That puts it ahead of the Google Pixel 3 at 439ppi and just past the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 at around 514ppi. On the performance front, Huawei’s claims about the Kirin 980 being recognizably superior to the Snapdragon 845 stand up to scrutiny. Usually, it involves limiting screen brightness and contrast, disabling location services, restricting connectivity, and turning off nonessential apps. While the Pixel 3 XL, iPhone XS and Samsung Galaxy S9 are generally great phones, they lack the pizzazz of Huawei's in-screen fingerprint scanner, its two-way wireless charging and its eye-catching colour choices. This time last year, Huawei was laboring behind the scenes to secure its first carrier deal in the United States for its freshly unveiled Mate 10 Pro flagship phone.

The Mate 20 Pro's face unlock feature also works well, and recognised my face more often than not -- even with a hood over my hair and with or without my glasses on. I’m really not sure whether these downsides overwhelm the upside of the Kirin 980 processor’s quickness and efficiency. The phone is using graphene film cooling technology for thermal management, and is one of the first commercial products to utilize graphene for such purposes. We’ve mentioned above that the Mate 20 Pro has a curved screen, and that’s one of the most immediately noticeable parts of its design. There’s nothing more heroic than lending a hapless friend some juice when their phone is at death’s door.The lens adjusts the optical path accordingly, ensuring that any type of motion blur is corrected before the sensor captures the image. That camera also doubles up as an extreme macro shooter, which is a cute and unusual feature, and it works well.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s screen also supports HDR, to make content really pop (where supported), and its 19. Things got worse a month later, when the FBI, CIA, and NSA collectively warned US citizens off Huawei phones, arguing they pose a security and privacy risk due to the company’s ties to the Chinese government. Huawei also has its own version of Google’s digital wellbeing tools showing you how long you use your phone, which apps, how many times you unlock it and with the ability to set limits. For all my praise about Huawei’s excellent hardware and performance, I have little good to say about the company’s software. The other biometric ID system that Huawei adds here — the pressure-sensing fingerprint reader built into the display — also contributes to this space efficiency by removing the need for a discrete space to install a separate scanner.In addition to the standard energy-saving modes, it supports fast charging via SuperCharge, filling up to 70% in 3 minutes. It is also the season for all the big fat makers in the industry to pull the wraps off their latest smartphones. Joining LG and Samsung with the “ more cameras are better” mantra, Huawei now has three cameras on the rear of its flagship. The main camera is 40 megapixels, the ultra-wide is 20-megapixels and there’s a third eight-megapixel telephoto camera. The Mate 20 Pro dimensions are still several millimeters smaller than beastly flagship phones like the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, but it is one of the larger phones on the market.