So yes, HUAWEI did it too. The Mate Pro+ series has now been renamed as Pro Max this year. Xiaomi taught us through its own sales numbers that, as long as the product is powerful enough, the name doesn’t matter. In fact, HUAWEI probably thinks the same way, which is why the Mate 80 Pro Max has become the new peak of HUAWEI smartphones. Also, this is the most impressive Pro Max I’ve ever seen. With a major redesign and a launch price lower than last year’s Mate 70 Pro+, there’s no reason the Mate 80 Pro Max would be anything less than great.

Design & Features

Let me answer the question you’re most curious about. No, this ring on the back doesn’t support magnetic accessories. Why the Mate 80 Pro Max has such a ring here it’s simply to prevent the functions of the wireless charging coil from being blocked by its metal back cover.

Compared to the Mate 70 series, the frames of the Mate 80 series have changed from round to flat. The benefit is that it looks slimmer. As for the downside, your hand will tell you.

The Mate 80 Pro Max is a phone with many holes. The three holes on the screen are nothing new; basically, the 3D facial recognition module and the front camera.

There are also five holes along the frame, including the microphone, speaker port, and SIM card slot—most of them are familiar to us. But what is this hole on the side for? HUAWEI told us that this is also one of the speakers. The difference is that it’s mainly used to cancel out the sound waves leaking during calls, to protect your privacy during phone calls.

Many of HUAWEI’s target users are outdoor explorers, so HUAWEI also designed new features for them. The Mate 80 Pro Max adds a new Expedition mode, which turns a modern smartphone into a professional outdoor tool. In addition to satellite communication and emergency messaging, it also extends battery life a lot. The map has also been optimized, automatically recording your path and allowing you to retrace your route anytime.

With IP68 and IP69 ratings, and the second-generation Kunlun Glass, treating the Mate 80 Pro Max as an ultimate rugged phone is absolutely justified.

Display

If you have the budget to buy the Mate 80 Pro Max or RS Ultimate version, your display will be upgraded from regular OLED to a Tandem one. Tandem OLED is not a new technology. The iPad Pro and HUAWEI Mate 70 RS Ultimate both use Tandem OLED.

The benefits of this panel are obvious—higher brightness, wider color gamut, and lower power consumption. Higher resolution may not be noticeable for everyone, but higher brightness is something you will definitely feel. I placed it next to several flagship phones we own, and at a glance, you can see how high the Mate 80 Pro Max’s brightness is.

Not only is it easier to read under sunlight, but it also excels at HDR content. The blinding highlights are hard to capture in video. Trust me, if you get a chance to see the Mate 80 Pro Max’s display in a store, you’ll definitely feel tempted to buy it.

The only downside of Tandem OLED is expense; however, the Mate 80 Pro Max is probably the cheapest Tandem OLED phone at launch right now. So this should be one of the strongest reasons for you to buy this phone.

Performance & Battery

The Mate 80 Pro Max uses the latest and most powerful Kirin 9030 Pro platform. Compared to the Kirin 9020, the 9030 Pro has one extra P-core, and both CPU and GPU frequencies have been improved. It’s worth noting that the four phones in the Mate 80 series have three different Kirin processor models. If you want the highest performance from a HUAWEI phone, you need to get the 16GB RAM Pro version at least.

Since the benchmarks we commonly use are all blacklisted by HUAWEI, we won’t be running benchmarks this time—the scores can’t prove the strength of a chipset anyway. So let’s jump straight to gaming performance.

Fortunately, miHoYo developed a HarmonyOS-exclusive version of Genshin Impact. This makes it one of the very few games that can fully unleash the Kirin 9030 Pro’s performance. And when you enable high-performance mode, you can disable frame interpolation.

HUAWEI also designed a new performance monitoring tool for all HarmonyOS phones: HiSmartPerf. With this, we can finally capture accurate frame rate curves from HarmonyOSI devices.

Wow, look at this perfectly straight frame rate graph—can you believe this is from a HUAWEI phone? This is the native frame rate without interpolation. I can’t believe that. It’s beautiful. Thanks to the full metal back cover, heat is evenly distributed. From this, the gaming experience seems comparable to other Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 phones.

Well, the Kirin 9030 Pro has indeed made great progress, but there is a cost—its power consumption still has room to improve. And with the battery capacity only increased by 300mAh compared to the previous generation—less than we expected—so battery life in gaming does indeed fall behind. Fortunately, under light workloads, it’s power-efficient enough to rival phones with 7000mAh batteries if you don’t play games.

Wired charging supports 100W, and wireless charging goes up to 80W. It only takes 50 minutes to fully charge in our tests. Overall, I think battery and charging performance are still satisfying.

Camera

All four camera sensors on the Mate 80 Pro Max come from SmartSens Technology. Honestly, I’m very happy with all four of them. The ultra-wide has a sufficiently wide field of view, and 2 telephoto lenses let me capture subjects far away.

There are two things to note: First, the ultra-wide camera is not compromised like in many other flagships. It uses the same sensor as the two telephotos, meaning image quality at every focal length remains excellent. Secondly, every sensor uses an RYYB filter, increasing light intake and greatly improving low-light performance. And the color shift caused by RYYB can be corrected with the second-generation color temperature sensor. Combined with the variable aperture on the main camera and SmartSens’s new HDR technology, this is the most feature-rich and balanced camera system I’ve seen. Whether it’s dynamic range, white balance, or focal coverage, I can’t find any faults.

Some phones try to use a 200MP mid-telephoto camera, rely on in-sensor zoom to cover longer focal lengths. Although in most cases, the cropped photos look similar to the Mate 80 Pro Max’s 6.2x optical zoom, this approach has two major drawbacks you might not know: One, their telephoto cameras cannot shoot macro photos. The Mate 80 Pro Max’s 4x telephoto has a minimum focusing distance of 5cm—the best macro performance we’ve ever seen on any phone, period.

Two, if you need to shoot video using the telephoto lens, the quality difference becomes huge. So, between a single large-sensor telephoto and two smaller-sensor telephotos that cover longer ranges, I’ll always choose the latter.

Speaking of video recording, the Mate 80 Pro Max has improved a lot as well. Shaking caused by stabilization has been reduced significantly. The ultra-wide sensor is also larger than that of other flagships, performing better than expected in low light.

The front camera is also from SmartSens, but with a smaller sensor. Selfie quality is average.

Conclusion

After reviewing this phone, I realized I like it more than the time I bought it. Although it looks more ordinary now, and its performance can’t compete with other Pro Max devices, HarmonyOS 6 is very smooth, and battery life is excellent if you don’t play games. The camera system is my favorite—full-range quad cameras—and it also has the brightest display I’ve ever seen.

Add long-held advantages like signals and Face ID, and you’ll understand why HUAWEI phones remain popular. Oh, and it’s also cheaper now, so for longtime HUAWEI users, this is the perfect time to upgrade.

The post The Most Powerful “Pro Max” of the Year — HUAWEI Mate 80 Pro Max Review appeared first on Gizmochina.