Google Pixel 2 XL hands-on review 2
It would be misleading to read too much into those specs and conclude that the Mate 20 screen is a poor one, though. This just isn’t the case. It’s an expansive, bright (to the tune of 820 nits), accurate LCD screen that really shows off video and gaming content well – something that’s only enhanced by the presence of stereo speakers. The iPhone XR recently demonstrated that you don’t have to have a pixel-dense AMOLED to produce pleasing visual results, and the Huawei Mate 20 backs up that view.
It even sports HDR10 support. Going back to the notch for a second, it’s one of the least intrusive examples you’ll find. Whether video content zooms in and incorporates it or cuts it out of the equation, there isn’t the same hampered feeling that you get with larger iPhone X-influenced notches. There’s an option to permanently hide the notch with a black bar in the Settings menu, although this somehow makes the display seem even less symmetrical.
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What’s more, without the benefit of AMOLED’s blacker-than-black nature, you can still see the notch a little. Huawei Mate 20 – Performance In performance terms, the Huawei Mate 20 is unimpeachable. Just like the Mate 20 Pro, it runs on the company’s own Kirin 980 CPU coupled with 6GB of RAM (a 4GB model is also available). This Kirin 980 might not be as widely used as the Snapdragon 845 found in most other 2018 flagships, but it appears to be faster.
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The chip is built using the same 7nm architecture behind Apple’s current A12 monster, which powers the peerless iPhone XS. This compares favourably to the larger and less-efficient 10nm process behind the aforementioned Snapdragon 845. Sure enough, the Huawei Mate 20 outperformed its Android rivals in our Geekbench 4 benchmark tests with a monstrous multi-core score of 9714, and a similarly impressive single-core score of 3307. By way of a comparison, the OnePlus 6T – arguably the fastest of the 2018 Snapdragon 845 brigade – scored 8915 and 2407 respectively. The Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus and its custom Exynos chip pipped the Huawei Mate 20 on single-core performance (3720), but lagged well behind on multi-core (8890).
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Even the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, with its more demanding QHD display, comes up a little way short of the Mate 20 on 9493 multi-core and 3242 single-core. Basically, we’re looking at the Android performance champ here. That’s certainly consistent with my real-world experience. In general navigation, the Mate 20 didn’t put a foot wrong.
Multi-tasking, waking from sleep, jumping into the camera app from the lock-screen – all were executed without a hitch. Of course, for £500 you’d expect this as a bare minimum. But the Huawei Mate 20 is similarly imperious in advanced tasks such as gaming. Infamous system hogs Asphalt 9 and PUBG ran flawlessly on High graphics settings.
This phone is a beast. Huawei Mate 20 – Software In hardware terms, we’ve seen that the Huawei Mate 20 is tough to knock. But, as always with Huawei phones, the software experience is decidedly easier in which to pick holes. That’s because Huawei insists on offering its own heavily customised UI on top of Google’s Android OS. It isn’t alone in this practice.
In fact, most Android manufacturers do this to some extent. But Huawei’s is far from the best of the bunch. It remains a curiously half-baked mish-mash of concepts taken from Apple’s iOS and Android itself. The style is both inconsistent and clumsy, with basic app icons and menus, and a curiously restrictive lock-screen.
You also get a handful of ugly, largely superfluous apps for Music, Video, Health, Calendar and the like. With Google providing superior versions of all, there really is little incentive to delve too far into them. The Themes app is an ever-present on EMUI, allowing you to customise the look of your homescreen. If only most of the alternatives didn’t look so cheap…
While I’m still not a fan of EMUI, at least recent versions have been smooth, fast and reliable – even on relatively modest hardware.
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