Huawei Mate 50 Pro: The king of photography, easy access to applications and a full charge during one quick coffee

After a period of more than two years of sanctions, which, to be honest, cut into the sales figures, the most powerful Mate series is coming back through the front door without any shame.
The Huawei Mate 50 Pro is equipped with a combination of 4700mAh battery, 66W wired fast charging and 50W wireless fast charging. It is half-charged in a quarter of an hour, and it takes a little more than 30 minutes to fully charge. Also interesting is the so-called emergency mode, which turns on when the phone only has a percentage of power left. In practice, this supposedly means that the phone automatically recovers energy for emergency calls. I haven't tried it, but it sounds very useful. The price is a factor I don't like, but I'd also rather buy a Gucci bag on sale that doesn't exist. But today it is obvious that what is good is expensive. The Mate 50 Pro can be yours for just under €1,300.

A charming orange with the added look of a prestigious watch

The first glance stops at the symmetrical design of the back of the phone, where the recognizable round lens system stands out, but unlike its predecessor, it is convex. At Huawei, they named it Clous de Paris, it reminds me of a very sophisticated dial of some rather expensive watch. Carefully selected color combinations, where the orange-orange leather background (vegan leather) in combination with the very popular gold bronze metal base definitely stands out.

I had the opportunity to admire two color versions at the same time, the already mentioned orange, which apparently will not be available in Slovenia, or rather it will not be available for the time being, and black. With the latter, it is impossible to avoid fingerprints on the back, otherwise it also looks extremely elegant.

The phone fits comfortably in the hand, and compared to the P50 Pocket, which is otherwise my primary phone, it is a little wider and you know how the saying goes with habit. One-handed operation works better with my primary though. But I was surprised by the weight of the Mate 50 Pro phone. This one is quite light, but also thinner than I expected.

All Mate 50 Pro models are water resistant to the IP68 standard. The IP mark stands for 'ingress protection', which in practice means how and how much dust or water can get inside the phone. The first number means protection against solid particles and the number 6 means that the device is fully protected against dust particles. So there is no obstacle if it falls into sand or flour, in women's jargon we can say that it is ready for powdering. The second number means water resistance. Water-resistant devices are those with a number of 7 or higher. A rating of eight means that the device can be submerged more than a meter deep, here Huawei mentions a depth of six meters for the vegan version, which, believe me, I have not tested. To be honest, I don't even want to, because that would mean my phone slipping out of my hand while taking pictures in the pool or the sea, which I often do. Well, I'm not teaching the phone to dive anyway, and drops and short dives don't hurt it.

It captivates from the front with a 6.74-inch OLED curved screen with a resolution of 2700*1228, which supports 120Hz refresh and HDR Vivid display. All these numbers sound terribly complicated, but in practice they mean that the view of the screen is very clear, clean and lively, an additional advantage is the ability to adjust the temperature of the screen. The resistance against falls is also increased, Huawei increases it by as much as 10 times.

I really like the sexy round matrix of all three cameras

Given the fact that I'm a satisfied user of the P 50 Pocket, and the Huawei P series has always been famous for photography, I didn't even expect a lot of extras when hanging out with my boyfriend. The Mate 50 Pro boasts advanced camera assemblies, among which the 50-megapixel main camera with a 10-level physical variable aperture at an interval between f/1.4 and f/4.0 stands out. The aperture cleverly adjusts the capture of light, and the result in the photo is quite well color-matched to the original, which is positive. Colors can always be added or taken away with filters, which are practically a constant nowadays.

In addition to the main camera in the 'circle', there is also a periscope 64-megapixel camera with 3.5 times optical zoom and an ultra-wide-angle camera, which also performs extremely well in macro photography. I guarantee that the veins on the petals, the details of the pollen or the drops behind the background have never been so sharp.

I'm not very good at photography myself, so I leave the PRO settings to the photo experts. It is important to me that my phone can take care of the settings itself when I want to capture moments such as sunrises and sunsets, a spotted porcupine that I found in the forest, and the portrait mode of capture is also important to me, where I already like a little more the so-called 'beauty' fashion mode.

It also manifests itself when shooting in low-light conditions, where optical image stabilization comes into play. Handheld night photography, as we like to say, is much better with this feature. For capturing photos that require a wide angle, the Mate 50 Pro also proved itself as it can offer a focal length of 13 mm.

Dior and Gucci have a price, and so does every good phone these days

Silver and black versions are currently available in Slovenia. Both are correct, but honestly they don't stand out. The breath is taken by the orange beauty dressed in vegan leather, whose crown is the already mentioned gold bronze dial, sorry, camera matrix. I think this is the ideal companion for combining with autumn styling.

One of the most common questions is app accessibility. It's no secret that the phone is equipped with Huawei mobile services, and Google's can be installed by ourselves without much difficulty. The AppGallery application store is really filling up quickly with the most common applications, and today it's hard to say that it's just another attempt to compete with Play and I store. This is a serious application store, the third largest in the world. Quite a few important applications for me already live in the AppGallery, for example everything related to my NLB bank, Flick, Viber, WhatsUp, Booking, t-2 to go and many others.

Both of my email addresses, private and work, are located on Gmail servers, and I installed them without any problems, even the view in the Outlook version, which is closer to me, works flawlessly.

To be honest, I don't listen to a lot of music on streaming channels, but my family's Apple music works on my phone, although I listen to my music most often through the YouTube application. I also exercise on it with my favorite Roberta in the RobertaGym app.

On a recent trip to Paris, I downloaded the Paris Metro app without any problems, I use Uber, Tripadvisor, Booking and Skyscanner for my travel, and I don't even need much else. My life would be difficult without navigation. In AppGallery you can find Petal maps, TomTom and HereWeGo, but I'm used to Google maps. I downloaded these via the application for access to practically all Google applications G space. Google calendar also works and talks to all my other devices without issue. I access the Internet either through the Huawei browser, and I also have Google's browser set up. To be honest, I don't even notice the difference in accessing information.

Accessing the social networks I use is not a challenge for me. I rarely look at Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, the rest. I use practically all applications for communication, so far I have not encountered the challenge.
Most of our official business is in the cloud, we use Dropbox. My phone is friends with this application and access to all files is always available to me, as well as remote meetings through the most common applications Teams, Zoom, MeeTime, WeChat and Skype.

Would you have one?

The answer is of course yes. However, it is true that I am currently enjoying the spring novelty of this same brand very well.

The rebirth of the Mate phone in the prestigious Huawei line is a clear signal to the world that this Chinese manufacturer will not give up, despite the many logs under its feet. Once the king of phones, it's back today. Refined photographic performance, which until now has not been in the foreground for this series, future technologies such as satellite communication and emergency mode (I'm only reading about these to be honest), the Harmony OS user experience and EMUI 13 skins, and last but not least, the re-accessibility of practically of all applications are a reliable stepping stone on the way back to the top of this once leading phone brand.

Author: Urška Mlakar