Huawei already held the top position in smartphone cameras with the Huawei P20 Pro, and not without reason. Its combination of a 40MP sensor, telephoto lens and monochrome lens led to a camera experience that was both powerful for the pros and fun for the tinkerers, meaning that Huawei had its work cut out to produce something even better for the Mate 20 Pro. Many Android makers have tended to rest on their laurels once they've cracked a good camera, but clearly nobody told Huawei this, because the Huawei Mate 20 Pro's cameras are nothing short of exceptional in almost every respect.
At a technical level, you get a 40MP f/1.8 wide lens, 20MP f/2.2 ultra-wide and 8MP f/2.4 5x optical telephoto lens to play with, which on the surface might seem like a daunting prospect. You might also wonder, as I did, where the lovely monochrome lens that Huawei used to put on its phones has gone. Huawei says it's no longer needed for creating fine mixed images, and while I can't complain at a quality level for the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, I do miss the creative challenge that shooting in true black and white created.
Like the Huawei P20 Pro before it, the basic camera app on the Huawei Mate 20 Pro rests on the AI optimisations that Huawei builds into its camera app, although by default they're switched off. If you're not a pro shooter it's a very good idea to enable this feature, because while it's not 100% foolproof, in my tests it did a generally very good – and sometimes exceptional – job of quickly assessing a scene and applying very suitable parameters for pleasing shots.
For the more pro users there's a variety of additional modes to play around with, many of which would be familiar to Huawei P20 Pro users. One of the the features I loved about that phone was how much fun it made smartphone photography, and the same ethos extends to the Huawei Mate 20 Pro. It's such a flexible camera array that you can tweak near endlessly if that's to your taste, or simply let the AI do the selection for you if you just want a quick snap.
The Huawei Mate 20 Pro also features an AI-led "Super Macro" mode that can capture exceptional fine detail up close, although you do have to give it a little time to kick in. You can optionally switch to the 0.6 zoom lens if you don't want to wait for it to kick in, but I'm mystified as to why Huawei doesn't make it a mode you can select. Typically if you want to take macro shots, that's what you're after exclusively. Having to reframe and wait for the phone to catch up is annoying, although that's a very minor criticism.

The reality for premium smartphones in 2018 is that they're all generally capable of great standard lit shots, but there can be some serious variance in low light performance. Here the Huawei Mate 20 Pro performs admirably on its own, as in the shots below:


But it's always worth comparing. So I took the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, Apple's iPhone XS Max, Google's Pixel 3XL and Samsung's Galaxy S9+ out for a low light shoot at a local field. I've used it as a testing ground before, and the point here is really to see how well each camera picks up low light, not in the inherent quality of the framing. It's an empty sports field, after all, and it was particularly gloomy on the night I tested.
Apple's iPhone XS doesn't capture a lot of low light detail to speak of:

With its standard camera, the Google Pixel 3XL isn't much to speak of either:

Google has a secondary trick up its sleeve, with its "Night sight" mode. This isn't, strictly speaking available yet, but with the modified APK that makes it available (albeit in a form that Google might modify as and when it makes it available to Pixel 3XL users) there's a remarkable uptick in the overall picture:

Google's using AI to supplement the colours in that picture, but it's still quite noisy and just a little artificial to my eye.
Samsung's Galaxy S9+, with its variable aperture does a decent and quite quick job of capturing the scene, albeit with muted colours:

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro in AI mode does a similar job, but with better overall colours and detail:

But it's when you switch it to dedicated night mode, where it takes multiple exposures (similar to the way the Pixel 3XL manages its low-light captures) that it delivers the hands-down best result of the pack:

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro's camera can shoot a variety of portrait styles, largely borrowing off the lead set by Apple's own portrait camera modes, but with slightly different effects on offer. For basic portrait shots it's a very capable device, but some of its additional portrait modes, such as stained glass or folding blinds are just plain silly.

They are also something of a trap because the Huawei Mate 20 Pro's camera app actively remembers your portrait settings after you've used them, and you can't post-edit for different lighting scenarios as you can with, say, an iPhone XS. That can lead to humorous-but-disastrous results, as with this shot of a chef that I didn't really want to be quite this, well... flamboyant:

On the video front, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro delivers good quality video at up to 60fps, with stabilisation that works well. Huawei is also touting its AI Cinema mode, which strips out colour of everything but human beings. It's an interesting colour reduction effect, but it does need some work. My jetboat trip down the river Thames highlighted both how well the Huawei Mate 20 Pro can handle stabilisation, as well as the limitations of its Cinema AI mode:
Huawei Mate 20 Pro: Sample Photos



