The Mate 30 Pro will release in the UK this Thursday, February 20, and Huawei is doing everything it can to tempt Android fans into buying one. The Chinese tech giant is dishing out a free Huawei Watch GT 2 and a pair of Huawei Freebuds 3 – that’s a freebie haul of around £368 – to anyone who buys one.
Let’s address the elephant in the room. Huawei is doing everything it can to make the Mate 30 Pro appealing, primarily because the phone isn’t that appealing at all. That’s nothing to do with the hardware, it all comes down to the lack of native support for Google apps and services out the box. That means you won’t find the likes of Chrome, Gmail or even the Play Store preinstalled. Instead, the Chinese firm is encouraging users to use its Play Store alternative, the Huawei AppGallery.
The only problem with the Huawei AppGallery is that it doesn’t come with anywhere near the same app selection you’ll find on the Play Store. You won’t even find the likes of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, for example.
For most people coughing-up £899 on a brand-new smartphone, that’s a pretty sizeable problem.
The Mate 30 Pro looks like the phone of the future
That leaves you with two choices: either live within the walled garden Huawei wants you to live in (because it’s banned by the US over fears around its ties with the Chinese government and the possibility of using its hugely-successful consumer and industry tech products to spy on people) or install all the usual Google apps and services on the phone yourself.
Express.co.uk has been testing the Mate 30 Pro for over a week now and, to be honest, we’re loving the Mate 30 Pro.
On paper, living within the forced limitations of the Mate 30 Pro doesn’t seem easy. Thankfully, to get all the apps you want – like WhatsApp and Facebook – you have a couple options. You can either transfer all your apps over using Huawei’s Phone Clone tool and hope they receive frequent updates, or you can download a third-party app store, like the Amazon Appstore, and get your apps that way.
The biggest problem with all this is the fact third-party app stores won’t receive app updates as quickly. That means if and when WhatsApp receives its glorious dark mode makeover, you might have to spend months gawking at it on your friends’ phones before you’re able to enjoy it yourself.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that some apps, like Google Maps, are unattainable through any other marketplace other than Google’s own. So you’ll have to find suitable replacements for some pretty essential apps.
The final option for the Mate 30 Pro when it comes to software, and the one we’ve opted for at Express.co.uk, is to install Google apps and services on the device unofficially. There are plenty of forums and YouTube videos showing you how to do this (we’ve embedded the one we used down below) and so far things have worked flawlessly. All in all, the process takes around five minutes to complete.
Of course, there’s no guarantee this method with continue to work. Indeed, one of the previous popular tutorials have now stopped working thanks to Google closing the loophole it used – so keep that in mind if you’re looking to buy the phone in the coming months.
Thankfully, our Mate 30 Pro has the Play Store installed and all the other Google apps you’d expect like Gmail, Chrome and is even running the brand new version of Google Maps, complete with its logo redesign. Better still, the Play Store is feeding our Mate 30 Pro with app updates, meaning we’re able to get our hands on the latest and greatest features as quickly as any other Android phone on the market.
The only problem we’ve had since installing Google on our Mate 30 Pro is a pretty niche one. On Google Play Movies, our film collection is showing up as normal and we’re able to stream them all, but for some reason the device won’t let us download them to the phone’s storage. While that’s certainly not a deal-breaker, it’s worth bearing in mind.
So why have we gone through all the trouble of installing Google apps and services on the Play Store ourselves? Because the Mate 30 Pro’s hardware is so damn good.
Let’s start with the basics – Huawei has absolutely nailed the design of the Mate 30 Pro. In fact, we think this is the best-feeling phone in the hand money can buy right now. This is mainly down to its gorgeous Horizon Display that seamlessly melts over the side of the phone into its aluminium chassis.
The extreme curves of the Mate 30 Pro’s display not only make the phone more square, and more comfortable to hold in the hand, they also look incredibly futuristic. Say what you want about its software – the Mate 30 Pro looks like the phone of the future.
Huawei’s Horizon Display isn’t all about classy aesthetics, though. Tapping the phone’s curvaceous sides twice will summon volume adjustment controls, swiping up and down on the screen from there will adjust sound accordingly.
The biggest benefit of this system is the fact you can adjust sound on either the left or right-hand side of the Mate 30 Pro, perfect for all the lefties out there or if your right hand is already busy.
The Mate 30 Pro comes with a notch at the top of its gorgeous display (that is sadly limited to 60Hz), but it’s the most justified on any smartphone because of the all the functionality it brings to the table. The Mate 30 Pro comes with a single 32-megapixel front-facing camera and an array of facial recognition technologies within its notch that not only deliver secure 3D unlocking, but also have a few nifty tricks up their sleeve, too.
By far the most useful of these is a feature Huawei is calling App Lock. When enabled, this will ensure any phone notifications are only able to be viewed by yours truly – the phone will even recognise if someone is peering over your shoulder and block content accordingly. That’s something that not even Apple’s vaunted Face ID system can do.
Additionally, the phone is also able to detect which angle you’re looking at it from and orient its content accordingly.
On the slightly more gimmicky end, you’re also able to raise your hand in front of the device’s notch and close it to take a screenshot. Swiping up and down in-front of the Mate 30 Pro’s sensors can also be used to scroll up and down on web pages, however this never always worked during our testing, so we stopped trying to use it entirely.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/8cWEUQmBi04
Then there’s the camera. The Huawei Mate 30 Pro comes with four sensors on its rear comprised of a 40-megapixel primary, a 40-megapixel ultra wide-angle, an 8-megapixel 3x telephoto and a time-of-flight (ToF) lens. Simply put, photos on the Mate 30 Pro look stunning and the phone performs excellently in bright and low-light scenarios.
In this writer’s humble opinion, the Mate 30 Pro’s main shots aren’t quite up to par with the immense clarity and detail you get from the Google Pixel 4, but things are still excellent across the board.
Where the Mate 30 Pro’s camera eclipses the Pixel is with sheer diversity though. The handset’s ultra wide-angle and 3x optical sensors are both superb and allow you to take shots you simply can’t get on Google’s offering.
Huawei has really upped the ante when it comes to video on the Mate 30 Pro. The flagship is the first from the firm to allow for 4K video recording at 60-frames-per-second and can even capture slow-motion footage at an astounding 7680-frames-per-second.
It won’t surprise you that when it comes to performance and battery life, the Mate 30 Pro is also superb. The firm’s in-house Kirin 990 processor isn’t quite up to snuff with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 865 in benchmarks, but in real-world use navigating through Android 10 is rapid.
The Mate 30 Pro is also fitted with a humongous 4,500mAh battery that can easily last two-days with moderate use. Plus, when you do need to find a charger, Huawei’s 40W brick included will make sure you get juice at blisteringly fast speeds.
As you can probably tell, we’re extremely impressed with the Mate 30 Pro at Express.co.uk. Although the phone’s software issues are an ugly asterisk, the reality of living with the Chinese handset is much simpler than you’d think.
Although it’s not not being endorsed by Huawei, we’d really recommend installing Google apps and services on the device, unless you’re willing to try out a Google-free life.
It would be easy to ignore the Mate 30 Pro’s release this week. After all, the Galaxy S20 series has just been announced, the iPhone 11 series remains a compelling option and Huawei is expected to announce the P40 Pro next month too. But there’s something special about the Mate 30 Pro’s curvaceous display and feature set that keeps us coming back for more.
So don’t write this one off just yet.
Express.co.uk will be reviewing the Mate 30 Pro in full very soon. So stay tuned.
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