Huawei Mate 20 Pro Revisted - How is it in 2023?

It’s 2023 and recently there as been a number of Smartphone launches with new flagship Smartphones from Samsung, Xiaomi, Oneplus, Motorola with more to come down the line.

Some brands are promoting themselves as the flagship killers, whereas others are relying on their credentials in the camera department or other areas.

The camera was one of the areas that appealed to me when I purchased my smartphone back in 2019. You could argue that I had quite a strange journey to my current phone having owned a Blackberry Priv (I wanted something unique) as a daily driver for quite some years and prior to that an Oneplus One (it was value for money, flagship chipset, low price).

Today, I’m here to share my experience with my currently daily driver, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro which I’ve used for the last 4 years at the time of writing.

I was lucky in getting this particular phone. At the time I got it, it was early 2019 and a friend of mine who had family visiting from China offered to buy me something from China, and she was an advocate of the Huawei P20 Pro and is camera. Having had good worth of mouth recommendation and seeing for myself how the camera performed, I asked if she could get hold of the Mate 20 pro.

It was the latest Mate in the series at the time and was significantly cheaper to buy (at least half the price) from China without having to pay the eye watering prices at retail in my country.

From the first day till now, it still has an eye-catching design even compared to the latest handsets and continues to deliver an actual high-profile smartphone experience despite being a little long in the tooth.

Specifications revisited

I thought it might be worth revisiting what the specs were of the Huawei Mate 20 pro first.

The Huawei Mate 20 pro was launched in 2018 and was part of the Huawei Mate series of phones, which also included the Mate 20, Mate 20 Pro and Mate 20x.

The Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro share a similar design, with a metal frame and glass backing, and a patterned "Hyper Optical" finish with various colour options, mine being the strange metallic blue kinda colour.

The Mate 20 Pro has IP68 certification. Both models utilize the 7nm, Kirin 980 an octo-core SoC manufactured by Hisilicon, featuring a Cortex-A76 and Cortex-A55 CPU cores, Mali-G76 MP10 GPU and uses a 6.39 in (162 mm) 19.5:9 1440p display with curved edges.

The Mate 20 Pro contained a notch concealing an additional infrared sensors used for a face recognition system and also includes an optical in-screen fingerprint reader and supported Qi inductive charging, including "reverse" charging of other Qi-compatible devices from its own battery power.

For storage expansion, the Mate 20 Pro utilizes a new, proprietary memory card format known as Nano Memory rather than microSD, which exactly matches the dimensions of a Nano-SIM card. As such, the devices utilize a hybrid SIM tray where the second slot can be used for either expanded storage or a second SIM card

The Mate 20 features three rear-facing cameras with Leica optics in a square-shaped array, with the Mate 20 Pro using 40-megapixel wide angle IMX600, 20-megapixel ultra-wide angle, and 8-megapixel telephoto sensors, dual-LED dual-tone flash, panorama, HDR and capable of recording video of you to 4K@30fps.

There is also a single selfie camera with the following specs: 24 MP, f/2.0, 26mm (wide), 1/2.8", 0.9µm capable of HDR recording at 1080p @30fps.

It originally launched on Android 9 and was upgraded to Android 10. However, due to the current issues between the US and China, the Mate 20 pro did not get to see Android 11 however global models are said to be updated to EMUI 12 with the China models getting Harmony OS.

Huawei Mate 20 Pro Design

Something I noticed abut a lot of new flagships is the use of materials, I’m not entirely sure, but I do feel we seem to be going backwards it terms of design.

Polycarbonate is back instead of glass on some handsets, plastic on some others. Or we get glass backs but plastic frames.

The Huawei Mate 20 pro looks and feels beautiful. The metal frame and glass backing and curved OLED screen still make it look like it something that could come out this year. The finish is high quality and I love the little red power button.

Apart from a true flagship smartphone-like feel, the screen is amazing to watch things on. This handset also comes with an IP rating that ensures its dust and water resistance. You can pay with your usual pay providers like Google Pay.

How does the Kirin 980 fare in 2022

The Kirin 980 still does well in 2022 especially when paired with 8gb of RAM since my model was the LYA-AL00 China only version.

Sure I may not be measuring it against technical benchmarks, against newer processors but for me in daily use I'm sure it continues to perform as well as the Snapdragon 845 and 855 which were out at a similar time.

I mainly use the phone to take photos, browse Reddit, surf the web, watch YouTube or streamers and game. You could argue it's not too taxing, but I’m sure when I play games like Fate Grand Order, Ark Knights, Honkai Impact 3rd I do push the processor quite hard especially during the graphically intense bits.

It's enough for me.

Talking about battery life, my Mate 20 pro seems to last up to a full day despite the battery getting a bit old. I also get the warnings I need a new battery from my phone, but I still think I can push it a bit more before It needs replacing, as it isn’t affecting me in any way yet.
The Camera

In terms of camera, the Mate 20 Pro has a powerful camera installation, which is still incredibly excellent so far. I feel like it still keeps up with newer phones, especially since it came with the wide angle lens, which all current phones seem to have nowadays.

In terms of real world test, I tested it last year alongside my friends Google Pixel 5 and Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro, and it still had the edge over both of them despite being a 1-2 years older at the time.

I feel other phones are just about catching up now.

The Software updates!

I get the feeling, if it wasn’t the way it was, the phone would have got Android 11 or 12.

Saying that, I can’t argue I’ve found it to be quite good. My phone started on Android 9, then Android 10, then EMUI 10.1, EMUI 11 and for me Harmony OS since I have the LYA-AL00 8gb ram model from China.

HarmonyOS feels familiar but also different. I think it's intentional not to be such a big leap for users of Huawei devices.

HarmonyOS feels like an evolution of the EMUI design language in some ways and brings new features such as a new control panel and task centre.

The home screen is still around and there are Harmony OS specific widgets.

When I upgraded, I did wonder whether my Google services would work on my phone. But it seems that there were no problems and Google services continue to work on my phone perfectly find despite be running a different OS.

I can only think it's because the Mate 20 Pro was designed and shipped with Google Play Services and that’s why it still works.

Is the Huawei Mate 20 Pro still worth buying today?

It's hard to say, really. I love my phone, but there are a few niggling things like I can’t double tap to wake, swipe down on my home screen to show notifications (instead I get search) and since it’s the LYA-AL00 I can't set a custom launcher which I’ve done for every phone I’ve owned.

I’m still impressed with the Huawei Mate 20 Pro and will continue to enjoy it for more time.

At current used prices, I would say yes. If you can find one in good condition and wanted to have an excellent camera for little money, I’d recommend it.

Sure there are tradeoffs like the lack of software updates on the Global version of the phone and the fact it's getting a little old in the tooth, but the camera still keeps up with many modern equivalents and in some places I think is still better.

What next?

I think I’ll probably stick with my Huawei Mate 20 Pro for the foreseeable future.

I haven’t really found a phone I want or feel I could replace it.

Some have crossed my mind like the Google Pixel 7 Pro or the Samsung S22 Ultra or S23 Ultra and even the Huawei P50 Pro despite it not having Google Services, but if I’m honest they are far too expensive for as I normally buy my handsets outright.

Alternatively, Honor phones seem to have evolved from the cheaper sub brand of Huawei into a premium manufacturer with good cameras, so I might look there.

Maybe I’ll wait and see, perhaps there's a new Flagship Killer out there that I’ll get one day, something that has got a good camera, good processor but also good value for money.

Hopefully this revisited review helps give you an idea of whether it's worth picking up. If you want to know something more about Huawei Mate 20 Pro that’s not mentioned in this review, then you can ask me in the comments section.