Huawei Mate 50 Pro review: The best smartphone you either can’t buy or probably won’t buy

Pros

Smart design, solid build quality

Excellent 120Hz OLED screen

Innovative and very effective camera system

High-end chipset delivers good performance

IP68 dust/water resistance

Cons

No Google Mobile Services

No 5G

Durable Kunlun glass on Orange version only

Expensive

Huawei’s Mate smartphones regularly showcase cutting-edge design, build and features, and this year’s Mate 50 Pro is no exception. The headline feature is a superb 50MP Ultra Aperture XMAGE camera with a 10-size adjustable physical aperture, although we must also note the absence of Google Mobile Services (GMS) and lack of 5G support thanks to ongoing US sanctions.

Those omissions may well make the Mate 50 Pro’s price tag – £1,199.99 in the UK, €1,199 in Europe – hard to swallow, especially when there’s plenty of GMS/5G-equipped competition in the four-figure ‘ultra-premium’ smartphone sector. Needless to say, the Huawei Mate 50 Pro is not available in the US.

Even so, it’s well worth examining how the Mate 50 Pro’s benefits and drawbacks play out.

Huawei Mate 50 Pro

Images: Charles McLellan / ZDNET

Design

In terms of look and feel, the Huawei Mate 50 Pro is every inch the ultra-premium smartphone. Rather than being a regulation slab of metal and glass, the Mate 50 Pro has some distinctive features in the shape of the curved glass overlaying its 6.74-inch display and the circular ‘Space Ring’ housing for the rear cameras. There’s a slim notch at the top of the screen to house the front camera array, but it’s not overly intrusive.

We had the Silver model for review. A Black version is also available in the UK and Europe, but there’s no sign of the Orange variant, which as well as having a striking vegan leather back uses durable Kunlun Glass to protect the screen. Huawei does not disclose the type of glass used on the front and back of the Silver and Black models, but it’s a shame that tougher Kunlun Glass is not used throughout the range.

The Space Ring is a large central raised circle containing what looks like four rear cameras. In fact, there are three, plus a laser autofocus system. The Space Ring does protrude by a couple of millimetres, but its central location makes for good stability when the handset is on a flat surface. You get a clear bumper case in the box, which helps with grip and protects the rear of the handset.

The power button and volume rocker are both on the right edge, leaving the left edge free. The top edge has an infrared sensor and a microphone, while the bottom edge houses a SIM/Nano Memory (NM) card slot, a USB-C port and a speaker grille. You can unlock the Mate 50 Pro using face or fingerprint recognition: the front camera array includes a 3D depth sensing camera for face recognition, while the fingerprint sensor is a quick and capable in-display unit.

Like most current flagship-class smartphones, the Mate 50 Pro has an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance. That means the handset is ‘dust tight’ and can handle immersion in static water at up to two meters (Silver and Black models) or six meters (Orange variant) for 30 minutes.

Huawei Mate 50 Pro: Orange & Black models

Image: Huawei

The extra features on the Orange version – vegan leather back, 512GB of internal storage (vs 256GB), Kunlun Glass, better water resistance – account for the €200 price difference compared to the Silver and Black models.

Features

Outside China, the Huawei Mate 50 Pro runs open-source Android-based EMUI 13 on Qualcomm’s current top-end Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset – with 4G but not 5G support, thanks to the US sanctions mentioned earlier (next year’s flagship phones will be powered by the recently announced Snapdragon 8 Gen 2). All models come with 8GB of RAM, while the Silver and Black versions have 256GB of internal storage and the Orange variant has 512GB. Storage expansion is available via Huawei’s proprietary NM cards.

Other wireless capabilities are up to date, with Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), Bluetooth 5.2, NFC and infrared all supported. Location technologies include dual-band GPS, AGPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, GALILEO, QZSS and NavIC. Unfortunately, the European version of the Mate 50 Pro lacks the ability to send text messages via a satellite connection, as is the case with the Chinese model. The extent to which the lack of 5G will trouble you will depend on coverage in your area: where I live (a rural area 40 miles north of London) there is currently no 5G coverage from any of the UK’s four mobile networks – O2, Vodafone, EE and Three. Still, if I’m paying a four-figure sum for a phone I’d plan to keep for at least a couple of years, I’d want it to be future-proofed with 5G support.

The 6.74-inch display is an OLED panel with 2616 by 1212 resolution (19.5:9 aspect ratio, 428ppi), 10-bit colour (1.07 billion colours) and HDR10+ support, and an impressive screen-to-body ratio of 91.4%. It has a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz for smooth scrolling and animation, a 300Hz touch sampling rate and supports 1440Hz PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation) dimming, which reduces flicker when screen brightness is low.

Huawei Mate 50 Pro: screen settings

Screenshots: Charles McLellan / ZDNET

Multiple display adjustments are available, many allowing you to trade off image quality against power consumption. You can run the screen at high (2616×1212) or low (1744×808) resolution, or have it automatically adjust (the default setting). The refresh rate is handled similarly, with high (120Hz), standard (60Hz) or dynamic (default) settings. You can also specify whether an always-on display is enabled and how it’s accessed (tap-to-show, scheduled or all day), have brightness adjusted automatically or manually, select and schedule Dark and Eye Comfort modes, and select colour mode (Normal or Vivid) and colour temperature (default, warm or cool). Bottom line: it’s an excellent screen.

There are two speakers – the earpiece in the screen notch and a second speaker on the bottom edge. Between them, these deliver plenty of volume, with good treble, which is no surprise, but also good bass response, which is rarer. There’s no 3.5mm audio jack.

Cameras

With its previous camera partner Leica having jumped ship to rival smartphone vendor Xiaomi, Huawei announced its own imaging brand – XMAGE – in July and launched it in September with the Mate 50 Pro.

The key feature of the Mate 50 Pro’s XMAGE camera system is the OIS-equipped 50MP Ultra Aperture camera, which uses an adjustable SLR-style physical aperture, with six blades offering 10 selectable steps – in Pro mode – from f/1.4 (more light, shallower depth of field) to f/4.0 (less light, broader depth of field).

This is accompanied by a 13MP f/2.2 ultra-wide angle (120˚ field of view) camera with macro capability and a 64MP f/3.5 periscope telephoto (3.5x optical zoom) with OIS. Also at the back is a laser autofocus unit, a multispectral sensor to help enhance colour accuracy and a dual LED flash.

Huawei’s Mate 50 Pro currently sits atop the smartphone camera rankings at DXOMARK, closely followed by the Google Pixel 7 Pro. Since we had a Pixel Pro 7 to hand, we decided to make some side-by-side comparisons, where relevant.

Variable physical aperture

Huawei Mate 50 Pro

Huawei Mate 50 Pro: Variable aperture

Left to right: f/1.4, f/2.0, f/4.0

Images: Charles McLellan / ZDNET

Telephoto

Huawei Mate 50 Pro: 1x