Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 14-11-2018

(Twitter: @FaizelPatel143)

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro is the most exciting phone on the market at the moment. The few weeks I had with the device has been phenomenal, exploring the many features that really makes the smartphone standout from the competition.

After unboxing the Mate 20 Pro, its gorgeous screen is what really gets your attention. Edge to edge display with a notch and curved, the screen is bright and vibrant. However it must be noted that the notch was first introduced by Apple on the iPhone X with many other manufacturers following suite.

The Mate 20 Pro is slim and sits comfortably in the hand when compared to physically larger devices of the same screen size and also doesn’t feel heavy in the pocket.

The screen measures 6.4-inches and is a fabulously bright AMOLED panel with a massive 3,120 x 1,440 pixel resolution, and it supports HDR too.

While Huawei does offer its VIP service which includes screen repairs, it’s preferable to encase the Mate 20 Pro to keep it in pristine condition.

The Mate 20 Pro’s Leica camera takes phenomenal pictures that sort of come to life and enhances the scene you are capturing. The one feature I truly enjoyed was the super macro feature delving deep into the subject being photographed. It produces crisp images of objects that are placed as close as 2.5cm from the lens. While it’s a great feature, I asked myself how often would I take photos that up close or how often would I use it?

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro features a 40MP main camera, a 20MP ultra wide-angle camera, and an 8MP telephoto camera. Together, the trio of lenses supports a wide range of focal lengths (equivalent to the performance of a 16-270mm zoom lens), enabling it to mimic the results from professional cameras.

I also particularly enjoyed HiVision which is basically Huawei’s answer to Google Lens. In addition to recognising QR codes, it’ll do on-device translation, look up landmarks, and recognise 10 million famous paintings.

Furthermore, if you take a picture of something you’re about to eat and, via a combination of AR modelling and volume calculation, you’ll get the estimated calories therein, so you can keep a check on the calories.

The Mate 20 Pro is fast and I had no trouble at all opening apps. As a note, its world’s first smartphone to support the 4.5G LTE Cat. 21 standard, allowing consumers to experience download speeds of up to 1.4Gbps.

The massive battery has proven useful and helps when I attended briefings or using the phone constantly to take notes, pictures, recordings and tweeting. With heavy use, the Huawei’s battery lasted at least two days.

The device is powered by a 4200mAh high-density yet very slim battery.

The 40W Huawei SuperCharge gives the device a 70 percent charge in 30 minutes while the Wireless Quick Charge, the industry’s fastest wireless charging solution boosts the devices batter by 12% in just ten minutes.

The Mate 20 Pro also has a Wireless Reverse Charge, which enables the phone to work as a power bank for selected electronic devices supporting wireless charging. This came in handy when I needed to charge my secondary phone.

The facial recognition is fast and seamless and recognises a user within 500 metres, with an error rate below one in a million. However I did find there was a lag sometimes with me then having to use my pass code or the in screen finger print sensor which is a nice touch, but it can frustrate.

Other features include support for Huawei’s new NM card format which are 45% smaller than SD cards. The new phones are also water resistant, and can be fully submerged up to half an hour at a depth of 2m.

Overall, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro has beautiful screen, it’s feature-packed, has a pro-quality camera, great battery life and more features than you’ll know what to do with.

The recommended retail price for the Huawei Mate 20 Pro starts from R18,999, with contract prices staring at R 699.