Huawei’s crown jewel is the epitome of innovation and that rarest of phenomena – a premium flagship worth its gargantuan price tag.

Specifications and Design

Huawei has flung everything but the kitchen sink into the Mate 20 Pro. This is a device loaded with incredible power, a truckload of features, a marvelous four-camera setup, an under-display fingerprint scanner, a futuristic reverse charging function, and a mammoth 4,200-mAh battery. That is just the tip of the iceberg; the Mate 20 Pro has plenty of other tricks up its sleeve.

Right from the design, the Mate 20 Pro sets a standard of excellence. The phone’s aesthetic appeal is off the charts. Our ‘emerald green’ review unit, embellished with a unique yet subtle texture at the back and a pleasing symmetry, is immediately arresting.

The three rear cameras are fashionably bundled together with the flash in a square box at the centre. While the camera unit protrudes ever so slightly from the back, it doesn’t do so overtly, and the device rests firmly on a flat surface with nary a wobble. The coloured power button provides a splash of glamour to the otherwise understated yet attractive design.

The Mate 20 Pro is elite, and so is its design. The device is a head turner.

Display

On the front, the massive 6.39-inch screen stretches out to all four corners. The curvature of the screen ensures that there are practically no bezels on the side. While the omnipresent notch is on the large end, the absence of bezels and an utterly gorgeous display are more than adequate atonement.

The Quad-HD AMOLED screen is a dream. Boasting a 1440 x 3120 resolution, 538 PPI (pixels per inch), exquisite colour reproduction and near unfathomable clarity, the screen is an absolute delight. Combined with the stereo speaker set up and HDR 10+ support for Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, the Mate 20 Pro is one of the very best smartphones for media consumption present in the market today.

Software, Performance and Battery

Here too, the Mate 20 Pro is ahead of its peers. The Kirin 980 processor is the world’s first 7nm chip for an Android device and is expected to perform at par with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855, which will debut with Samsung’s S10 lineup this month whereas the Mate has been in circulation since October 2018.

Suffice it to say, the Mate 20 Pro is a beast. The state-of-the-art chipset that packs in a hyper-responsive 2.6 GHz CPU chews through day-to-day tasks with consummate ease. Further, the generous 6 GB RAM allows multiple applications to run simultaneously in the background, ready to be plied at the user’s behest. While it isn’t a gaming phone per se, the Mate 20 Pro is a highly capable gaming device; graphically intensive games such as PUBG and Asphalt 9 function with buttery smoothness, there is no lag whatsoever.

Equipped with Android 9.0 out of the box and Huawei’s custom EMUI 9.0 on top, the software is reasonably streamlined and easy to operate, although there is so much packed in, it is almost overwhelming for the first couple of days, but once you find your bearings, it’s a great phone to operate. 

Some nifty features include knocking the screen to take a screenshot, multi-app split screen, digital balance – it lets you keep track of what apps you’re using and for how long and a ton of customisation options.

The Mate 20 Pro’s heavy-duty features call for an equally heavy-duty battery, and the gigantic 4,200-mAH battery is more than up to the task. While there is an option to downgrade the screen to a 1080p resolution, thus saving on a large chunk of battery life, during my use, I stuck to the QHD display. Even then, the battery easily lasted me a full day with approximately 25 percent still left in the tank, a mighty impressive feat. There are other ways to save on battery life – there are multiple power saving modes, and the phone prompts you to halt power-sucking apps operating in the background. Further, Huawei’s dark-mode greatly benefits battery longevity. Using the techniques mentioned above, it is entirely possible to run this phone over two whole days.

Besides, the 40W charger bundled in the box is one of the fastest in the world, charging the device from 0 to sixty percent in under thirty minutes. There is fast wireless charging available as well.

There is more. The Mate 20 Pro is the world’s first device to offer wireless reverse charging. In what is arguably its most fabulous party piece, the phone can wirelessly charge another Qi-charging supported phone by merely placing the second phone on the Mate’s back.

Cameras

In early 2018, Huawei’s P20 Pro was widely heralded as a camera phone par excellence. The Mate 20 Pro improves upon its smaller sibling, including a 20MP ultrawide lens, which not only makes for stunning landscape shots but is of great practical use for routine shots as well. Besides that, there is a 40MP wide lens and an 8MP telephoto lens that allows 3x optical zoom and 5x hybrid zoom. Made by Leica, all three lenses come with optical image stabilisation.

                                                                Fig: 1X zoom

                                                              Fig: 3X Zoom

As expected, the cameras are supreme, on par with the best in the business. The shots are pleasing, colour accurate and packed with detail. The ultrawide lens is particularly fun to experiment with as it opens new avenues of framing a shot. Similarly, the telephoto lens works like a charm; there is no loss of detail at 3x zoom. Further, the phone’s camera can detect 1,500 scenes across 25 different categories and adjust the camera settings on its own.

The portrait mode produces beautiful shots with just the right amount of bokeh effect. Also, the night mode is fantastic and illuminates even the darkest of scenarios.

The Mate 20 Pro is capable of producing drool-worthy shots during any time of day, at any angle, and from any distance. It is an exquisitely crafted camera unit with powerful hardware and software. 

Verdict

Since the time I have been working on this column, the Mate 20 Pro is the most remarkable phone I have come across and by a reasonable margin. There is virtually no chink in its armour. Elegant yet robust build quality and design, an altogether stunning screen, a powerhouse processor, a sophisticated camera, an insanely large battery that borders on overkill and a whole host of supplementary features – Huawei’s Mate 20 Pro is worth every cent of its inevitably daunting Rs 1, 29,900 price tag.