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00:00Hey what's up guys, MKBHD here.
00:05Okay, so Huawei was in a really odd place in 2019, being banned in the US.
00:10I did an entire video about their situation, I'll leave that link right up there.
00:15So because of that, every single Huawei phone that's come out since then comes with like
00:20a giant asterisk next to it, at least in the US, because it doesn't make sense to buy here
00:25an Android phone without Google Play services and that whole connection to Android.
00:30So their new flagship came out, and that's one of those, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro.
00:34And I bought one, but I didn't really get to use it too much until now.
00:38And it turns out, this is a really, really nice piece of hardware, one of my favorites
00:42of the year.
00:44But it still can't make up for this software situation.
00:49Here's what I mean.
00:50Just look at this phone.
00:51This is actually one of my favorite designs of all of last year.
00:53I've always been a fan of boxy designs, like I've said, and this is one of those.
00:57But it's also quite unique, mainly because of this next level waterfall display.
01:03Now I typically do not like when phone displays curve a bit over the edges.
01:07That's one of my complaints for the OnePlus 7 Pro, the Galaxy S10, a bunch of others.
01:13But this one is so dramatic, it falls off so steeply that it gives it that boxy square
01:19look again.
01:20It gives the phone an actually pretty futuristic and impressive look in the hand.
01:24It's a six and a half inch, bright, slightly above 1080p OLED display.
01:29It's got the fingerprint reader underneath the glass in the middle where it's reachable.
01:33The forehead and the chin are pretty thin, and the notch, it isn't tiny, but it isn't
01:38as big as the iPhone either.
01:40And overall, it just makes for a nice viewing experience, unlike any other smartphone that's
01:45come out.
01:46But that is about where the good stuff ends, as far as the display goes.
01:49And then you start to notice the quirks, as far as the quirks and features.
01:54First of all, there is light fall off on both edges.
01:57It's kind of hard to capture exactly what it looks like on camera, because the light
02:00still coming from the OLED seems to fill that in.
02:02But looking at it in person, both sides of the phone have this darker edge to them.
02:07And then the screen curves so far back onto the side of the phone, that it is the side
02:13of the phone.
02:14Like it actually is legitimately half of the side, and it's pushed that red power button
02:18all the way to almost the back of the phone.
02:21It's like really offset from the center line.
02:24And since it's the only button on the phone that you press every day, you definitely notice
02:27that.
02:28And also, as a matter of fact, it is the only button on this entire phone, meaning there's
02:32no volume rocker.
02:33So instead, you again use the side of the phone, and literally tap on the display on
02:39the side, and then swipe up and down on that side part of the screen to control the volume,
02:44like it's a volume rocker.
02:46And then of course, you get the feeling of that haptic motor clicking as you swipe, and
02:49you can do it wherever you want, on the top half of the left, or the right side of the
02:53phone.
02:54It is really cool, and it feels like a futuristic solution to the problem.
02:57But the more times you use it, the more times it fails, and or takes you two or three times
03:03to activate it, and then the more you just wish you had a regular set of buttons.
03:08But the rest of this hardware is pretty excellent though.
03:10It's not too big of a phone, despite the huge screen size, and it feels solid and weighty
03:14in the hand.
03:16It's Gorilla Glass 6, in case you're wondering, since screen protectors are probably not very
03:20protective on this phone.
03:21And you've got a good-sized 4500 mAh battery that nets you pretty great battery life.
03:26There's an optical fingerprint reader underneath the display, like I said, nice and close to
03:30the bottom, so it's easy to reach and works quickly.
03:32And you do get 40-watt wired fast charging, and also 27-watt fast wireless charging, and
03:39reverse wireless charging, if you're into that.
03:40Then the speaker at the bottom, it's small and kind of easily blocked, but it does get
03:44pretty loud.
03:45And the whole phone is IP68 water-resistant, and you even get an IR blaster at the top.
03:51Remember these from back in the day?
03:52You could program them to turn your TV on and off, or just troll other nearby people
03:57and turn their TVs on and off.
03:58Really about the only cons I can come up with for this phone's hardware are nitpicks.
04:03There's no headphone jack, which feels like a nitpick in 2020.
04:06Not a lot of phones in this range have them anymore.
04:09Also, the back, it's glass, and glass breaks.
04:13But also, that camera bump is not small, and it sticks out the back of the phone a little
04:16bit in a way that catches a lot of lint, because it's a sharp edge, and it's hard to get the
04:21dust from around the circle if you put it in your pocket even once.
04:24The expandable storage is via a proprietary nano-memory card, so it's not a micro-SD card
04:30slot.
04:31It is technically expandable storage, but you might not be able to use the one you currently
04:35have lying around.
04:36And also, no high refresh rate on the display.
04:38That is a nitpick for 2019, but coming into 2020, that's starting to feel like a pretty
04:44big deal.
04:45But other than that, you can clearly tell there's a lot to like with this phone, and
04:47it doesn't just stop on the outside, it gets to the inside too.
04:50You get the high-silicon Kirin 990, which if you haven't heard of it, is a high-end
04:54chip, not quite matching the power of the Snapdragon 855, but very close.
04:59And with 8 gigs of RAM and UFS 3.0 storage, this phone is quick.
05:04It's no slouch at all.
05:05It games just fine, scrolls around, multitasks as good as any other 60Hz phone.
05:10And the camera hardware is beastly too.
05:12We're talking, well, you can see the quadruple cameras on the back, 40-megapixel main camera
05:17at f1.6 with OIS, and it is a big sensor at 1 over 1.7 inches, and you also have an 8-megapixel
05:243x telephoto with OIS, and a 40-megapixel ultra-wide at f1.8.
05:30And it's an even bigger sensor than the main camera, at 1 over 1.54 inches.
05:34And then that fourth sensor is a 3D time-of-flight camera, plus the dual LED flash.
05:39In my opinion, now that I've actually gotten to use this more, the ultra-wide, best technical
05:44performance of any ultra-wide that I've seen in any smartphone camera.
05:48It's not the best camera quality, still.
05:50It's kind of weird with the colors, but technically speaking, very impressive ultra-wide.
05:55This sensor is so big that I find myself just switching to the ultra-wide and shooting with
05:59it all the time.
06:00It's not super fisheye-wide, and then you can still get up close and be near subjects
06:04and get a naturally blurred bokeh without needing portrait mode.
06:08Skin tones and overall color were a little weird.
06:11I think they could use some work.
06:13Dynamic range was good, though.
06:15Focus was on point.
06:16And of course, all those pixels give you a lot of detail that most secondary cameras
06:20are not exactly crushing.
06:22So the primary camera is good, but the ultra-wide was fun.
06:25So this phone is clearly capable of doing pretty great things, but that's the problem
06:31is I've been using this phone and kind of having a hard time doing almost anything.
06:35See, because of Huawei's relationship with the US right now, me importing this phone,
06:40buying it online and getting it shipped here, means I get a phone with its Android 10.0
06:45right now and the latest version of EMUI, also 10.0, but with no Google Play services
06:52and none of that connection to Google at all.
06:55This has created the biggest delta between awesome hardware and software holding it back
07:01that I've ever seen.
07:02No Play services means no Google Play Store on this phone, which means no Instagram, no
07:07Gmail, no Google Calendar.
07:10There is, of course, a Huawei App Store called App Gallery, but a lot of stuff is region-locked
07:15and you can change your region, but good luck finding pretty much anything of the same selection
07:20of apps that you'd find working functionally in the Play Store.
07:23There's no Twitter or YouTube here.
07:25You can still download or sideload other apps from their respective websites if they host
07:30them, so like Dropbox and WhatsApp and things like that, and there have been attempts to
07:34sideload Google Play services onto the phone as well with varying levels of success.
07:41Basically you're getting really deep into you got to know what you're doing territory
07:44here.
07:45So all this change has brought Huawei phones, in the US anyway, from very good alternatives
07:51to basically unusable, which is a shame because this is actually kind of a really nice phone.
07:56And Huawei's EMUI software on top of Android, it's never been my favorite, but it's actually
08:00getting better too.
08:01They've really gone out of their way and started cloning other popular stuff they've seen.
08:05They built a copy of Apple's Measure app, called it AR Measure.
08:10It seems to work pretty decently.
08:12They also have smart display resolution switching in the settings to save battery and an overall
08:17much nicer cleaned up settings app, which is important with a functional search.
08:21So yeah, it's not perfect, but they have been getting better.
08:24But now this phone is just clearly so hobbled by the lack of Google connection that it's
08:30clearly not just bad for Huawei, but bad for competition.
08:33This is bad for us too.
08:34So at the end of the day, this phone will be fine in China and Huawei will be fine in
08:39China where millions of their customers are who just don't need Google Play services at
08:44all.
08:45China is the biggest smartphone market in the world.
08:46They'll be just fine, but I'm just not about to go out of my way and recommend anyone goes
08:50and imports one of these like I did.
08:52So moral of the story, a re-emphasis on the importance of software.
08:57You and me, we all already knew for a smartphone, you know, the build's got to be good.
09:01The battery's got to be big.
09:03The display's got to be crisp.
09:05But behind the scenes with software, the battery optimization, the display's responsiveness,
09:11the quality of the camera, what you can get out of a sensor, all these things are software.
09:17And that'll never be not important.
09:19Don't forget that.
09:20Thanks for watching.
09:21Catch you guys in the next one.
09:23Peace.