Huawei’s Mate smartphones have always been about great design combined with build and camera features, and the Mate50 Pro continues on the same trajectory.
Design
When it comes to looks and overall design, the Huawei Mate50 Pro is a premium smartphone by all means. Its 6.74-inch display is curved and seamlessly infused into the the body of the device, with bronze frame and an orange vegan leather covering the back. On the back as well, the camera module takes a circular shape which Huawei calls “Space Ring”, and houses the 50MP Ultra Aperture XMAGE camera coupled with a 10-size adjustable physical aperture.
Unlocking the phone, can be done either by its front-facing camera, using a secured face scanning technology or by the good old under-display fingerprint sensor. The power button and volume rocker are both on the right side, leaving the left free. The Mate50 Pro has an IP68 water and dust resistance rating.
Other design features:
- IR blaster
- Expandable storage (only works with Huawei’s Nano Memory format)
- Dual speakers
Display
The Huawei Mate50 Pro has a 6.74-inch OLED display screen with a resolution of 2616 x 1212 pixels, packed with adaptive 120Hz refresh rate, and HDR10+ playback. Indoors, the Mate 50 Pro can light up, up to 535 nits, and 825 nits in direct sunlight with superb viewing angles.
Colors are vivid, and very accurate, the device is a real joy to use and everything pops up with superb clarity. Additionally, the Mate50 Pro has an impressive screen-to-body ratio of 91.4%
Cameras
The Mate50 Pro is packed with a 50MP main camera with variable aperture, 13MP ultra-wide, and a 64MP telephoto triple-rear cameras with OIS and EIS, all branded with what Huawei calls the XMAGE Camera system.
The six aperture blades can be set to ten different levels ranging from a wide-open f/1.4 to a tight f/4.0. Performance wise, the camera module does not disappoint, The AI is quick to recognize scenes and recommend a shooting mode, and will also automatically switches to the appropriate lens for the best result.
Overall, shots taken were very detailed, with natural colors in both low light and outdoor conditions.
The front shooter placed in the notch is a 13MP f/2.4 camera packed with and a 3D depth sensor for face recognition. It also has the capability to do 1x, 0.8x or wide angle, shots with optional beauty mode and other effects.
Both rear and front cameras can shoot video at up to 4K@60fps, with image stabilization available on the rear.
Performance, Software & Battery Life
The Mate50 Pro is powered by Qualcomm’s 2022 flagship Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset, backed up by 8GB of RAM, which helps the Mate 50 Pro deliver impressive performance. Unfortunately there is not 5G on this phone, so you are stuck with 4G speeds.
Overall, as we said, performance is impressive. Going through the device is a breeze, multitasking is fluid, and nearly all takes performed (daily use) were smooth without any lag or drop in frames when it came to gaming.
As it’s well known now, there’s no Google Play Store, and while Huawei’s App Gallery has become rich in nearly all the main apps we use on daily basis, you still find yourself missing some essentials.
EMUI 13 has useful additions like stacked widget, a customizable always-on display option. Huawei has also added its homegrown voice assistant, cloud storage, mapping, a health and fitness app, and a live translator and other apps.
Battery wise, the 4700mAh cell performs very well due to the optimization implemented by Huawei, from adaptive resolution and refresh rates and efficient CPU used. All this delivered a near all-day battery while using daily tasks such as browsing, email, social media and some gaming / video recording thrown in the middle.
Verdict
The Huawei Mate50 Pro is a superb phone, and has one of the best camera modules out there right now. If you are willing to look beyond the lack of Google’s ecosystem, then this is a much recommended phone.
The Huawei Mate50 Pro is available to buy in an 8GB+256GB configuration with the choice of black and silver, and an 8GB+512GB configuration in vegan orange leather.
