The Mate 20 Pro: the Verge is calling it the best phone America can’t get. But that’s misleading journalism. While you can’t get Huawei’s flagship as you would the iPhone XS Max or the Pixel 3 XL, it isn’t entirely impossible to get your hands on a Mate 20 Pro. Although Trump is doing all that he can to ban the Chinese telecom company, you can still purchase the smartphone through intrepid resellers.
Now that the Mate 20 Pro is back on the table, let’s check out five of the top reasons why you’d want to go to such lengths to get a phone that’s ostensibly banned in the U.S.
- The 4,200mAh battery
Sure, most smartphone breakdowns include specs like a mega-charged processor and RAM, but let’s cut to what really matters. While most flagships will perform relatively simple processes at roughly the same speed, few smartphones can outperform the Mate 20 Pro when it comes to battery life.
With a 4,2000mAh battery, it’s bigger and badder than anything else on the market. The only other flagship that even comes close is the Galaxy Note 9 and its 4,000mAh battery.
Ben Sin of Forbes says Huawei’s flagship has spoiled other phones’ battery lives — managing to keep up with a long day of heavy use on a single charge. Some critics say the battery can last as long as two days!
- You can be a battery hero
With any other handset, running on battery fumes is par for the course. It’s totally normal to leave work for a date with just 4% battery left. Normally, this forces you to do one of two things — either frantically search for an outlet while you’re at the bar or simply accept fate, trying to focus on your date while your phone dies.
It’s rough, but if you had a friend (or date) with a Mate 20 Pro, you’d have a third option: reverse charging.
Although the Mate 20 Pro may not be the first phone to offer wireless charging, it is the very first handset to offer reverse charging. That’s right — you can share your battery and charge another device capable of wireless charging. All you have to do is line your Mate 20 Pro’s back with another phone, and it will begin — no contact necessary.
- Its color choices
We’re living in a time of smartphone parity. While each major manufacturer has specific software that sets them apart from their competitors, few manage to stand out with how their handsets look. They’re all slim, black (or sometimes white) rectangles with very few physical markers differentiating one flagship from the next.
The Mate 20 Pro at least tries to seem a little different. Rather than the usual grey-scale options, you have the choice of Black, Twilight, Midnight Blue, Emerald Green, and Pink Gold for your Mate 20.
If these color options don’t impress you, you can always turn to a Mate 20 Pro skin from dbrand. They have Mate 20 Pro skins in all colors of the rainbow, plus textures like black matrix, carbon fiber, and black marble. You can make your phone look how you want it to look when you have a Mate 20 Pro skin on your side. And these accessories are slim enough they won’t interfere with the 20 Pro’s wireless charging.
- The trio of cameras
While other manufacturers stick to dual rear-facing cameras, Huawei goes the extra mile with its trio of lenses on the back. They’re made from Leica lenses and offer a 40-MP main, a 20-MP ultra-wide, and an 8-MP telephoto. Roughly centered on the upper rear of the phone, the three lenses are bordered by a flash that brings light and clarity to most conditions.
- It has a headphone jack!
In 2019, three years after Apple removed its 3.5mm headphone jack and nearly the entire mobile world followed suit, this last point is a big deal. In a brave move from the Chinese telecom company, the Mate 20 Pro still has a headphone jack.
There’s no need to buy a dongle to connect wired headphones to the flagship, nor do you have to purchase an expensive pair of wireless headphones that die without a charge. You can use the Mate 20 Pro to listen to an episode of JVN’s Getting Curious as usual at no added cost.
And there you have it — five reasons why the Mate 20 Pro is worth going against Trump. Between its supercharged battery and headphone jack, there’s a lot to love about Huawei’s flagship. Let us know if it’s enough to convince you to get an unlocked one from a reseller!
