4.5

Great camera, fast.... But I thought it was heating up a bit on continuous usage... Need to check.... Nice phone though... Initial review so will go with 4 stars

Full value for mony, excellent looks and unexpected performance and endless features.

Most Awaited Massive product from Huawei
King in class
1.Speed

Phone is very compact and light, best balance of overall performance and cost, for my requirements..!!

The phone is freaking good and the screen is outstandingly sharp. No complains on the performance and people who follow technology know that as of 2018 December this is easily the most powerful phone in the world. However it is not all cherry blossom ! I've few issues.
1. Emui doesn't allow to set the default launcher to anything else except Huawei s own launcher. I'm fine with it as Huawei gave definitely toned down the heavy UI. One who wants to customise their phone with Nova launcher or any other launcher should be aware of this.
2. The rear camera is awesome and gives amazing results given you switch off the AI mode. But it is the front facing camera that is the problem. Without it is very high megapixel front facing camera, the extremely heavy smoothening is a problem. You can see the difference when you click a picture from a different app and see for yourself.

Highlight of the phone is the battery and the time it takes to charge it. It's just body brilliant. It just took me to 1 hour 6 minutes to charge this mammoth battery from 0 to 100 %.

All in all amazing phone if you can live with the Huawei launcher. Worth the buy! Won't regret the purchase

*Background*

Previous devices: 1. Moto Z Play - had been using for 2 years, but the phone app was giving some problems. Had wanted to try iOS to understand differences with Android, so ended up buying 2. iPhone SE some 3 month back, which I was quite satisfied with except it being single SIM, and small screen (which has its advantages also especially for handling and navigating) and poor resolution (not a good experience for viewing pictures or editing them using the Lightroom app). Hence, was in no hurry to buy a phone, but was sort of missing a good quality 'proper' phone.

I was following all the new releases, and my main prerequisites were: 1. Good quality camera, 2. Good battery life, 3. OLED screen, 4. Responsive phone and UI. Some of the considerations in no particular order were: 1. iPhone XS / XS Max: quite expensive, found the stock keyboard without glide / swipe feature very limiting. 2. Google Pixel 3 XL: uncertain about battery life, and some of the YouTube reviewers had demonstrated that 4 GB RAM proved somewhat insufficient. Also, Mate 20 Pro's camera's image quality seemed at par or better / marginally worse than Pixel's in most reviews I came across. 3. Note 9 / Galaxy S9+: Samsung UI is a big no-no; phone seems to get very slow after few months (wife has S8+), 4. OnePlus 6T: Absence of 2K resolution screen, camera wasn't very confidence inspiring.

Coming to Huawei Mate 20 Pro: Initial apprehension was about EMUI, which I hadn't liked much, and was having preference for stock Android, but compared to all other contenders mentioned above it seemed to be the best compromise. My expectations were: good camera, good battery endurance (because of large battery and 7 nm process chip.

My experience so far...

*Pros*

1. Look and feel: The finish, feel in the hand, the gloss and gradient of Twilight color back are all great! The accompanying case gives a bit of rhomboid pattern to the back, and it's the first time I've put a case on my phone in many years. Phone feels optimally heavy and balanced, isn't very slippery (with case on), and not too bad to use with single hand because of its relatively narrow width.

2. Screen: Very sharp, and vivid. I found it a bit cool for my taste, but it's easy to change its temperature, which I did.

3. Responsiveness and user interface: It's been just 2 days, but every app is very responsive. I've not installed any game, but am perfectly satisfied with this aspect. I've enabled full gesture UI, and am very, very happy happy with it. Especially, the 'back' feature used by swiping from either sides of the screens is very useful and intuitive. I wouldn't want to go back to using a back button again!

4. Unlock methods: (a) Fingerprint scanner is reliable, but a bit less quick and consistent compared to capacitive sensor I had on Moto Z Play, but I hardly need to use it, because the (b) Face ID system works perfectly, very quickly and unobtrusively. I've enabled looking at the phone as a requisite to unlock, which supposedly makes it more secure. And, its responsiveness seems to improve with more number of uses.

5. Battery life: Difficult to comment as it's just 2 days, but it's very impressive. Yesterday with over 3.5 h screen on time and total time since charge of 16 hours, I was left with ~65% battery. I haven't used the provided stock fast charger yet, so can't comment on the charging speed.

6. Camera: Have hardly clicked any pictures, and a few I'd tried in a mundane setting under blue light of fluorescent 'tube light' were grainy, and not as sharp as I'd have liked. But when I compared with Samsung Galaxy S8+ my feeling was that Samsung's processing (especially over sharpening and noise removal with resultant loss of details upon zooming) made the pictures look better than Mate 20 Pro's, but the gradient of skin tone was captured more faithfully by the latter. There's also a 'vivid' color mode while capturing, but it makes the pictures look very artificial, but some might still indeed like it.

7. Sound from external speakers. There's no exact standard to compare against, but I'm satisfied with the ringtone loudness and quality. I'd tried listening to few old Bollywood songs, and they sounded nice, but I felt iPhone SE's output had felt fuller. Quality through earphones (1MORE Triple Driver Earphone: http://amzn.in/d/57nQ1sR ) seemed good, but haven't heard much yet.

*Cons*

1. User interface: I find the icons a bit childish. I can use other launchers like Nova, but will lose some features. Only one major complaint I have is that to bring down the notification shade one has to swipe up all the way from the top towards the bottom. If I end up swiping from somewhat below the topmost level, 'HiVision' (a kind of quick search for apps, web pages, etc.) gets initiated, which is annoying. I also wish double tapping on the home screen could've been assigned some feature (e.g., turning off the screen). I've enabled complete gesture navigation. Initially I was having trouble invoking the task view, but I figured out that best way to do it is to swipe up till around bottom fourth of the screen, and then drag the thumb down a bit instead of just holding it still there.

2. Automatic screen brightness: For some situations, the screen brightness goes too low, and I've to manually turn it up.

3. New contacts are by default saved in Huawei's account instead of Google account, so I've to manually change that to latter from a drop down menu each time. Annoying! Will see if this setting can be changed.

All in all, I'm very happy to have this phone, and some times I use it only because it feels so good to use it! :D Of course, the novelty will wear off in some time.

I'll try to update this review with any new opinions I form, and possibly a few pictures.

If you've reached till here, thanks for your attention! :)

*Update with night shots*

I'll say the camera is better than any other phone camera I've seen up till now. The pictures I've uploaded are from a very dark scene, and yet the details are good with very little noise. One of the pictures is from telephoto lens (3x zoom), which is the only optically stabilized lens, but with narrower aperture, and yet the font on the display board in top left of the picture is seen with very crisp boundaries. I've to agree with many YouTube reviewers that the night mode should be used only in extreme darkness if you're alright with loss of details. The dynamic range of this camera especially in dark is far better than that of Galaxy S8+ (if that helps).

Call Quality: No issues whatsoever.
Battery Backup: Solid 6.5 to 7 hours of screen on time
Size of the phone: Despite the screen size of ~6.4inches, the phone feels compact and well built
Camera: I own a Pixel with latest camera set up. In daylight, Mate 20 pro's superior hardware gather excellent details. In night mode, Mate 20 pro outputs pic which are sharp leading to more details. Pixel night mode outputs pictures which are soft, has more light and less noise. Its a personal preference, but Pixel is marginally better in software processing, however Mate 20 pro pics are totally worth it. It is 9.5 to Mate 20 pro to 10 to Pixel for night mode alone. Daylight pictures, Mate 20 pro is better than Pixel for details.
Kirin 980: Beats 845 easily
Fast Charger: You can literally see the difference and this is ONE OF THE BIGGEST + point of Mate 20 pro
UI: EMUI is a pain, however there are numerous launchers (Microsoft launcher, Pix launcher, Poco launcher, etc) in playstore that makes the user experience pleasant.
Overall: No phone comes close to beating Mate 20 pro.