Huawei Mate 20 Review

5.0 starsHonor Play review: The best affordable phone on the planet

Facebook Twitter Pintrest LinkedIn Google+ Mail

0 Comments

Huawei may have already won several hearts over this year with its beautiful P20 Pro but the Chinese manufacturer isn't done yet. Like rivals LG with its V series and Samsung with its Note series, Huawei also releases two flagship smartphone ranges a year.

Generally revealed towards the latter half of the year, the Huawei Mate series has traditionally offered plenty. Last year we saw the arrival of the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, succeeding the Mate 9, but this year the new Mates stray away from the sequential number naming going by Mate 20.
The Mate 20 Lite was announced at IFA 2018, but here is everything rumoured so far about the other two devices in the series: the Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro.

• Huawei Mate 10 Pro review
• Huawei Mate 20 Lite initial review
• Upcoming phones: The future smartphones coming soon 
• Best smartphones available to buy today

Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro release date

• Mate 20 Lite revealed at IFA 2018
• Mate 20/Mate 20 Pro coming on 16 October

Huawei announced the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro in October 2017, with both devices being made available shortly after at the end of October and beginning of November.
We've already seen the Mate 20 Lite, but the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro will follow the same launch cycle as their predecessors. Huawei Mobile tweeted an image of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, with the words: "Stay Tuned for the Huawei Mate 20 Series. The first smartphone powered by Kirin 980. London, 16 Oct".
Pens out ladies and gentlemen, 16 October is the date to put in your diary.

• Huawei Mate 10 review

Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro design

• Premium design expected
• Metal core with glass front and back probable
• Waterproofing likely
• Notch design expected

The Mate series is typically the larger of Huawei's flagship smartphone ranges. The Mate 10 features a metal core sandwiched between robust tempered glass, offering a lovely premium design. It isn't waterproof, though the Pro model is, and it features slim bezels at the top and bottom of the display, along with a fingerprint sensor at the bottom.
We'd expect the Mate 20 series to continue with the premium design found on the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, though hopefully both models will adopt waterproofing. It's also expected both will offer a notched display, like the P20 and P20 Pro, but leaks suggest the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro's notches will differ from each other.

Slashleaks

Slashleaks leaked the apparent front panels of both the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro. Both have notches at the top but the Mate 20 (shown on the left of the image above) has a tear-drop style like the Oppo R17 with just a small hole for the front camera and a slit right at the top for what will presumably be the speaker. The Mate 20 Pro panel (shown on the right) meanwhile, shows a wider notch like the P20 and P20 Pro models, integrating the speaker and presumably other sensors alongside the camera.
Both panels show a very small chin at the bottom of the display, suggesting Huawei will opt to reposition the fingerprint sensor to the rear on both devices.
The Mate 10 measures 150.5 x 77.8 x 8.2mm and weighs 186g while the Mate 10 Pro measures 154.2 x 74.5 x 7.9mm and weighs 178g. The Mate 20 models will likely be similar in footprint, even if the standard Mate 20 features a larger display as rumours have suggested.

• Huawei P20 Pro review 

Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro display

• 6.9-inch AMOLED display rumoured for Mate 20
• Mate 20 Pro could have smaller, curved display
• 18:9 aspect ratio expected on both
• Footprint expected to be similar to Mate 10 despite display increase 

The Huawei Mate 10 has a 5.9-inch display with a standard 16:9 aspect ratio and a 2560 x 1440 resolution, while the Mate 10 Pro has a 6-inch display with an 18:9 aspect ratio and a 2160 x 1080 resolution.
With most flagship smartphones adopting the 18:9 aspect ratio, or thereabouts, we're expecting the Mate 20 series to do the same, especially after the Mate 20 Lite did and both the P20 and P20 Pro do.
The Mate 20 is reported to be coming with a 6.9-inch OLED screen, made by Samsung Display. Based on the leaked front panels, the Mate 20 will have a flat display, while the Mate 20 Pro will have a curved-edged display as we saw on the Porsche Design Mate RS that launched earlier this year. A separate leak on Weibo claiming to show hands on images of the Mate 20 Pro in an anti-leak case also supports the device offering curved edges, as well as the Pro having a standard notch as mentioned previously.

Weibo

The panel leak meanwhile also suggests the Mate 20 Pro will have a smaller display than the standard Mate 20. Could it adopt the 6-inch screen of the Porsche Design Mate RS perhaps?
A 6.9-inch display on the Mate 20 would of course be an inch larger than the Mate 10 it would replace but with the adoption of the 18:9 aspect ratio, the footprint of the device should remain similar. The Mate 10 also has an LCD display over AMOLED so the colours should be richer and more vibrant on the Mate 20 if the rumours are accurate. Expect HDR10 compatibility too.

• Huawei Porsche Design Mate RS review

Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro camera

• Leica-branding expected to continue for Mate 20 series
• 24-megapixel front camera likely 
• Dual or triple setup expected on rear 

The Huawei Mate 10 comes with Leica-branded dual rear cameras. There's a 12-megapixel colour sensor with an optically stabilised f/1.6 27mm equivalent lens, coupled with a 20-megapixel monochrome sensor with the same lens but no optical stabilisation.
This year's Huawei P20 also sees a Leica-branded dual rear camera setup but the P20 Pro features three Leica cameras on the rear, made up of a 40-megapixel RGB sensor, 20-megapixel monochrome sensor and an 8-megapixel 3x optical zoom camera. The P20 devices also both offer a 24-megapixel front camera compared to the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro's 8-megapixel offering.
Whether the Mate 20 will adopt the P20 Pro's camera setup on the rear or stick with a dual setup remains to be seen for now, but expect a big focus on this area again. We'd expect the P20's 24-megapixel front camera to make an appearance on the Mate 20, even if the triple setup is reserved for the Mate 20 Pro.

• Huawei P20 Pro triple camera explored

Huawei Mate 20 hardware

• Kirin 980 processor confirmed
• Increase in RAM?
• Large battery capacity likely
• Wireless charging?

The Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro will no doubt improve on the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro in terms of its hardware specifications, as all succeeding flagships do.
The Mate 10 runs on the Kirin 970 CPU with Mali G72 GPU and it comes with 4GB of RAM, while the Mate 10 Pro has 6GB. There is 64GB of storage in the Mate 10 with microSD support for storage expansion and a 4000mAh battery runs the show.
The Mate 20 Series is confirmed to feature the Kirin 980 processor, which was revealed in full at IFA 2018. We wouldn't be surprised to see an increase to 6GB of RAM for both models though, like the P20 Pro and Mate 10 Pro. Whether the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro will ditch microSD support like the P20 devices is unclear for now, but we would expect to see an increase in internal storage either way and dual SIM is also likely.

FCC

A large battery capacity is likely to remain for the Mate 20 too as it has done for all preceding Mate devices, but we'd hope to see wireless charging introduced, a feature still missing from Huawei devices, even in the case of the P20 and P20 Pro. A Huawei wireless charger - the CP60 - did recently gain FCC certification however, suggesting wireless charging is a strong possibility for the Mate devices.
We recently received a hand-delivered press release, locked in a safe with an emoji-encoded password, which appeared to refer specifically to the Mate 20 Pro. The device wasn't named but a promotional placard depicting the company's previous high-end devices including the Mate 10 Pro and P20 Pro with a blank space following them was inside the safe.

Pocket-lint

The release highlighted the battery capacity of the previous high-end devices, suggesting the Mate 20 Pro will offer a larger capacity than the 4000mAh in the P20 Pro. Nothing is certain as the release was only a teaser with no official names or capacities revealed for the upcoming device, but it's safe to say a large battery is a given for the Mate 20 Pro.

• Wireless charging explained
• Inside Huawei's awesome new phone hardware 

Huawei Mate 20 software

• Android with EMUI

The Huawei Mate 20 series will no doubt run on Android with Huawei's EMUI (Emotion UI) over the top.
The Huawei P20 and P20 Pro run on EMUI 8.1 but the Mate 20 series will likely launch with new features on top of what these devices already offer. What these features will be remains to be seen for now but expect a number of leaks to appear over the next couple of months, some of which may give us a better indication of what to expect from the Mate 20 series.
For now, read all about the Huawei P20 and P20 Pro to see what Huawei's current 2018 flagships offer.

Source :  pocket-lint.com