Huawei Mate 20 Pro

or reliable as the latest dedicated fingerprint readers. Huawei’s 3D facial recognition, which works similarly to the iPhone’s, is more dependable, but even this can’t be counted on – it didn’t recognise us half the time in good lighting.

The headline feature of the Mate 20 Pro is undoubtedly its Leica Triple Camera system, which offers up a 40-megapixel RGB lens, an 8-megapixel telephoto lens, and a 20-megapixel wide-angle lens. It’s hard to go wrong with this versatile setup, and Huawei has thrown in plenty of options to make the most of it, including a ‘Pro’ mode that lets you tweak advanced settings like ISO, shutter speed and exposure, and the ability to save RAW photos.

But do three cameras make it the best option for photography? Not necessarily. While photos from the Mate 20 Pro never failed to delight, a side-by-side comparison with other devices showed we invariably preferred the photos from the Pixel 3 XL and iPhone XS Max, particularly when it came to selfies, photos with a high dynamic range, and low-light image. The lesson to learn here is that best-in-class camera hardware on its own isn’t enough to win the photography game.

Indeed, software is the Mate 20 Pro’s weakest link. While it ships with the latest Android 9 Pie operating system, Huawei has put its own EMUI software layer on top, which includes a bunch of inferior duplicate apps and bloatware – a lot of which you can’t uninstall. We’re not a fan, to put it plainly. This lack of software sophistication extends to the notification bar at the top of the phone. The wide notch means there’s far less room for notification icons to live, and in the Mate 20 Pro’s case, it can only fit one notification at a time.

But the software quirks are minor issues. Between the stunning screen, fast performance and excellent battery life, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro is the smartphone to beat for 2018. SAMSUNG GALAXY NOTE 9 CRITICAL SPECS