Huawei Launches Mate 20 Pro With Kirin 980, 2-Way Wireless Charging And 6.4-inch OLED Display
As expected, Huawei has fitted the Mate 20 Pro with its brand-new, 7nm Kirin 980 processor paired with 6GB of RAM. Huawei is claiming performance dominance over the garden variety Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor used in 2018's flagship Android smartphone and says that it includes a Category 21 modem that is capable of delivering download speeds of up to 1.4Gbps. As is becoming commonplace with newer devices, the Kirin 980 also includes a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU) that is capable of accelerating AI tasks.
The Mate 20 Pro features a 6.39-inch OLED display (3120 x 1440) with a tall 19.5:9 aspect ratio. At the top of the display, you'll find a notch similar in size to the iPhone XS Max. As you might expect, the notch serves as home to both the front-facing selfie camera and the earpiece speaker. However, the notch also serves as home to a 3D facial recognition system similar in concept to Face ID on Apple's latest flagships. And if that wasn't enough, there's also a fingerprint sensor embedded into the display for those that prefer that route for authentication.
Like other recent Huawei smartphones, the Mate 20 Pro has three cameras on the rear. This time around, however, they're clustered into a single "quad-pod" on the back of the phone with the LED flash. There's a 40MP wide-angle sensor (f/1.8), a 20MP super-wide-angle sensor (f/2.2), and an 8MP telephoto sensor (f/2/2, 3x). The cameras are backed by Huawei Master AI 2.0 image processing engine.
As we previously reported, the Mate 20 Pro comes with a massive 4200 mAh battery that uses USB-C super-fast charging which can push the battery to a 70 percent charge in just 30 minutes. But perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the battery/charging system is that the device supports two-way wireless charging. Not only can the Mate 20 Pro be topped off using a wireless charger, but it can also serve as a wireless charger for other devices. With the feature enabled in settings, you can plop another smartphone down on the Mate 20 Pro (i.e. an iPhone XS or a Google Pixel 3 XL) and it will charge it. Just don't expect for the Mate 20 Pro to break any speed records when it comes to wireless charging other devices.
The Mate 20 Pro will come standard with 128GB of RAM and will be priced at €1,049 in the United Kingdom.
If the Mate 20 Pro is too much phone for you, there's also the standard Mate 20. This smartphone also uses the Kirin 980 processor, but is available with either 4GB or 6GB of RAM. It features a slightly larger 6.53-inch LCD HDR panel with a lower resolution of 2244 x 1080. It has a smaller "teardrop" display notch that only houses the selfie camera, a rear-mounted fingerprint reader, and a smaller 4,000 mAh battery. Other compromises are found in the camera system, where the 8MP telephoto sensor only supports 2x zoom, while the 40MP and 20MP sensors have been ditched in favor of 12MP and 16MP sensors respectively. On the plus side, the Mate 20 does include a 3.5mm headphone jack that isn't included on the Mate 20 Pro.
The Mate 20 is priced at €799 (4GB) and €849 (6GB). U.S. pricing has not yet been announced for the Mate 20 Pro and Mate 20.
