The waterdrop notch is a shape redesign for what some see as a necessary evil in the smartphone experience. Regardless of which notch design a company goes with, I prefer a notch-less experience. But for those of you who can’t get enough of it, Huawei is on the notch bandwagon. Both of its newest smartphones provide this rising design trend, and the regular model takes notch design one step further.

The new Mate 20 series has three rear cameras and a square-shaped camera lens

Huawei’s newest phones also have triple rear cameras, not surprising considering the P20 Pro had the same. The Chinese Android OEM was the first, however, to unveil a smartphone with a triple rear-camera setup. Proud of its “achievement,” Huawei is back with triple rear cameras on the new Mate lineup. The new triple rear camera trend is taking off, with Android giant Samsung having just announced its first triple rear camera smartphone setup three weeks ago in the Galaxy A7 (2018).

The new triple rear-camera setup features a primary lens (40MP with f/1.8 for the Pro, 12MP with f/1.8 for the regular model), telephoto lens (8MP 3x telephoto lens with f/2.4 for the Pro, 8MP sensor with f/2.4 for the regular), and an ultrawide lens (20MP with f/2.2 for the Mate Pro, 16MP with f/2.2 for the regular).

The triple rear cameras will certainly spark interest, but the square-shaped camera unit could prove a huge turnoff for many. OEMs with many sensors atop the phone display have found a way to make the notch fashionable. Huawei will have to bring fashion to the camera unit to make triple rear cameras a selling point.

The Kirin 980 and Dual NPU

Apple unveiled the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max last month with a market-first, 7-nanometer SoC inside. According to US agency Consumer Reports, the 7nm SoC has dramatically improved battery life on both of the new XS models, giving users between 24-26 hours of battery life on a single charge. Surprisingly, Apple put smaller batteries in both smartphones but still achieved respectable battery performances.

Huawei, thankfully, has gone with the “less is more” philosophy in the battery department, but the company is the first in Android to bring a 7nm SoC to market. Its Kirin 980 SoC is the company’s very own processor that features better battery life and faster performance.

The new Kirin 980 is an octa-core processor featuring four high-performance Cortex-A76 cores and four low-performance Cortex-A55 cores. The Dual NPU, acronymic for “Neural Processing Unit,” is also on board to help with image processing, AI photography, and object recognition.

Mate 20 has the cutting-edge, In-Display Fingerprint Sensor

The In-Display Fingerprint Sensor is one of the coveted new trends in tech that has received its share of whispers over the last two years or so. Samsung has been recognized as coming forth with its own in-display fingerprint sensor but the Korean giant has yet to emerge with it. Chinese Android OEM Vivo took the wraps off the cutting-edge fingerprint sensor in its Vivo X21 smartphone back in May, then brought it over to the Vivo NEX S. The new Mate 20 series isn’t the first of Huawei’s to support an in-display fingerprint sensor (that title belongs to Huawei’s Mate RS Porsche Design Edition), but there are only a few smartphones with the feature available as we know it.

The new in-display fingerprint sensor allows you to place your fingers where they naturally reside on smartphones (the display, of course) and unlock your smartphone in the same way that rear-mounted fingerprint scanners and home button-embedded ones have done over the years.

Huawei’s Mate 20 performs as a Samsung DeX rival

Samsung’s DeX experience is designed to help smartphone users project their content to a larger screen (think PC). The new Mate 20, like its Pro sibling, features something DeX-like using Miracast technology. The new phone wirelessly projects your on-screen content onto a larger screen for better viewing. And, you can do this while still making calls and sending texts from your phone.

Conclusion

The Huawei Mate 20 is a smartphone that checks off all the boxes of what high-end buyers are looking for these days, such as notch designs, curved displays, large-capacity batteries, triple rear cameras, and even in-display fingerprint sensors. Of course, Huawei must credit Samsung with its DeX-like Miracast functionality. Huawei’s phone isn’t that original (the Nano Memory card implementation is about all in that department), but then and again, buyers want features and cutting-edge specs, whether original or not.

Check out the new Huawei Mate 20 by viewing the official London announcement below.