MY PERSONAL COMPLAINTS & REVIEW OF THE HUAWEI MATE 20 X
This is my personal take of the huawei mate 20X which I provide as a cautionary note to potential buyers. This is an honest critique of a phone I owned for little over a month. For comparison sake I own the samsung a70 and used that to gauge the phone's overall value. Last month I bought it going in with the mindset that the big screen and its features would be cool as hell. I was wrong.
Online I purchased it for $590. My first impression when I unboxed it was I felt horrified. The phone is monster big. It made me a bit uneasy to think that the heavy weight coupled with its sheer size would make for a perfect shattered screen in time. As I handled it I was on edge that it would fall which made me feel somewhat insecure. But after a while I got used to the size and it fit my pockets although the top protrudes out a bit. After toying with it I felt I had to always be aware that it might fall so I used extra precaution while it was on my person, but it was no biggie.
BATTERY
The first thing that constantly bothered me about the phone was the battery which is 5000 mah. The first thing I made sure to do was to put this baby into airplane mode, turn off bt and location and just keep wifi on. Also, I made sure of turning off background activity in the settings on the grand majority of apps not to mention uninstalling unwanted apps.
You might at first glance think, "wow 5000 mah, amazing I'll buy it right away!" Hold your horses buddy. Just because a phone has a big battery doesnt necessarily mean it will perform like a big battery champ. An example of this is when I charged the phone to 100% one morning. I read email, went on youtube for 10 minutes, surfed the net and made one call that lasted 2 minutes. This whole session lasted 20 minutes. The battery drained to 87%, I kid you not! Another example is when I charged it to 100% one night. After 3 hours of idleness, not picking it up or doing anything to it, the battery read a disconcerting 96%. How in god's name is that possible on 5000 mah after I disabled many apps and killed many more running in the background?? By comparison my samsung a70 which has a 4500 mah battery beats the mate 20X big time in battery. After I put the a70 through the ringer with the above same session in the same amount of time the battery showed a pleasing 97%. A user on xda commented that his mate 20x's battery is slightly (keyword, slightly) better than his samsung s9 which has a 4100 mah battery. Now youre seeing the bigger picture.
UI
The UI is the 2nd worst thing about this phone. It looks like Ice Cream - heavily outdated and disappointing. Though it navigates fast through menus, the app drawer cant be accessed by swiping from the bottom as in most phones today with Pie which is installed on this phone out the box. Even though you have an option for that feature its clumsy and not pretty.
SCREEN RESOLUTION & COLOR
Another bone of contention is the screen resolution. It looks good. But when compared to modern phones like my a70 which is very sharp it falls short. Of course the screen is large which "thins out" pixel density making it less crisp. Thats understandable. But it disappoints when juxtaposing it with sharper phones.
Color is not well calibrated even though it's set to vivid by default. Red apparently dominates the other colors which makes the reds stand out too much. Perhaps a tweak in the settings would do the trick? But with a phone debuted at $1000 you would think huawei would have the experience by now to fix that. Completely inexcusable. The samsung a70's vivid color depth blows the mate 20x out of the water.
SOUND
The sound volume and quality are quite loud and amazing respectively. The best I've ever heard in any smartphone. Huawei did a good job in this dept. But there's no way to toggle dolby atmos off unfortunately. Battery charging is fast, no complaints. Stereo is a huge plus!
GAMES AND VIDEO
For some unknown twisted reason, given the above complaints, playing games on this phone lasted a long time in battery. Playing asphalt 9 for 15 minutes drained only 4 - 5%. Same thing with playing videos. An hour of youtube drained only 6%. Very good but strange given its battery drains in other areas.
OVERALL & MY ADVICE
My great question in all this is, why the hell arent people complaining about these issues?? Battery is not efficient, the UI looks ugly and feels way outdated, the colors are off, resolution isnt as sharp as on other phones and its a bit heavy. To be perfectly honest, with all these faults the phone is worth $460, not $650 which is the lowest price as a new item selling on amazon at the time of this writing. Without any of these issues the phone would be perfect.
For those considering buying this phone take great heed of the aforementioned before you fork over 7 tall bills for it that later on you might regret. Dont be easily fooled by rave reviews of owners of the phone on xda either. Many will exaggerate it because theyre blinded by its large size. Likewise, dont be easily fooled by tech reviews elsewhere like those found on zdnet. Some of them are actually written by paid reviewers who will intentionally gloss over a product, ignoring its faults to satisfy ad revenue.
This is my personal take of the huawei mate 20X which I provide as a cautionary note to potential buyers. This is an honest critique of a phone I owned for little over a month. For comparison sake I own the samsung a70 and used that to gauge the phone's overall value. Last month I bought it going in with the mindset that the big screen and its features would be cool as hell. I was wrong.
Online I purchased it for $590. My first impression when I unboxed it was I felt horrified. The phone is monster big. It made me a bit uneasy to think that the heavy weight coupled with its sheer size would make for a perfect shattered screen in time. As I handled it I was on edge that it would fall which made me feel somewhat insecure. But after a while I got used to the size and it fit my pockets although the top protrudes out a bit. After toying with it I felt I had to always be aware that it might fall so I used extra precaution while it was on my person, but it was no biggie.
BATTERY
The first thing that constantly bothered me about the phone was the battery which is 5000 mah. The first thing I made sure to do was to put this baby into airplane mode, turn off bt and location and just keep wifi on. Also, I made sure of turning off background activity in the settings on the grand majority of apps not to mention uninstalling unwanted apps.
You might at first glance think, "wow 5000 mah, amazing I'll buy it right away!" Hold your horses buddy. Just because a phone has a big battery doesnt necessarily mean it will perform like a big battery champ. An example of this is when I charged the phone to 100% one morning. I read email, went on youtube for 10 minutes, surfed the net and made one call that lasted 2 minutes. This whole session lasted 20 minutes. The battery drained to 87%, I kid you not! Another example is when I charged it to 100% one night. After 3 hours of idleness, not picking it up or doing anything to it, the battery read a disconcerting 96%. How in god's name is that possible on 5000 mah after I disabled many apps and killed many more running in the background?? By comparison my samsung a70 which has a 4500 mah battery beats the mate 20X big time in battery. After I put the a70 through the ringer with the above same session in the same amount of time the battery showed a pleasing 97%. A user on xda commented that his mate 20x's battery is slightly (keyword, slightly) better than his samsung s9 which has a 4100 mah battery. Now youre seeing the bigger picture.
UI
The UI is the 2nd worst thing about this phone. It looks like Ice Cream - heavily outdated and disappointing. Though it navigates fast through menus, the app drawer cant be accessed by swiping from the bottom as in most phones today with Pie which is installed on this phone out the box. Even though you have an option for that feature its clumsy and not pretty.
SCREEN RESOLUTION & COLOR
Another bone of contention is the screen resolution. It looks good. But when compared to modern phones like my a70 which is very sharp it falls short. Of course the screen is large which "thins out" pixel density making it less crisp. Thats understandable. But it disappoints when juxtaposing it with sharper phones.
Color is not well calibrated even though it's set to vivid by default. Red apparently dominates the other colors which makes the reds stand out too much. Perhaps a tweak in the settings would do the trick? But with a phone debuted at $1000 you would think huawei would have the experience by now to fix that. Completely inexcusable. The samsung a70's vivid color depth blows the mate 20x out of the water.
SOUND
The sound volume and quality are quite loud and amazing respectively. The best I've ever heard in any smartphone. Huawei did a good job in this dept. But there's no way to toggle dolby atmos off unfortunately. Battery charging is fast, no complaints. Stereo is a huge plus!
GAMES AND VIDEO
For some unknown twisted reason, given the above complaints, playing games on this phone lasted a long time in battery. Playing asphalt 9 for 15 minutes drained only 4 - 5%. Same thing with playing videos. An hour of youtube drained only 6%. Very good but strange given its battery drains in other areas.
OVERALL & MY ADVICE
My great question in all this is, why the hell arent people complaining about these issues?? Battery is not efficient, the UI looks ugly and feels way outdated, the colors are off, resolution isnt as sharp as on other phones and its a bit heavy. To be perfectly honest, with all these faults the phone is worth $460, not $650 which is the lowest price as a new item selling on amazon at the time of this writing. Without any of these issues the phone would be perfect.
For those considering buying this phone take great heed of the aforementioned before you fork over 7 tall bills for it that later on you might regret. Dont be easily fooled by rave reviews of owners of the phone on xda either. Many will exaggerate it because theyre blinded by its large size. Likewise, dont be easily fooled by tech reviews elsewhere like those found on zdnet. Some of them are actually written by paid reviewers who will intentionally gloss over a product, ignoring its faults to satisfy ad revenue.
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