Huawei has launched its latest flagship phone Mate 20 Pro in India with prices starting from Rs 69,990. This is Huawei’s second flagship product in the country, after the P20 Pro, which was launched earlier this year.
The Mate 20 Pro, like its predecessor, packs three cameras at the back, carries a bigger yet compact design and packs in hardware that’ll match the best in the business. The phone will be available from 3 December onwards for Prime members on Amazon, and 4 December for everyone else.
We spent sometime with the Mate 20 Pro and here’s what we feel about Huawei’s chances with its latest triple-camera device.
From the word go, it is hard to deny that the curved edge screen kind of reminds you of Samsung’s Galaxy S series of phones. Having said that, the Mate 20 Pro packs a 6.39-inch AMOLED screen with 3160x1440 pixels or 2K resolution quality.
In terms of the design, the Mate 20 Pro matches its sibling the P 20 Pro with the twilight colour code, something that had impressed people earlier. Yes, it is made of Gorilla glass, but you would be better off using a case, just in case one has butter fingers.
It has a notch at the top, but it is not as tall as the others in the segment, especially the Google Pixel 3. It’s wider than most other phones we have seen this year. The chin size is respectably small though and that ends up offering a lot of screen space for viewing content.
The 6.4-inch AMOLED screen is bright and high on contrast – something that we’ve gotten used to with Samsung’s trademark display panel over the years. Having said that, for over Rs 70,000, we would have liked the phone to come with a Super AMOLED display.
The phone packs a Kirin processor with 6GB or 8GB RAM with storage up to 256GB and you can choose between using the second SIM or expand storage further. Huawei claims to be one of the first to use a 7nm chipset, the Kirin 980, that promises flagship-level performance.
With the Mate 20 Pro, you get a 4200mAh battery that’s loaded into a device that’s deceptively slim at 8.6mm and lightweight at 189 grams. The speciality of the battery is that it can be reverse charged to – wait for it – wirelessly charge other phones.
That’s right, any Qi charging supported device (like iPhone 7, 8, X or Samsung Galaxy Note 8/Note 9, S9 or even the Google Pixel 3) can be charged by placing the phone at the back of the Mate 20 Pro.
The company claims the wireless charging technology works at 15W, and during our time with the feature, it worked, albeit with slow results, which is understandable.
Then you’re looking at the other highlight of the Mate 20 Pro, which are the three rear cameras, offering 40, 20 and 8 megapixels with wide, ultrawide and telephoto lens respectively. You can also rely on a 24-megapixel front camera for basic photography use. We’ll test out the cameras and pit it against other flagship phones to determine its quality.
It doesn’t have a headphone jack and runs a Android 9.0 Pie version of EMUI that still feels like a work in progress, especially for a phone that costs as much. All in all, the Mate 20 Pro is a fine effort from Huawei, but for Rs 67,000, you can get the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 in the country. Can it rival the South Korean giant? We’ll find out very soon.
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