Gaya Tech: Huawei Mate 20 Pro

Huawei Mate 20 Pro, Just What Travellers Need

Text by ED JUNAIDI | Images by ED JUNAIDI & HUAWEI

I am so happy to say that the time for carrying super bulky DSLR cameras are a thing of the past. It used to be cumbersome for a travel writer like me to simultaneously carry both a heavy camera and notebook to jot down my experiences. That DSLR camera has now been replaced by a powerful device that fits in my hand and always ready to be used when I need it. All my travel experiences can be recorded in various formats – text, photos and videos. Huawei Mate 20 Pro has transformed how I do my travelling, both for work and leisure.

This device is perfect for me, especially when it is equipped with Leica lenses and possesses capabilities to capture great photos in raw format with manual settings in its Pro Mode. The image quality can reach up to 40 megapixels. Another advantage of having Huawei Mate 20 Pro is the fact that the image quality does not degrade as it changes from one focal length to another since the device readily has three focal lengths, hence removing the need to lug different lenses wherever I go.

The device’s ultra-wide lens is amazing at capturing landscapes, while the portrait lens captures human expressions excellently. I can easily switch from scenery photography to portraiture at a slide in camera mode. Its three times (3x) telephoto lens produces quality image even though the shot is digitally zoomed, which is crucial when I am documenting my travels.

Huawei improves its cameras using artificial intelligence to capture sharp photos in low-light and at night without having to switch to Night Mode. I have tried capturing the Petronas Twin Towers at night and the images totally blew me away with its pixel-perfect quality.

Built in a curved body with glass finishing on both rear and front, including cover-all 6.39-inch display, Huawei Mate 20 Pro is the best-looking smartphone to date. It also feels good in my grip with its sporty contour along its edges, giving the body a sleek and solid look. My unit comes in beautiful Twilight colour that is introduced and made famous by Huawei. It comes with pseudo-futuristic in-screen fingerprint scanner as well.

If looks are not enough, Huawei Mate 20 Pro is substantially packed with extensive features, ridiculously way ahead of other smartphones in similar range. This device’s 6GB RAM and powerhouse Kirin 980 processor (the first seven-nanometre chip on Android) ensure that speed is never compromised, allowing me to install more applications and perform multiple tasks at the same time.

Huawei Mate 20 Pro comes in two storage sizes, 128GB and 256GB; the latter comes only in Twilight colour. Those, like me, who love taking photos and videos thus requiring larger storage will be glad to know that this device is expandable to a maximum of 256GB with nanoSD slot, but I had to give up its dual SIM functionality. However, for me, if I were to travel overseas, I prefer to install the SIM card on the other slot so that I can use both my home SIM to receive calls and local SIM for data, which is a convenient for world travellers.

Another improvement to Huawei Mate 20 Pro that I find appealing is its fast charging feature: it charges my phone from 5% to 100% in less than 30 minutes, which is impressive. Like most devices released last year, Huawei Mate 20 Pro is equipped with wireless charging too, but it comes with another feature that also charges other phones wirelessly, which comes handy when your travel buddies are in need of emergency power for their smartphones.

It is important for current and potential Huawei smartphone users to know that at press time, even though the United States of America President Donald Trump issued an executive order requiring US-based companies to restrict doing business with Huawei, the company assures that it will continue providing security updates and after sales services to all existing Huawei and Honor smartphone and tablet products that have been sold or still in stock globally.