they, have a good feel to them and they don't rattle around not. On the bottom you will see the two distinct, and tenor lines which as I mentioned look a lot like Samsung's, and then, we have a type C port with a speaker behind it, Allisyn tray which will house two nano, Sims or one, nano sim and their, micro, SD card, but it's not actually a micro SD it's their own format, from Huawei. So. It's a glass covered back and I have the silver, version here which is very prone, to finger prints very slippery as well but if you go for say the midnight blue and has, those lines, on it which gives it a little bit of texture tiny a little bit more grip and resists, fingerprints, a little better and here's. What the case looks like on the phone so it is going to protect the cameras only just you can see is about a millimeter difference between where the cases and then that camera module which sticks out a little bit it offers protection for the buttons as well and the, screen if you do place it and face down will not actually be touching, the table here for example so. The bill quality is premium, and compared. To the samsung galaxy s 9 Plus on the left it feels ever, so slightly better because, it's a little bit more narrow and I, find that it's just easier to get access to the button and not only that the. Edges the way they've done the inches on them 820 Pro they're just a little bit more rounded. Off a little bit smoother feel better in hand and overall. It just gives it a slightly, better, feel to. The s9 plus, here, face. Unlocking, is also, much quicker than my use loan plus as I'll demonstrate now tap the button. Very. Quick do, that again. Most. Of the time it is quick just, as you've seen taking. A look now at the end screen fingerprint, reader so you tap the screen first that'll wake it up you see the little icon here hopefully that's not going to get burnt into the screen I'll, place my thumb on there which was a bit awkward for me and you, can see it unlocks so how long did that take it's about one to, two seconds, it can be a little bit slower at times now, sometimes, you don't get the position a hundred percent correct and it. Will not work every, single time so speak tit to work maybe, eight. Out of ten, times, and. Here it seems to be working for me quite well overall. I don't have any real issues with it it's just not as fast as those rare fingerprint, readers from, the likes of SATA one plus six, I'll. Take a look now at the screen in details so I know there's been something going around with glue gate there's been a problem with the glue, between the glass. And then the OLED panel below luckily. For me with this unit it's perfectly, fine, now you're gonna get this right here you can see that the edge screen is exactly the same as my Samsung Super AMOLED panel, that's in the explain plus you, get that discoloration, you get the color shifting, out now that's just a trait there of the screen it's, not really too much of an issue but if you're really fussy about your screens then that may bother, you now light leakage, bleeding. And things like that I'm not seeing a problem here not like the some of the IPS panels that I look at that often have like a dark shadow ring, around the knotch that, is not happening here now you will sometimes see this shimmering, happing see those lines going, across like pulse, width, modulation flicker, this, is only happening, on camera, it's, like whenever I records, OLED. Screens or Samsung AMOLED panels this happens, you. Can see that this green is flickering away here at the moment but again this is only on camera so we've got our color, temperature, mode and your, white balance that you can see it so out of the box it's on vivid, to, me which is that's, not really that accurate normal, is probably, the best the more accurate, the white balance is more, correct there and we, also have eye comfort mode so that's a blue light filter, so, you know you don't keep yourself awake at night the, other useful option here too is the text and display slider. So you can slide this up so if you find that it's too small you can increase it you find it allowed to decrease it and also the display size this is very handy to have now, the gamma is one, this screen is completely off no matter what sitting I use here it should. Be 2.2. Or closer to 2.2, but it's miles off here hovering around, 1.4.
As You can see brightness. Tops out at 790. Lux which is a little bit lower than the, 830. I messaged, on the mate, 20 X dark. Colors, on the screen when you're showing them they do look very good because this is an OLED panel, of course and overall. It is a really nice screen a premium, screen that, only complaint there is the the gamma being quite off for some reason, when. You take a look at the touch performance, that is also excellent it goes with your finger there's no stuttering, it is very smooth, they seem to have it synced perfectly, with the refresh rate of the screen which, is great the, UI performance is, decent, now this UI comes, with a huge amount of, bloatware, I will just show you what I recorded, of how, much bloatware. Had had on here blow wet applications so you can see right here from the screenshot when I first got it then it actually has about 16, crappy. Applications, on there that you're not going to want you're gonna want to remove and even. Under top apps you'll find a lot, more so it takes a good 15 20 minutes to uninstall, all of those I did. Also receive, this firmware update, now this brings it up to Android, 9 security, patch level December, the 1st which is really good so it's up to date and it, may have possibly fixed. The, display, dimming, issues so when you went into certain applications. You're on a manual brightness, setting that, it would dim down the display, even though you don't want it to do that and that seems to be fixed because it's not happening to me now, if you do buy the Chinese, version beware. It will not have Google Play installed, but it is a very easy fix you go into the app gallery which is mostly all in Chinese in fact, a hundred percent Chinese, search, Google you'll find there in the Google Play Store it will then install that and you can see it's running fine I haven't had any problems with it it is very fast the performance there so, I have the full screen gestures, at the moment enabled, so you swipe up and hold. To get, your recent apps and. Go. Through and multitask, you just swipe up to go home and then. If you're in an application, for, example to go into gallery here and then, I swipe from the side that takes you back it's very easy to get used to and, prefer it over the on-screen. Menu, keys that you can use chrome, scrolling performance I, have found to be very, fast and smooth, in fact better than the, mate 20x. That, I just, finished, reviewing and that is probably aided by the fact that this version I have has, 8 gigabytes of RAM that model has the karin 980 but with the 6 gigabytes, so that 8 gigabytes, of RAM to me makes. It feel just ever, so slightly faster. And a little. Bit smoother. And that, is also reflected, in synthetic. Benchmarks. For example, this, is an - - and we're getting a score of almost. 270,000. Where I got about. 260,000, on the make 20x, with only 6 gigabytes of RAM and like, them 820 X that has superfast, ufs 2.1. Spec storage take, a look at the sequential reads here over 900, megabytes per second, that's going to be faster, than a lot of people's laptops if you're still using a set of 3 SSD, that's, almost double the, read speeds there that you'll be able to get sequential, writes also good and then, the random writes are impressive. For a mobile phone, GPS. Performance, is solid, no complaints, and only hovers around 4, meters of accuracy. And locks on to almost all of the satellites it sees with good signal strength if, you are purchasing the global version then you've got global, LTE, band coverage, and here in Spain it's working fine the Chinese version it's got, to even out eBay in 20 as well the, other people would need if you were gonna buy the Chinese version, although I wouldn't recommend it I'll go for the global one so good, 4G, speeds it's LTE plus there that it managed to lock on 4G plus it's.
Alright I mean not the fastest, of course but, that's my provider, and here, we have wireless performance so, no problems, here as well so the signal strength the range that, I'm getting is all, good it all checks out on. To battery life so it is very good this is way better than my samsung galaxy s 9 plus I've got 9 hours of screen on time I had 14 percent battery left, I could possibly, get 10 now I was using the screen set to 200. Lux and this, is my year so it was heavy use I did a bit of gaming so Pub G by, the way pub G I don't know if it's because of the turbo boost but, it burns through the battery very, quick pub G YouTube. Streaming prime video as well I was watching that, Play services was using a little bit of battery chrome and general, use overall the battery holds up really well it's going to be a two day mobile phone for most people and maybe even three, now. If you're gonna buy the Chinese version you need to be aware of this if you want to use a third-party launcher and that is Nova, Launcher for example, okay, it's running oh that's, great, swipes. Up you can see all your apps performance, is. Really good but what happens when you go home. It. Brings back huawei's, launcher. There, emui. You can't, override. It because they will not let you sit nova. Launcher as the default launcher or any third-party launcher I have. Some good news for those of you out there that like to use netflix, on your mobile phone that drm, info, tells us that has security, level, with Widevine level. One what. That jargon, translates, into is netflix, will run in HD. Full, HD it's not gonna be stuck and standard definition, and it works really well and for, those wondering about a notification LED there, is one that is up here but as far as I can tell it's not, a multicolored, one definitely not as good as the one on my samsung galaxy s 9 plus now, your notifications, you can have the icons as you can see right now or you can actually change it over to numbers, if you want so you can see how many you have now. On to gaming performance so as expected it, performs really well this, is on the ultra frame rate on HD. And you, don't notice really, any performance, dips at all until, it gets hot after gaming for it about 30. Minutes or so. When. You go in with the scope that's all very fluid, and smooth. Overall. Excellent, top performance, from, the keren 980 here, so. This phone like mini flagships has dual loudspeakers because the earpiece doubles, as a loudspeaker, we've, got the type C speaker. Placement which is a little bit awkward but. When you have a cable plugged in as you will hear just now then.
It Doesn't actually muffle, it too much so to me it's not a deal breaker and the speaker sounds decent it has a nice level of base and the loudness as well as good but here's that sample. So. As you can hear from that that when you plug in a cable to charge it, and use that I'll speak at the same time it's not actually muffling it at all, much hardly, anything just a tiny little, bit now the 3.5, millimeter headphone output. When you use the type C adapter or type C headphones it's, good it's clean it is, loud, and overall, I like, it there's nothing really wrong with it at all you can't fault it a voice call quality as well as excellent. It's good no problems. Moving. Over to the cameras, now so there's still camera very good good performance, overall takes a very decent image and sometimes. The exposure is a little bit off but when you have a look at the video performance but I'm showing you now this is 4k with electronic. Image stabilization. You. Can see the stabilization, is OK, but I have noticed that you do get some shutters, in the video that. The electronic, image stabilization is not as good as other flagships. Quite disappointing, also. The bitrate with 4k. Not. As high as it could be it often offers around 30 megabits, per second, 33, I feel, a Chevy a bit high you do see some artifacts, and then, the audio quality from those microphones you often get like a reverb, or some sort of noise cancellation, effect that comes in which is quite distracting, and despawning. As well, now, if you do look at this video on, a 4k monitor on, a 4k TV you'll, notice compared to again other flagships, that. The quality, is a little bit soft. It's not so sharp, now you can swap over to the other lenses, this. Is now the wide lens I'll show you but, when you pan around with, this one you'll. Notice it will start to drop frames and the, video performance it's quite choppy I mean. The lens probably ideally is not set up really for a video and then. When you move over to the 3 times zoom, well, it's great to zoom in you, can see the quality, really does drop off and is quite disappointing. Now, let's have a look now at the front-facing, camera. So. This is the front-facing camera it has electronic, image stabilisation and because it is using that it has to crop the image it's, 1080p and right, now I've got to push my arm right, out to get it now what I would call like a reasonable kinda normal thing that you would get facing. Camera you can see the electronic, image stabilization, works, reasonably, well it's, keeping which didn't and good to have those flagship cameras. Phones. Mobile's, should all have image, stabilization with, the front-facing cameras a lot of them still don't and when, I walk along you can see it's, doing a good job here, overall, a standing out the image I find, that the front-facing camera can be a little bit soft at times and it, is focusing and keeping my face in, exposure which is good when you can see the background, there with the Sun it's, very bright but it's mean to do it's not going to override this of course if I tap the screen then it's, now focused onto the background, and that is adjusted, the exposure and, everything, yeah now you'll notice that their mic sometimes, they have this funny kind of effect to them like almost like noise cancellation. Or a bit, of reverb or, something like that because the way I'm holding up perhaps blocking, the mics a little on the end is why, this happens. So. Video performance, in low, light you can see now is not good, at all it's actually, very poor look at the grain look at the artifacts, it's, dropping frames now if you swap over to the three times then. You'll see what I mean there look how bad that is it's all washed out we're losing a lot of detail and indoors. Low light you can see now the front-facing camera has a lot more grain, to it the electronic, image stabilization also, doesn't work as well but of course this is to be expected in these difficult conditions. All. Right now quickly recapping, so bill quality's great great battery life, excellent, performance it's right up there it's, very very good really. Good screen on it the build quality I think is actually slightly better than my Samsung Galaxy S 9 plus that's, all great now the downsides. To it are very minor well there's a couple of minor ones in one big one so, the minor ones would to be the fingerprint reader so it's sometimes, a little bit hard to find so at night when you go to find it and then it's only going to work about seven to, eight times out, of ten, which is a little, bit disappointing, and it takes about two seconds so it's not a big issue because we do have very good faced unlocking, which is 3d mapping face.
Unlocking, To with this so it's more secure the. UI, that it has okay so am UI, from, Huawei, has a lot, of bloatware that they've already pushed. On there a lot of silly applications. I counted about 16 applications of, junk on there and the, Chinese version will not let you use a third-party launcher, you, can run it but you can't set it as the default launcher. Which is the big issue they won't let you away for security reasons they say which is it's, just kind of wrong I wish they would let us over right there but that's why you go for the global version and to get no bloatware so. The cameras when you look at these cameras as a package, the. Whole package not just still images not just low-light I find. Them to be disappointing. Okay front-facing camera even though you disable all the beautifying effects so. You set all the sliders and everything to zero and off it, still looks like it's too soft it's got some beautifying there always that's. A little disappointing to me but. The biggest disappointment has. To be the video so video has low, Bret bit rate and average, focus, the focus is not really that good in it electronic. Image stabilization again. Not fantastic, dropped. Frames, it's. Not, very good and then the microphones, as well so it's like five things with video that are just wrong with this so very, poor video performance on this flagship. Expensive. Mobile phone so, if you're gonna be spending this kind of cash on this phone you'd. Expect to have really. Decent great, 4k. Video quality 1080p. 1080p. Is a lot better but 4k compared, to the other flagships, big, letdown so that's the reason not to go for the phone for everything else yes if you want the great performance, build, quality the screen. This, is one, of the ones to go for if you can afford. It that is of course and you're, not going to be shooting any video so, thank you so much for watching this lengthy, review and, if you haven't already do, check out my review of the larger. 7.2. Inch version of this phone which is the mate 20x.
2018-12-20