Huawei Mate 20 Lite Review

The Huawei Mate 20 Lite sits in the mid-range rather than the flagship tier of Huawei’s Mate 20 line. As a “Lite” model it drops a number of features from the standard Mate 20, but keeps a large display and a glass-and-metal body. At the time of this review it sold on Amazon for around $351, before shipping and import fees.

Background

Huawei introduced the Mate 20 Lite at IFA 2018 in Germany, ahead of the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro that followed later that year. It repeats the pattern of the earlier Mate 10 Lite: a scaled-down version of the main model.

Design

The Mate 20 Lite has a glass back and a curved metal frame, with a notch at the top of the display. The body is 7.6mm thick and weighs 172g, but the larger surface area keeps it from feeling bulky.

The glass surface is slippery and shows fingerprints readily, so a case is worth using. The power and volume buttons are on the right, while the microSD and SIM doors are on the left; the phone does not offer dual-SIM support. Along the bottom there is a USB-C port, a speaker grille and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The headphone jack is welcome given how many phones of the period had dropped it, though there are no stereo speakers.

Screen

The display measures about 6.3 inches and uses an IPS LCD panel. It runs at 1080×2340 resolution with slim side bezels, giving a 19.5:9 aspect ratio and a screen-to-body ratio of roughly 81.7%. Pixel density is 409 ppi. Like many phones of the time it has a notch, which can be hidden in software.

Performance

The Mate 20 Lite ships with Android 8.1 Oreo under Huawei’s EMUI 8.2 interface, familiar to existing Huawei users and easy enough to learn for newcomers.

It does not share the chipset of the rest of the family. Where the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro use the Kirin 980, the Mate 20 Lite uses the Kirin 710 — the same mid-range positioning the Mate 10 Lite took with its Kirin 659. The processor is octa-core, pairing 2.2GHz Cortex-A73 and 1.7GHz Cortex-A53 cores. On Geekbench 4 it scored 1588 single-core and 5542 multi-core.

The phone has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, expandable via microSD up to 256GB. On AnTuTu it scored 137,192. In practice it handles daily use and games such as PUBG and Asphalt 9 smoothly, though it is not built for high-end graphics.

Battery and camera

The Mate 20 Lite carries a 3750 mAh battery. In a mixed session of PUBG, Asphalt 9, photography and social media use, it still showed 72% after 8 hours — enough for a full day, with a recharge at night. In a 90-minute HD video-capture test at full brightness with Wi-Fi active, it lost only 14% of its charge; the Honor Play, which has the same 3750 mAh battery, lost 20% under the same test.

There are four cameras in total. The rear pairs a 20MP and a 2MP sensor; the front pairs a 24MP and a 2MP sensor. Depth sensors on both sides allow depth-of-field shots, and the bokeh effect can occasionally look exaggerated. The camera app includes Portrait mode, professional slow and fast motion, night mode and 3D panorama, along with an AR Lens section offering 3D Qmoji, effects, backgrounds and 3D objects. Daylight and well-lit outdoor shots come out well, while low-light performance is weaker.

Who it suits

The Mate 20 Lite fits a buyer who wants a Huawei mid-range phone with a large screen and a glass design at a mid-range price, and who values all-day battery life and a usable camera in good light. It is not the right fit for anyone who needs flagship-level processing power, high-end gaming graphics, or dual-SIM support.