The Mate 20 & Mate 20 Pro Review: Kirin 980 Powering Two Contrasting Devices
by Andrei Frumusanu on November 16, 2018 8:10 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Mobile
- Kirin 980
- Mate 20
- Mate 20 Pro
Battery Life - Contrasting Two Models
The Mate 20 comes with an LCD screen and a 4000mAh battery. The screen is slightly larger in area than that of the Mate 20 Pro, who in turn uses an OLED screen, but also features a slightly larger 4200mAh battery.
The Kirin 980 of both phones should provide great efficiency, although I have to note that my units of the Mate 20 Pro seemed to have a worse binned SoC, as active system power consumption (normalised for screen and idle) in SPEC was about 8-9% higher than on the Mate 20.
In the web browsing test, we see the regular Mate 20 post some new record battery life results, with a staggering runtime of 13.5h. Here we finally see Huawei replicate the results of the Mate 9, which similarly had a very efficient screen. The efficiency of the SoC also augments the phone above that of other devices.
On the Mate 20 Pro, we see the previously discovered screen panel issues come back to haunt it. Even though it has a larger battery and a smaller screen than the Mate 20, the more expensive phone fares worse off in the test. Unfortunately the large base power handicap of the phone along with slightly worse luminance efficiency is the main cause of the results.
In regards to the Mate 10 results: The actual battery life of devices on the stock firmware should be better, unfortunately I haven’t been able to get to get back to this version as my units have a variant that unlock the memory controller to its full speed (and reduces battery life).
In PCMark, we see a similar regression on the part of the Mate 20 Pro – the regular version is achieving excellent results. Here the test is favourable to OLED devices, as evidenced by the P20 Pro leading all our results, however again this increase base power consumption of the Mate 20 Pro costs it a lot of lifetime which ends up it having much reduced battery life compared to where the SoC and battery capacity should have been capable of.
Overall, there’s two conclusions here in regards to battery life:
The Mate 20 is just an outstanding device and is currently showcasing absolutely leading battery life. Most devices with such runtimes are lower or mid-range phones with large battery capacities. In the high end, the Mate 20 is essentially in a tier of its own as it achieves this excellent battery life result while also showcasing the best performance of an Android device.
The Mate 20 Pro’s result and conclusion is a bit more muted. Its battery life isn’t bad, but falls short of expectations. Here the 4200mAh battery serves as no more than to just compensate for the inefficient display.
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AkiraAkimoto - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link
Andrei will it be ok for me to translate this article into Chinese and post it on some of the Chinese forums with your name and original web link (this page) on it?s.yu - Tuesday, November 20, 2018 - link
lol, many media outlets in China already use Anandtech's content, those who mention the source are already the decent ones.AkiraAkimoto - Tuesday, November 20, 2018 - link
shameless and use partial of the content to support their "paid of view"thats how most chinese media work lol
Lukas Dvorok - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link
Excellent and really retailed review. Thank you. Pitty that you haven't been able to test also unit with BOE display and Mate 20X.dudedud - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link
So right now there's no reliable way to compare this kirin NPU against Apple's?And i hope that you could add the A55' SPEC scores too in the near future
ianbergman - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link
I've only had my Mate 20 Pro for a couple of days, but interestingly, I don't see any of the display issues mentioned. And really crossing my fingers I don't! I still remember the horror of the Pixel 2 XL's hue shift. So far everything else is great - need to live with it a while to get a sense of battery in real world situations, speakers and voice quality, etc.ianbergman - Sunday, November 18, 2018 - link
If anyone knows of a great well to tell if I have an LG panel or not - would appreciate it! CPU-Z and other similar hardware info tools can't seem to tellLukas Dvorok - Monday, November 19, 2018 - link
Device Info HW application. Right on first page when you open app. Something called like touch device or so. I got LG, now I got replacement with BOE.zeeBomb - Sunday, November 18, 2018 - link
Andrei dropping us with that GREAT REVIEWS!!!Lukas Dvorok - Sunday, November 18, 2018 - link
Hello, will reducing resolution on Mate 20 PRO to FHD+ mitigate higher power drain caused by dual MIPI lane? Thank you