Huawei Mate 20

With the Mate 20 Pro receiving high praise from tech outlets that doesn’t mean the Mate 20 isn’t worth your time. While it might not have the trendy features of its more expensive sibling, it holds its own against other smartphones in the looks and power department.

The Mate 20 design is almost identical to the Mate 20 Pro — right down to the square camera housing unit. But, it’s only splash resistant so make sure you don’t drop it into any puddles. 

There is a variety of different colors to choose from, but only the Midnight Blue and Emerald Green provide Huawei’s “vinyl” textured back. While barely noticeable, the texture provides a better grip than the standard smooth glass you’ll find on the other color options.

A 6.53-inch IPS display takes up most of the phone’s face with an 88% screen-to-bezel ratio. At 2,244-by-1,080 pixels, it isn’t the sharpest panel available. But, for most people, it’s sharp enough. And thanks to an RGBW stripe configuration, it looks sharper than its 381 PPI suggests.

There’s more to a screen than its sharpness. Fortunately, the Mate 20 delivers on most counts. Colors are bright and vibrant. Despite not sporting an OLED display, blacks were dark. Sadly, the colors themselves aren’t super accurate and whites have a bluish tint.

Like the Mate 20 Pro , the Mate 20 uses the Kirin 980 octa-core processor and 6GB of RAM. Thanks to the Neural Processing Unit (NPU), the phone can manage tasks effectively leading to what critics consider one of the fastest smartphone experiences available. Whether reviewers were browsing the web or playing 3D games, it worked seamlessly.

Battery life sets the Mate 20 apart from other smartphones in its price bracket. Thanks to the NPU, experts could squeeze almost two-and-a-half days worth of use out of a single charge. Heavy users can go a full day without worrying about their phone shutting down. 

Should you find the battery low, fast charging offers a 50% charge in only 30 minutes.

The phone features a three-lens camera system with a 12MP main lens, 8MP telephoto lens, and a 26MP wide-angle lens. Despite lacking the beefy 40MP lens of the Mate 20 Pro , the camera on the Mate 20 captures excellent images. 

Reviewers were impressed with the performance of all three lenses and captured good images. The only complaints centered on a lack of detail when zooming in. Still, for how most people will use the phone, image quality is good enough.

Night mode is where the camera really impressed critics. It took very detailed images with little grain. Unfortunately, Huawei ditched the image stabilization, which means you’ll have more motion blur in your images if you are not careful.

While it might not be perfect, experts highly recommend the Mate 20. Android Police states, “… the Mate 20 is one of the best Android phones out there right now…” Stuff.tv adds, “… the Mate 20 is a superb phone. It takes great photos, has oodles of power and a long-lasting battery…”