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Hardware

Chinese Phone Maker Huawei Launches Mate 20 Pro Featuring In-Screen Fingerprint Sensor, Two-Way Wireless Charging, 3 Rear Cameras and 4,200mAh Battery (theguardian.com) 68

Huawei's new Mate 20 Pro has a massive screen, three cameras on the back and a fingerprint scanner embedded in the display. From a report: The new top-end phone from the Chinese firm aims to secure its place at the top of the market alongside Samsung, having recently beaten Apple to become the second-largest smartphone manufacturer in August. The Mate 20 Pro follows Huawei's tried and trusted format for its Mate series: a huge 6.39in QHD+ OLED screen, big 4,200mAh battery and powerful new Huawei Kirin 980 processor -- Huawei's first to be produced at 7 nanometres, matching Apple's latest A12 chip in the 2018 iPhones.

New for this year is an infrared 3D facial recognition system, similar to that used by Apple for its Face ID in the iPhone XS, and one of the first fingerprint scanners embedded in the screen that is widely available in the UK, removing the need for a fingerprint scanner on the back or a chin on the front. The Mate 20 Pro is water resistant to IP68 standards and has a sleek new design reminiscent of Samsung's S-series phones, with curved glass on the front and back. The back also has an new pattern etched into the glass, which is smooth to the touch but ridged when running your nail over it.

On the back is a new version of Huawei's award-winning triple camera system using a 40-megapixel standard camera, an 8-megapixel telephoto camera with a 3x optical zoom and new for this year is a 20-megapixel ultra-wide angle camera, replacing the monochrome sensor used on the P20 Pro.
The Mate 20 Pro runs EMUI 9, which is based on Android 9 Pie. The variant with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage is available for 899 Euro starting today.
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Chinese Phone Maker Huawei Launches Mate 20 Pro Featuring In-Screen Fingerprint Sensor, Two-Way Wireless Charging, 3 Rear Camera

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  • About huawei (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @10:37AM (#57486390)

    Fun part I recently ran into with Huawei phone that friend was using. You can't install VLC on them any more through play store. You have to get APK package from elsewhere.

    Apparently, Huawei has some out of spec handling of battery management that interferes with many apps, and VLC folks just had enough. So keep that in mind if you want to get one:

    https://www.androidcentral.com... [androidcentral.com]

  • Why not just buy a Pixel 3? If you're going to be spied on, it may as well be by an American company.
    • by MrMr ( 219533 )
      I recommend checking if the country you plan to use the phone in has an extradition treaty with the US or China. As far as I can see the odds are 100 to 40. Not great in either case.
    • Huawei's Mate 20 Pro vs Pixel 3: Micro-SD, 50% more Ram (6GB), ~50% larger battery; 40W wired charging.
      General Cons: Still missing aux-jack, limited 2G|CDMA radio [kimovil.com], $1000+ for a phone.

  • "2-way wireless charging"So in addition to being able to charge you phone from your car, you can also charge up your cars battery from your phone.

    While this sounds like a good feature in the winter especially, the capacity 4,200 mAh won't make a lot of difference in trying to start you car

    • This will probably get moderated funny, but I really have no idea what they mean by two-way wireless charging and would love to know.
      • by Mascot ( 120795 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @10:51AM (#57486506)

        I base this guess off of nothing but an image and a headline that said something like "friend charging" that I didn't click on, but it might be the ability to charge one phone with another. So if you have 80% battery and your friend's phone is about to die, you can put them on top of one another and yours can charge his.

        • by Ksevio ( 865461 )
          Yep, you wouldn't know if from the article (which doesn't mention it at all) but that's exactly what it does (if you enable the option)
        • So if you have 80% battery and your friend's phone is about to die, you can put them on top of one another and yours can charge his.

          No, no I can't. If he can't be trusted to keep his phone charged, he can't be trusted period. I'm not going to give him my precious life energy.

        • In our bleak bluetooth earbud future, two-way wireless charging is a pretty great idea. I hope other, non-spyware phones adopt this idea.

        • I base this guess off of nothing but an image and a headline that said something like "friend charging" that I didn't click on, but it might be the ability to charge one phone with another. So if you have 80% battery and your friend's phone is about to die, you can put them on top of one another and yours can charge his.

          Reminds me of the term "Charging Up", as used on the Hulu series "Future Man"...

          Caution: DEFINITELY NSFW:

          https://www.reddit.com/r/telev... [reddit.com]

    • by Anonymous Coward

      No no, you use the phone and the signals escape wirelessly and are picked up by the Chi-Com authorities who then have you whisked away to a secret prison, after months of which you are charged with something. Two-way wireless charging.

  • I might actually consider this or one of the Samsung competitors. I don't go hiking/canoeing all that often but when I do, carrying a phone is PITA. And I feel compelled to carry one for emergency situations. Also at the water park with my kid. Although I may still go with a cheaper GSM watch that can receive texts and make a 911 call in an emergency. It means a higher monthly fee. But even with the IP68 rating, I'm still scared to submerge an expensive device.
    • I might actually consider this or one of the Samsung competitors. I don't go hiking/canoeing all that often but when I do, carrying a phone is PITA. And I feel compelled to carry one for emergency situations. Also at the water park with my kid. Although I may still go with a cheaper GSM watch that can receive texts and make a 911 call in an emergency. It means a higher monthly fee. But even with the IP68 rating, I'm still scared to submerge an expensive device.

      You could just get one of these. [amazon.com] and keep your current phone. Not just waterproof, but floats, and the touch screen & camera still work.

    • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      I might actually consider this or one of the Samsung competitors. I don't go hiking/canoeing all that often but when I do, carrying a phone is PITA. And I feel compelled to carry one for emergency situations. Also at the water park with my kid. Although I may still go with a cheaper GSM watch that can receive texts and make a 911 call in an emergency. It means a higher monthly fee. But even with the IP68 rating, I'm still scared to submerge an expensive device.

      Why not just buy a $10 waterproof bag for your phone? You can even keep using your phone (touchscreen/camera/etc, not sure about able to hear calls) while it's in the bag. Might not be completely waterproof if you are going to be spending significant time submerged in the water, but I used one without issue climbing Dunn's River Falls.

    • Lil' Wayne was all about that [youtube.com] a few years ago...
    • The first thing to do when getting a new allegedly waterproof phone is to test it by putting it in a large cup full of water for five minutes. If there are any obvious faults, it will fail under warranty before you transfer everything over and personalize it. Samsung once had a sport version of their phone that failed in water, and they decided to replace them under warranty when people complained rather than recall them, so lots of people lost data just so Samsung could avoid replacing the ones that didn

    • I don't go hiking/canoeing all that often but when I do, carrying a phone is PITA. And I feel compelled to carry one for emergency situations.

      Ever hear of Ziploc bags?

    • If I were you, I'd consider a Samsung (unless you do just want to get a waterproof bag).

      Huawei products have been caught actively spying on Americans and calling home via their products.

      As a result, our military will not use Huawei products at all and Huawei was banned from investing in / building 5G infrastructure in the United States and other countries, and the US is trying to get Canada to change its mind about allowing them up there.

      Some ZTE products were also found to be doing this. As a resu
  • by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @11:53AM (#57486712)

    I hope manufacturers will start putting front-facing cameras behind the screen, roughly in the center of the phone or 2/3 of the way up. That way when (1) in video calls we'll be able to look at the people we're speaking with and they'll see our eyes actually looking at them, and (2) when we take selfie photos and are checking out how we look, our eyes will be looking at the camera.

    I read about an Apple patent for this back in 2009 but it doesn't look like there's been any development since then. https://appleinsider.com/artic... [appleinsider.com]

  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @12:25PM (#57486828)
    Not mentioned in TFA or TFS, but mentioned here [engadget.com]:

    The new handsets are the first to take NM Card, a Huawei-made design that offers the capacity and performance of microSD in a card the size of a Nano SIM.

    The problem, you might have surmised, is that you're buying what's currently a vendor-exclusive technology. You can't just run to any store and pick up an NM Card when your built-in storage fills up. It's unclear how Huawei will price these cards, for that matter. And however reasonable the price might be, you're likely locking yourself into using Huawei phones if you want to use that extra storage with any future phones.

    • by mentil ( 1748130 )

      nano SIM isn't that much smaller than microSD, and SD cards aren't known for mind-blowing performance. Samsung is the only one using UFS AFAIK but that's far faster and not proprietary.

  • by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @12:42PM (#57486904) Journal
  • So what exactly is two-way wireless charging? To me, that means placing two phones back-to-back and using one to charge another. But this also seems really stupid. Or does it mean you can also charge by placing the phone face-down? Either way, a bizarre feature.

  • by AbRASiON ( 589899 ) * on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @01:31PM (#57487264) Journal

    Sorry, don't subscribe to the arguments supporting the ability to work around this design flaw.

    It's not hard to keep, it's really not ruining phones keeping it. I will not purchase a phone without it.

    Period

    • It's not hard to keep, it's really not ruining phones keeping it. I will not purchase a phone without it.

      The geek's stubborn rear-guard resistance not withstanding, I'm afraid the headphone jack is going the way of the parallel port and the Dodo. It's just one more cable and one more connector that no one wants to bother with any more.

      • It certainly seems that way. Yet it's one of the few international standards that is everywhere.

        I bet I could buy a set of basic headphones in the middle of Africa, South America, middle East, etc.

        I don't need a DAC built into my headphones. It's crazy people are considering ditching this and I think it's entirely to copy Apple. If they didn't do it and now set the standard "all 'modern' phones have no headphone jack, ewww" then we wouldn't be taking about it.

        Ridiculous.

  • "Two-way charging"? You mean I can take the massive power in the phone's battery and send that out to the grid, like with solar? Way cool.

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