02 Oct 2018
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Pros:

  • Catchy slim look
  • Large 6.3-inch display
  • Fair AI supportive camera

Cons:

  • AI is bit gimmicky
  • Rather low-performing Kirin chipset
  • There are better options available in the market

So, let’s take a look at what Huawei Mate 20 lite has to offer:

Huawei Mate20 Lite Review

Price and Availability

Ok, this one as can be taken from the name is the cheapest of the Mate lot and is available in the US at $ 500 and the UK at £379.

Taking into account the features, it’s definitely a tempting mid-range phablet that is positioned head-on with Huawei’s Honor 10 and definitely a competitive smartphone for competitors in the mid-price market.

Design and Build

Following the footsteps of the Mate P20, Mate 20 Lite boost a large 6.3-inch large display with a touch wider notch, which is pushed wider to accommodate the dual selfie cameras.

Apart from the wider display notch, the overall design is pretty standard with rest of 2018 smartphone launches. The company has managed to squeeze the screen to body ratio to as high as 81% and kept the measurement at 158x73mm. The thickness is also well-adjusted to mere 7.6mm.

The rear of the phablet is made of glass and boost dual camera lenses placed at the center of the phone. The fingerprint sensor is nicely placed below the dual lens cameras and easy to access. The borders of the phone are the Mate brushed metal strip that has essentially become the trademark of Mate. A serious limitation that we feel is the absence of wireless charging; that’s despite the glass covering of the rare side. Waterproofing is yet another big limitation that is missing, but we believe Huawei decided to go just without these flashy aspects as a measure to keep the price lower.  Nonetheless, thankfully the company retained the headphone jack.

As for the colors, the smartphone is only available in two color options; black and blue and that’s understandable as the Mate Series is primarily aimed for the business/professional use. Now, we are certainly not taking away anything with respect to the overall aesthetics of the phone, which to put simply is a decent looking phablet. What we didn’t understand is that Mate 20 Lite has its limelight on AI focused cameras, which hints the company’s push towards a younger demography, however, the absence of color options can seriously hamper the marketing strategy.

Specs and Features:

Ok, now that we are done with the Reviewing Mate 20 Lite aesthetics, let’s just dive into some technical bits of the smartphone cum phablet.

Screen

Yup, that large boosting 6.3-inch display is certainly impressive and will raise many eye-brows of large screen fans. Huawei Mate 20 lite comes with a Full HD+ display boosting 409PPI and 1080x2340 pixel density.

The screen used in the smartphone is LTPS LCD, which is understandable keeping in view the mid-range price of the phone. Nonetheless, overall display quality is impressive with solid color and well-distinguished contrast; making it one of the best available phones in this price range.

Processor and Storage:

Huawei has been experimenting with its own developed Kirin chipset and Mate 20lite is the company’s second smartphone to boost its own Kirin 710 chipset. The chipset comes with an octa-core processor that has been divided into four high performing (2.2GHz clocking) and four low-performing (1.7GHz clocking).

To be honest, Kirin 710 is nowhere close in terms of performance as some of the other chipset available in the market. In fact, 710 is a far cry from Huawei’s own Kirin 980 that is expected to power higher end Huawei Mate 20 and Huawei Mate 20 Pro. Nonetheless, the chipset is decent enough to power routine usage and the 4GB Memory certainly adds up to the performance of the phone. The phablet comes with 64GB built-in storage and additional microSD card slot that can be expanded to 256GB.

Unfortunately, our hands-on review for Huawei Mate 20 lite can’t be benchmarked as the phone consistently denied any benchmark software to run through it. But don’t worry, we were able to install all other apps without any problem.

Connectivity and Audio

The Mate20 lite boost all standard connectivity options with a USB-C, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. We have already mentioned the presence of headphone jack (thankfully). One downside though is the absence of support for NFC, which means there’s no chance to use Google Pay.

Security

The phone packs much security features with fingerprint placed comfortably at the backside of the phone. The phone also offers face unlock, which with dual selfie camera has become much more trusted and meaningful

Cameras

Here’s the crux of the Mate 20lite. The company has put forth a serious effort to integrate AI into camera technology and while it may appear gimmicky to most, nonetheless, you can get a taste of AI camera in a mid-priced phone.

The dual selfie lenses are kept at 24Mp and 2MP (depth-sensing), whereas, the primary cameras are kept with 20MP and 2MP (depth-sensing). Now, there are various selfie camera phones available in the market, however, the difference here is the AI-driven stuff that’s primarily aimed for beautification, artificial reality overlays and iPhone inspired emoji.

Battery life

Mate 20lite boost a 3,750 mAh battery that’s quite standard as of today’s trends. The battery is sufficiently powered to last over a day, while the company didn’t shy away to claim 2.3 days of battery life for average usage, which isn’t much of an exaggeration as we were able to stretch battery for 2 days mark.

The Final Verdict:

To be honest, this is one of those phones that puts us in a difficult situation. The phablet is definitely attractive and packed with decent features that you can think of for a mid-price range smartphone and is in direct competition with Huawei’s own Honor series.

To say the least, if you are a selfie fan and want to try some cool AI integrated camera tricks, Mate 20lite delivers the punch. However, you will still be able to find better features at the same pricing in the market.

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