Earlier he reached, with Mate 20 Pro Huawei already overtaking – Tehnozvezdje

Matjaž Ropret
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November 26, 2018 at 5:31 p.m.

Huawei has achieved an extremely fast and great leap from an unknown phone manufacturer through an increasingly powerful challenge of the best to a rhythm and development denominator. However, until this year, in testing their products, we have repeated similar mantras – they are very good, almost at the level of the most advanced, but not pure, and with few notable features. With the P20 Pro and especially with the new Mate 20 Pro, this also changes. The latter, in fact, has some of the technologies and capabilities that other models do not offer.

First, you have the camera. We can get involved in an academic debate, be it the best or not. Or, if you want to fully utilize the hardware at your disposal. Some people like their results, others just a little less because of still excessive interference with artificial intelligence and algorithms to write in jpg files. But such flexibility as you get with this phone, usually there is no other. The results with the automatic mode are already at a high level and for the addition there is a night mode, when it usually captures little light. Instead of an advanced HDR, it wants more control and less interference with the "memory", can be photographed in manual mode. In addition to such exposure, such photographs have a less pronounced contrast and emphasize the edges of the objects, and from the raw register (dng) it is also possible to extract many things, of course, with some involvement in the appropriate photo processing program. Background blur (aperture) and portrait mode are also available for playback.

Above all, flexibility is provided by three lenses. In addition to the usual focal length, extremely wide telephoto lenses (approximately 16 mm) and telephoto (80 mm) are available, as well as an optional optical and digital zoom (135 mm). Especially wide is welcome because the quality is really decent, almost like the main lens. Of course, the recordings are slightly "barricaded", and again not excessive. In the "zoom", a smaller sensor and less points are known, but still can be useful, especially under good light. The decision to abandon the black and white sensor and incorporate the wide-angle lens was certainly good and correct. It will be interesting to see if Huawei can further improve this camera through software updates and how it will be developed in future models.

The next area is biometrics. Probably Apple, when it came out of the iPhone X last year, took over two. First, integrated fingerprint readers, even though they were commented on at the time, are not so close to mass reality. And in addition, it will have Face ID, a reduced Kinect, a few years before the competition. And so he decided to switch to facial recognition instead of temporarily transferring the fingerprint reader from the front of the phone until the technology became mature enough. It turned out that both of these assumptions were rather pessimistic. In fact, there are already several phones in which the fingerprint recognition is directly on the screen, as well as a completely equivalent facial biometry.

True Mate 20 Pro offers both. Reviews on the fingerprint reader on the screen are shared. Critics point out that it is slower than the ones we have been accustomed to in recent years – especially those at Huawei have been extremely fast and reliable – and that they do not recognize the finger more often than with the classics. But personally, my new solution is improving. It is true that the identification takes a little longer, between half a second and a second. But with that I have no problems, I leave my finger long enough on the glass, but something. Reliability is great for me, it only fails when I have wet toes, which is also true for everyone else. And the animation is interesting, and after a few days you already know exactly where to put your finger before the circle is drawn. The front end reader seems convenient because I often want to check something on the phone, which gets a little away from me at the desk, but I do not want to hold it.

But for those who do not like to wait, I recommend the facial unlock. With it, the phone is often unlocked at a glance, in any case, even before it is pressed. It works pretty much under all circumstances. In normal light, in the dark, in the sun, with a hat, with glasses. I do not notice any noticeable differences from Apple's implementation, but Huawei is probably even faster. And you do not need (if you set up) to pull anything with your finger on the screen, but it's unlocked directly.

The quality of the screen does not suffer from fingerprint recognition. And although it may not be possible to deduce based on the specs, this time the OLED is significantly better than last year in Mate 10 Pro. A little bit of that in the P20 Pro. Especially black is much more black this time because in the year past, despite the screen technology that promises pure blackness, it was not so. Calibration of other colors is also significantly improved. White is white this time, it does not creep in blue or yellow, as it is happening. It would be nice if Huawei offered some additional options to adjust the size of the icons and scaling, because in some places the high resolution is now well used and elsewhere.

And last but not least, battery and charging. As much as 4200 mAh capacity is more than enough for a full day, in a month I've never come close to the fact that the phone should have a full filling at bedtime. But I occasionally did this on a wireless charger. When one after another follows an extraordinarily intense day, the battery can be maintained at the end of the other, otherwise one should not rely on it for two days of autonomy. But it's really a fast download, already with some universal charger that supports one of the faster protocols, much less with the attachments. With this, a phone from 30 to 80 percent of the charge arrives in about half an hour. I still could not test the wireless speed because the Huawei charger has not yet come for me. It is not speedy with others, however, the phone can be used often enough for electricity, so that whenever you go to your place, it is 100 percent. Of course, this is true for anyone who supports inductive charging, but not every big battery like the Mate 20 Pro and the same efficient processor as the Kirin 980.

Reverse wireless charging sounds like a cute idea to me, but I have not been able to take advantage of it for now. I think it would be better to come in to charge an hour or a box with completely wireless headphones. However, none of these devices I use do not support this way of generating power. It is always a problem to present something without a concrete ecosystem in the background. To charge the other phone would otherwise, I tried this, but with some limitations. The first is that it should be almost in the coffin and possibly somehow tied up, otherwise whoever should get energy is too quick to take off from the slick and elegant Mate 20 Pro, and the joy is over. Which also means that you can go something like that somewhere where the phones are resting on the table, like coffee or lunch. You can not perform such fill in your pocket or backpack. But at the subway level, I get those few percent for an urgent call or I send a message / email, which most probably is not. On the clock or headphones, I imagine I could add the juice for a few hours of operation, but at the same time I would not have taken the phone off my crutches.