Android - advisor.truePDF Issue.56.2018

LATEST SMARTPHONES, TABLETS & WEARABLES
ANDROID
ISSUE
ADVISOR
BEST
ANDROID
PHABLETS
2018
REVIEWED: HOW TO
Google Pixel,
Google Pixel 3 XL
CONNECT
AN ANDROID
D
PHONE TO YOUR TV
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CONTENTS
78
REVIEWS
4 Google Pixel 3 69
19 Google Pixel 3 XL
32 OnePlus 6T
45 Huawei Mate 20 Pro
69 Google Home Hub
BUYING GUIDE
78 Best Android phablets
HOW TO
119 Connect an Android device to a TV
2 ANDROID ADVISOR • ISSUE 56

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CONTENTS
119
4 45
ISSUE 56 • ANDROID ADVISOR 3

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Google Pixel 3
Price: £739 inc VAT from fave.co/2RDX8sL
P
ossibly one of the most leaked smartphones of
all time is here, so it might not come as a surprise
but Google’s latest flagship handset is oicial. We
attended the Pixel 3’s London launch and have spent
solid time with it. Read on for our thoughts.
Design
There’s not a huge design change when it comes
to this year’s Pixel phone as on the whole, Google
is sticking to the same style and look. The Pixel 3
has a distinctive style at the back with its two-tone
efect, which not everyone will like. The iconic glossy

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section at the top houses the camera with the lower

part containing the fingerprint scanner.
This time around, it’s a fully glass design, with the
lower section ofering a matte finish, which both looks
and feels luxurious. It’s not quite as grippy compared
to a typical glass back, but feels nicer and won’t show
fingerprint marks as much. Importantly, this change
also enables wireless charging for the first time on a
Pixel. We’ll talk about this in more detail later.
It’s the front that looks even more diferent this
year due to a change in display aspect ratio – an
industry-wide trend. Smaller bezels not only look
better but mean you get a larger screen in a body
that’s essentially the same. Whatever side of the fence
you’re on, the regular Pixel 3 is the model without a
notch. The Pixel 3 XL, for the first time on a Google
phone, has the divisive feature. Both have a camera
bump on the rear, but it’s small and not a big deal.
Much of the elements we’re used to are the same,
so you get a USB-C port, no headphone jack, and
waterproofing – the latter is now IP68 instead of IP67.
Our main worry is dirt collecting in the speakers on
the front as they are slightly recessed.
Colour options are once again Clearly White, Just
Black and the new Not Pink (which has a peach tone
in real life) – each with a diference accent colour on
the side button apart from the black model.
Display
The most obvious change is the display, which as
we mentioned is now using an on-trend tall aspect
ratio. It’s 18:9 to be precise and sticks with a Full HD+

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resolution (2,280x1,080) and AMOLED tech. Many

might be Quad HD, but 443ppi is plenty.
On the spec sheet it’s listed as ‘flexible’, but this
doesn’t mean it has curved sides like a Samsung
Galaxy S9. We believe it’s to achieve smaller bezels.
Jumping from 5- to 5.5in give you more real estate
to play with. If you want even more, then the XL
has a 6.3in display, albeit with a larger than average
notch. Either way you’ll need to get used to the new
gestures of Android Pie, which we’ll talk about later.
The display has an always-on feature, so it can
give you handy information such at the time, date and
weather without having to switch it on. You can also
opt to have notifications appear as well, and switch
on Now Playing to see the track and artist when
music is playing nearby – no need to Shazam it.
At 5.5 inches, the Pixel

3’s display is bigger
than its predecessor’s

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We find the display looks great in the default

adaptive mode, but you can head into the settings
menu and try other colour modes. There’s also
natural and boosted.
Processor, memory and storage

When it comes to the core specs, there’s a predictable
upgrade to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 – the
firm’s flagship processor for 2018. Memory remains at
just 4GB (despite rumours of a 50 percent increase).
You need to choose from 64- or 128GB of storage.
Pick wisely as there’s no microSD card slot as usual.
The Pixel 3 might not be setting any records in our
benchmark tests, although 61fps in T-Rex appears to
have gone beyond the limit, but the phone is super
smooth in real life, so you needn’t worry on this front.
Geekbench 4

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GFXBench Manhattan
GFXBench T-Rex

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JetStream
We’ve not found any noticeable lag, partly thanks

to the high-end components and the pure Android
software. We’ve compared it to the Pixel 2 and a
selection of rivals, but don’t read into the figures
too much – after all, they are synthetic tests.
Cameras
Where other manufacturers force you to buy the
large model out of two phones to get enhanced
photography, normally an extra camera, the Pixel
3s have the same setup.
Interestingly, neither phone has dual cameras at
the rear. Google is confident that it can ofer excellent
photography and video capture with just a single rear
lens. The specs look the same as last year at 12.2Mp,

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Landscape shot
Selfie shot Low light shot

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an f/1.8 aperture, OIS and dual autofocus (phase

detection and laser).
Google’s software, namely HDR+, is the reason
why it only needs one lens. A new feature called Top
Shot will take multiple shots so you can choose the
best, rather then end up missing that key moment.
Night Sight is also new and aims to help you get great
results in low light without using a flash with machine
learning. It’s launching in November, though.
There’s also Motion Auto Focus, which can lock
onto moving object, it worked really well in our macro
test with the plant blowing around a lot in the wind.
Overall, we’re very impressed with the results
from the camera, which takes great photos with
minimal fuss. The portrait mode is particularly
impressive and lets you control both background
and foreground blur after you’ve taken the shot.
There are plenty of other modes to check out
including the usual selection of Panorama, Photo
Sphere, Google Lens and Slow Motion. Playground,
which is similar to Sony’s AR efect, plonks
characters, including Marvel and Stranger Things,
onto your desk or wherever you want them.
Oddly, then, the new tech is at the front where
there are two cameras. Both are 8Mp with an f/1.8
or f/2.2 aperture and like the LG V40, one is a
standard focal length, while the other is wide-angle
(107 degrees instead of 75), so you can fit more
people into the frame.
The quality is good and you can easily switch
between the two cameras almost seamlessly with
a slider within the camera app. You can see the

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diference in our gallery, and take a look at how good

the portrait mode is at the front, too.
On the video front, the Pixel 3 can shoot in up to 4K
resolution, but at 30fps. Whereas, Full HD can do 60-
or even 120fps. The footage is nicely detailed and the
stabilization is excellent, so you can even walk around
while filming, but avoid a headache inducing result.
Connectivity and Audio

There’s plenty more about the Pixel 3 that essentially
remains the same as before, with similar connectivity
(dual-band 11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC and the
like) and the rear fingerprint scanner. That means
there’s no fingerprint scanner embedded in the screen
(or face unlock either). This is a shame as it’s set to
arrive on the OnePlus 6T, which will be a cheaper rival.
But that tech may come with teething problems and
the Pixel’s scanner works well, plus you can use it pull
the notification bar down if you switch this gesture on
– this is a bit temperamental, though.
Google boasts of excellent audio, despite the
lack of a headphone jack. This means you’ll have to
make use of the USB-C Pixel earbuds or the included
adaptor. We’d recommend the latter since the supplied
headphones are, like the Pixel Buds, uncomfortable.
The main audio feature is the front-facing stereo
speakers, and they’re good but not flawless. They
are certainly capable of going louder than most
but when you get to the upper third of the volume
things get pretty distorted and there’s not too much
bass to speak of. At around 50 percent is a nice
sweet spot of velocity and clarity.

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The lack of a headphone jack means

you’ll have to make use of the USB-C
Pixel earbuds or the included adaptor
It’s a small thing, but we like how Google has

decided to make the volume rocker default to
media volume rather than ringtone, since this is
something you’re going to adjust far more often.
Battery life
A new feature, although it’s nothing new in the
grand scheme, is wireless charging. It works with any
Qi charger. It’s a welcome addition and the battery
capacity is a little larger, too, at 2,915mAh. That’s a
little below the average for a phone this size, and
although the battery life is okay, it’s nothing special
really. Like so many smartphones, you’ll need to
charge it regularly.
Fast charging will help that, as will the new Pixel
Stand if you choose to buy one.
Get the Pixel Stand (£69 from fave.co/2OPrJpC)
and the phone will turn into a sort of smart display,
where you can control it with your voice or handy on-
screen icons. It will also do clever things like connect

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Google Pixel Stand

turns your phone
into a smart display
to your Nest doorbell to automatically show you who’s

at the door, be a digital photo frame and the Sunrise
Alarm slowly brightens the screen to help wake you up.
Software
It’s no surprise that the phones come with Android 9.0
Pie, although they’re not the first to market with the
latest version. We reviewed the Sony Xperia XZ3 last
month, which ships with Google’s latest OS.
The main change here is that you’ll have to get
used to gestures for navigation that are akin to the
iPhone XS. The usual three-button navigation bar is
now just a single icon.
Swipe up a long way and you’ll open the app draw
which at the top ofers suggestions for both apps and
actions. Do a shorter swipe and you’ll get the new

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recent apps screen, which still ofers the same app

suggestions at the bottom along with the Google bar.
Recent apps are now displayed in a horizontal list
rather than the older vertical Rolodex style. You can
fling apps of the top of the screen to close them or
swipe down (or tap) to open one.
An easier way to switch between apps is by using
the navigation bar at the bottom. It works like the
iPhone X/XS so swiping to the right will switch to
the previously used app. Swipe and hold and you
can scroll between all your apps, then simply let go
when you’ve found the one you want.
It’s all very diferent, especially if you’ve become
accustomed to the old way of doing things on Android.
You will get used to it, and you’ll have to as there’s
no option to switch the old navigation buttons on.
Otherwise, it appears that you generally get the
same pure Google experience with the Google
Assistant a swipe away from the home screen and,
of course, no bloatware.
There are a number of new (sometimes hidden)
elements though, including the ‘At-a-Glance’
section at the top of the home screen, which provides
handy information such as upcoming calendar
events and more. Tap on any to get more detail.
Android Pie also monitors how you respond to
notifications. If you clear certain ones a lot, then it
will suggest to turn them of.
Active Edge remains, too, so you can squeeze
the phone to trigger diferent things. It’s a sort
of hidden feature since the design of the phone
doesn’t indicate it’s there.

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As we’ve found on other phones with this feature

(and others like Apple’s 3D Touch), you’ll either use it
all the time or completely forget it’s there. You can set
how sensitive it is to stop it happening by accident.
The problem here is that you can’t customize it,
so it only summons the Assistant or silences alarms,
incoming calls and the like. It would be far more useful
if you could choose to use it for other things such as
launching the camera, as you can on HTC phones with
Edge Sense. You can launch the camera by double-
tapping the power key but that’s more awkward.
Something we’re still trying out over a longer
period is the Digital Wellbeing feature hidden in the
settings. This which shows you how much screen time
you’re giving to diferent apps and does various thing
The Pixel 3
comes with
Android Pie

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to help you disconnect with your phone, including

setting app timers and a wind down mode combines
the Night Light, Grayscale and Do Not Disturb to
help you with your bedtime routine.
Verdict
Google once again sets the standard for Android
phones with the Pixel 3. It’s an unassuming device,
partly due to its similarity with the Pixel 2 and the
overwhelming amount of leaks.
It gets the basics right, rather than trying to add
a load of new features people don’t actually need.
The Pixel 3 ofers excellent and compact design
with solid core specs and smooth performance.
While you can buy cheaper Android rivals that have
things like a headphone jack and microSD card slot,
the Pixel 3 is likely to win you over with it’s amazing
cameras and the handy features within Pie.
If you’re looking for a no-nonsense Android phone
that you can rely on, then the Pixel 3 is a top choice.
It’s worth bearing in mind the XL model ofers a very
similar experience, but with a larger screen (including
a notch) and bigger battery. Chris Martin
Specifications
• 5.5in (2,880x1,440; 443ppi) P-OLED capacitive
touchscreen
• Android 9.0 Pie
• Qualcomm SDM845 Snapdragon 845 (10nm)
processor
• Octa-core (4x 2.5GHz Kryo 385 Gold, 4x 1.6GHz
Kryo 385 Silver) CPU

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• Adreno 630 GPU

• 4GB RAM
• 64/128GB storage
• 12.2Mp rear-facing camera: f/1.8, 28mm (wide),
1/2.55in, 1.4μm, OIS, dual pixel PDAF
• Dual front-facing cameras: 8Mp, f/1.8, 28mm (wide),
PDAF; 8Mp, f/2.2, 19mm (ultra wide), no AF
• 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 5.0
• A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO
• NFC
• Fingerprint sensor (rear mounted)
• USB 3.1, Type-C 1.0 reversible connector
• Non-removable 2,915mAh lithium-ion battery
• 145.6x68.2x7.9mm
• 148g

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Google Pixel 3 XL
Price: £869 inc VAT from fave.co/2zqZkf0
T
here’s a new king in town – the Google Pixel 3
XL. The larger of two new Pixel 3 phones has
a remarkably large notch at the top of its tall
6.3in display – odd at first given that the smaller Pixel
3 has no notch and the same dual cameras as the XL.
It’s a little unremarkable to look at in pictures, but
once you start to use it, it’s all about the software
and what it can do wrapped up in surprisingly
premium hardware. And oh, that camera. It’s the
best yet on a smartphone and is a bug enough reason
to buy this phone over any other. Google’s vision of
the perfect phone seems to be going to plan.

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Notch
Yes, there’s a big notch on the Pixel 3 XL. It’s deep
and narrow as opposed to the shallow narrow notch
of the Huawei P20 Pro or the shallow wide notch of
the iPhone XS. Whether a notch irks you is personal,
but it’s not a big deal to us. It’s there to house the
earpiece and dual cameras while keeping the phone
as small as possible, that’s what notches are for
(though for what it’s worth you can hide it).
The 3 XL is virtually the same overall size as
the 2 XL but manages a larger display and an extra
camera. On paper, this is not a regression.
The rear of the phone is similar to previous
generations yet for the first time supports wireless
charging despite being matte – it’s all glass though.
The etching Google has applied to the glass is very
clever and keeps the contrast of the previous two
That notch also the phone to

retain dual front-facing speakers
like the last generation Pixel

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generations’ designs in the classiest way possible.

It still feels hefty and premium and the finish is
awesome. Fewer fingerprints, but it’s glass, so it’s
still at the peril of the ground.
The top section is smooth glass and houses a single
rear camera and flash. The phone comes in three
colours, Just Black, Clearly White and Not Pink – there
is no contrast ‘panda’ edition like we got last year.
White and pink models have contrasting green
and orange power buttons respectively while the
black stays all-black stealthy.
That notch also allows the phone to retain dual
front-facing speakers like the last generation Pixel,
with a wider speaker at the bottom of the phone.
Google said they are 40 percent louder and richer
than on Pixel 2. We’re not sure about that measure,
but they do sound better.
There’s also a G logo and fingerprint sensor, but
no headphone jack. There’s a dongle in the box
though, along with USB-C headphones that look
and fit like the wireless Pixel Buds.
Just like those headphones, we find them very
uncomfortable after just an hour’s use. Your mileage
may vary, but we only used them once because of this.
It’s a shame because they have an inline remote and
ofer real-time translation just like the expensive Buds.
There’s also IP68 waterproofing and massively
improved haptics. Where the Pixel 2 (and other phones
with less good vibration motors) shook the whole
phone when you tapped buttons, the 3 XL’s sharp,
precise haptics are a pleasure to use, and as good as
those on the iPhone XS and LG G7.

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Display
This is quite a playful feeling phone, and that is a lot
to do with how good the screen is and how it looks
in contrast to the all-glass design.
Google is continuing its design language in a light
way, melding the hardware it sees fit to complement
the Material Design concept its software is modelled
around. The block colours of the phones are a world
away from the austere designs pushed out by Apple,
Huawei and even OnePlus.
After the problems the Pixel 2 XL had with its
display (or at least how it was calibrated for colour
hungry eyes) the 3 XL’s display hits the ground
running. The 6.3in 2,960x1,440 P-OLED looks brilliant,
with good colour calibration and viewing angles.
There’s a new adaptive colour profile loaded on
to ensure this. It considers current lighting settings
to change the calibration of tone, and works quickly
and≈quietly. It’s great.
Google had to make sure the screen was better
than the disaster of having to severely recalibrate the
2 XL’s in a software patch. We’re happy to report this
is a huge improvement.
Performance
It’s all in a phone that is run by the Qualcomm
Snapdragon 845 chip, the same one found in the
OnePlus 6 and Samsung Galaxy S9. Google’s stuck to
4GB RAM where others push 6 or 8, but in our testing
the 3 XL ran completely smoothly with no hiccups.
This is to be expected as Google is in complete
control of the hardware and software of the phone.

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Geekbench 4
GFXBench Manhattan

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GFXBench T-Rex
JetStream

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It’s the iPhone of the Android world in this way, and

is all the better for it.
Our benchmarks pitch the phone against the
smaller Pixel 3, the Pixel 2 and other devices with
similar specs. What the results show is that in
synthetic benchmarking, they are all very good. But
we think that using the Pixel 3 XL is the most fluid,
satisfying way to experience Android thanks to the
optimization of hardware and software.
The battery size is the only thing that changes,
aside from the display size, buy opting for the 3 XL
over the 3. It’s 3,430mAh as opposed to 2,915mAh, so
this is the one to get if you want to eke the most out
of a day. A day is about the most you’ll get if you’re
a heavy user. We got about four to four-and-a-half
hours screen-on time with the 3 XL. That’s pretty
good, but not as much as you’ll get with the Galaxy
Note 9 which sometimes gets nearly six.
Camera
The Pixel 2 phones were widely regarded to have the
best rear-facing cameras of any smartphone despite
only having one lens. The Pixel 3 XL is even better.
Seriously. It’s incredible what Google is achieving
with post-processing software.
While two or three lens phones try to capture more
detail during shooting, the Pixel 3 XL elects to capture
several layers of image information with one lens and
then uses software to process the best possible image
after the fact. And it works stupendously well.
A new feature called Top Shot automatically helps
you select the best photo from a burst of photos, so

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Default shot

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you don’t get a photo where people have their eyes

closed and are smiling properly (or goofing of, but
it works well).
Along with this is Super Res Zoom where the phone
can detect your hand shaking while using digital zoom
and corrects the photo accordingly, mimicking what
you’d achieve with a second telephoto lens. It works,
but it’s not as good as actually having a second lens.
Whether or not these sorts of features are
gimmicky depends on how long you end up using
them, but just like with the previous two Pixel
generations, using the Pixel 3 XL simply made us
take more photos with our phone.
It’s noticeably better than the iPhone X and
depending on your tastes, the newer XS. The Huawei
P20 Pro might just edge night-time photography still,
but Google is promising its own mode Night Sight in
a software update soon that could change that,
The 3 XL continuously chooses the right balance
of colour and contrast and can handle light amazingly.
You won’t be disappointed, and you get unlimited
Google Photo storage.
The dual front-facing cameras are an interesting
choice, allowing for wide angle selfies and multi-
face detection to keep everyone in focus. Aside from
this there is no immediate advantage to having two
lenses – and you get them both on the regular Pixel
3 without the notch, if the notch bothers you.
Software
Older Pixels and the Sony Xperia XZ3 already have
Android 9 Pie but, of course, the Pixel 3 XL ships with

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it installed. Google makes you use the new gesture-

based navigation system as default and it does take
a bit of getting used to after years with Android’s
three navigation buttons. You can’t revert back to
the familiar three navigation buttons, so Google is
all in on this new system. But it’s easy enough to
get used, if not as beautifully intuitive as Apple’s
gestures on the iPhone X series.
A feature that is built in that until now has only
been available as beta versions on older Pixels
is Digital Wellbeing. This is the ability to set app
limits to help you use certain services less, and to
actually spend time away from your phone rather
than use it more.
You can set app timers so you’re only on Instagram,
say, for 15 minutes a day. It makes you more aware
of how much time you waste on your phone but
it’s pretty easy to override and keep scrolling.
Google made a big deal at launch about how
the software ecosystem continues to improve over
time. This is in the cloud-based services such as
Google Translate, but, of course, other phones can
run Google apps and services. It’s true that on the
3 XL though, it’s most closely intertwined in the OS
given it’s a Google phone.
This is evident with the excellent Pixel Stand,
a £69 accessory that pairs exclusively with your
Pixel to become a mini smart display. It wirelessly
charges the phone and can act as a digital photo
stand, but it’s most useful as a Google Home Mini
style device. It’s a worthwhile purchase on top of
the phone. Google also said that Pixels would be

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A clever call screening

feature will help you
ward of cold callers
the first to get the Duplex feature it teased earlier

in the year that can call businesses for you to book
restaurants and the like.
A clever call screening feature is currently US-only
and even then, initially in six cities only. But it’s a great
way to ward of cold callers and unwanted calls as
Google speaks to the caller and their reply appears
live as text on your screen. It’ll put them of calling
again and means you don’t have to deal with it.
We weren’t able to test this in the UK, though.
Verdict
The third Pixel generation is the best yet and if you
don’t mind spending more and getting a notch then
the Pixel 3 XL has a bigger screen and bigger battery
than the regular version.
You’ll get Google’s best, most premium and refined
phone to date. The camera is utterly astonishing and

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The Pixel 3 XL’s camera

is the best we’ve seen
on a smartphone
the best on a smartphone – though not as good as

an actual DSLR.
The software is excellently optimized for the
hardware and works seamlessly, which we can’t
say for non-Google Android phones. The etched
glass back is lovely and it’s simply a piece of
hardware that’s a pleasure to use.
At launch, this is the best Android phone you
can buy with the best camera on a phone. Not
bad, Google. Henry Burrell
Specifications
• 6.3in (2,960x1,440; 523ppi) P-OLED capacitive
touchscreen
• Android 9.0 Pie
• Qualcomm SDM845 Snapdragon 845 (10nm)
processor

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• Adreno 630 GPU
• 4GB RAM
• 12.2Mp rear-facing camera: f/1.8, 28mm (wide),
1/2.55in, 1.4μm, OIS, dual pixel PDAF
• Dual front-facing cameras: 8Mp, f/1.8, 28mm (wide),
PDAF; 8Mp, f/2.2, 19mm (ultra wide), no AF
• Bluetooth 5.0
• NFC
• Non-removable 3,430mAh lithium-ion battery
• 158x76.7x7.9mm
• 184g

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OnePlus 6T
Price: £499 inc VAT from fave.co/2OjuZUR
W
hen you follow tech and smartphones
closely the constant onslaught of new,
supposedly better models coming out can
be numbing. It can also wrongly convince you that
you need to upgrade your phone that is six, 12, or 20
months old. The OnePlus 6T is one such phone.
It is a very good smartphone, but it’s not much of
an upgrade from the OnePlus 6 that launched just
five months before it. It has the same processor, same
basic design, very similar display and comes in two of
the same colours. If you own a 6, you do not really
need a 6T. And you might not even want one, either.

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But for the rest of the world, for the normal people
out there, this is one of the best phones you can buy.
It just isn’t, in context, anything new or exciting. But
maybe that’s just today’s phones in general.
Design
The OnePlus 6T looks a lot like the OnePlus 6 and
we compare them here. But for a moment, let’s
pretend the 6 doesn’t exist.
The 6T has a premium glass design and you can
have any colour as long as it’s black: Mirror Black
(gloss) or Midnight Black (matte). It’s gently curved on
the back and is a comfortable weight to hold, though
the curve coupled with the tiniest of camera bumps
means it does rock when used flat on a table.
It has a dew-drop shaped notch at the top of its
large 6.41in display that houses a camera, while the
speaker is a slit right on the top edge of the phone.
We had to adjust how we hold the phone for calls
to line it up to our ears properly, but this is an issue
with many notched phones that don’t house the
speaker in a top bezel.
The back panel houses dual cameras and the
OnePlus logo, while the antenna lines are hidden
in the aluminium frame.
With a USB-C port and no headphone jack in all
black, the OnePlus 6T sufers a tad from the black
rectangle syndrome of modern smartphones. In a line
up, it blends in with the LG V40, Pixel 3 XL and Sony
Xperia XZ3 as an all-glass black slab.
The loss of that headphone jack jars more than
with other manufacturers since it was only five months

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prior to the 6T’s release that co-founder Carl Pei

stood on a stage to announce the OnePlus 6 and
claimed people still really wanted one. OnePlus told
us it was time to remove it on the 6T, in part to fit
the in-screen fingerprint sensor.
The company is between a rock and a hard place –
its fanatical community probably wants a headphone
jack but the wider public don’t actually care en
masse, evident in the acceptance of iPhones without
jacks since 2016. It’s the latter market that OnePlus
desperately needs to sell to now to break into the
mainstream, helped by new operator partnerships.
Removing the headphone jack to fit in a snazzy
new piece of tech is the decision. But the big
question is, like with the Huawei Mate 20 Pro,
does the sensor actually work?
The short answer is yes, complete with funky
software animations. It’s not quite as fast as most
decent physical fingerprint sensors, including the one
OnePlus has replaced the

headphone socket with an
in-screen fingerprint sensor

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on the OnePlus 6. On the 6T it worked through the

factory-installed screen protector, which we then
took of to test again and it seemed fine. It just takes
that split second longer than you might expect.
We also ended up re-training the phone twice to
read our thumbs and then it seems fine. It’s less good
at edge detection than physical sensors and you have
to place your thumbprint quite flat. But it’s amazing
that it even works in the first place, and it’s secure
enough to use for biometrics.
It’s not as fast as face unlock, which we found
ourselves using more and even works well in the dark,
but you’ll still need to rely on the fingerprint sensor
for secure transactions and app authentication.
It’s notable that OnePlus still won’t give the 6T
an oicial IP rating, though it did tell us the phone is
‘water resistant’ and uses silicone rings and foam in
ports and buttons to prevent water damage. During
our testing, our 6T unit took an accidental tumble
(in a case, thankfully) into a toilet. Apart from being
ashamed at our bathroom habits, at least we know
the phone can survive such a dunk.
This is a slick phone and we prefer the matte black
finish to the gloss option, but like most other black
slabs out there it’s nothing new and comes at a time
where smartphone design has been reactive to the
iPhone X. This notched display with no home button
or physical fingerprint sensor is evidence of that.

What the OnePlus 6T definitely has going for it (like all
previous OnePlus phones) is its high-end specs for a

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Geekbench 4
GFXBench Manhattan

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fair price. It has a Snapdragon 845 processor and 6-

or 8GB RAM depending on the model you choose.
OnePlus gives you the option of 6GB RAM with
128GB non-expandable storage to hit the lowest price
of £499. To totally future-proof your purchase you can
also go for 8GB RAM with 128- or 256GB storage.
We tested the 8GB RAM/128GB storage model, but
all versions will give practically the same performance.
You only need 8GB RAM if you intend to indulge in
high level gaming or absolutely cane your phone
all day long with tens of demanding apps.
The OnePlus 6T benchmarks using Geekbench
(CPU), GFXBench (GPU) and JetStream (browser) are
more telling of phone tech in general than the 6T
itself. The scores are virtually identical to the OnePlus
6 as well as the other Android phones we chose to
compare with similar specs.
You won’t notice a diference in performance
in anything you do or view on the OnePlus 6T
compared to other current top end phones.
You view everything on the phone through a
vibrant 6.41in OLED display, though its resolution is
capped at 1080p. Other phones such as the Samsung
Galaxy S9 and Pixel 3 XL have more pixel-dense
1440p screens, but most people won’t notice the
diference and will appreciate the money saved by
opting for the 6T. It’s still a higher resolution than
the more expensive iPhone XR.
The 6T’s screen has a tiny notch at the top that
proves very unobtrusive and is physically the smallest
notch we’ve yet used on a phone. The payof is a large
screen with attractively slim bezels.

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GFXBench T-Rex
JetStream

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The haptics on this phone are behind the Pixel 3,

iPhone and LG G7. The vibration motor still buzzes
audibly and at the same clip for most actions. It’s
an area that when done better makes a phone feel
surprisingly more premium.
The single down-firing speaker is still here (no
stereo speakers unlike the Pixel 3 or S9), but it sounds
way better than on previous OnePlus phones. Not
great for long video sessions, but good enough
for podcasts. And yes, no headphone jack. Fine,
OnePlus. The speaker benefits from the space
aforded by the loss of it as there’s more room for
sound to resonate, OnePlus says. And there’s a
dongle in the box for your headphones.
The company has also launched USB-C Bullets,
a version of its excellent headphones with the USB-C
connector for a reasonable price.
Watching video looks great on the rich OLED
display, but bear in mind you’ll either get black bars
thanks to the aspect ratio. You can zoom in on
video to fill the display, but you’ll lose some of the
picture and be more aware of the notch.
Cameras
The cameras on the 6T are physically the exact same
hardware as found on the OnePlus 6: a 16Mp f/1.7
main sensor with optical image stabilization paired
with a secondary 20Mp f/1.7 telephoto lens.
Results are really good, if behind the Pixel 3.
Although the hardware is the same as before, OnePlus
has added some subtle software smarts such as a
night mode that clearly boosts low light. In daylight

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Default shot
Selfie shot Macro shot

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the cameras cope very well with a good contrast

and colour balance, though some over saturation
particularly of greens and grass.
The selfie camera is a 16Mp f/2.0 lens that
sometimes struggles to take portrait shots, but is a
capable single lens for most people’s front-facing
needs. While easier to turn of than on some other
phones, there’s still a beauty mode here that most
will likely want to avoid. But it’s important to say that
often studying smartphone cameras can really get
you into the weeds: the cameras on the phone are
very good. Unless you’re after a specific tone to your
photos that doesn’t look like our test images, you’ll
be more than happy with the lenses on the 6T.
The phone can record video up to 4K at 60fps,
though most people won’t do this given the overkill
(and file size). However, the capability is there if you
want it. Stabilization isn’t as good as on the Pixel line,
but it’s pretty impressive and means the 6T is a phone
you can completely rely on as a point-and-shoot
camera and video camera, no question.
Battery life
The 6T has a 3,700mAh battery, on the higher side
for an Android flagship in 2018. Thankfully the payof
for making the phone a bit thicker for this reason is
outstanding battery performance.
Between charges we without fail got at least four
hours screen on time with heavy use, and more often
than not were pushing six. If you needed convincing
on why to plump for the 6T above others, battery life
is one of the main reasons.

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Even using the phone to hotspot a laptop for most

of a day didn’t run the battery down and we went to
bed on about 20 percent. It’s a notable improvement
that we personally don’t mind swapping for no
headphone jack (there, we said it).
Software
OnePlus’ OxygenOS skin over Android 9 Pie is very
accomplished and probably our favourite Android
version along with Google’s on the Pixel 3.
Our review unit arrived with OxygenOS 9.0,
but immediately pushed us an update to 9.0.3 that
improved screen unlock, added navigation gestures
and fixed some bugs. We like how the 6T lets you
use Google’s new Pie navigation system, OnePlus’
own swipe gestures (which we prefer) or switch
back to the traditional Android navigation buttons.
This is customization you can’t get even on a Pixel
OnePlus’ OxygenOS skin

over Android Pie is our
favourite Android version

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3, and we love the 6T for it. It doesn’t have wireless

charging, proper waterproofing or a headphone jack,
but the software is truly outstanding for Android
enthusiasts and novices alike.
The customization options are easy to get used
to and the OnePlus 6T is one of the most pleasingly
individualistic phones you can buy at the moment
because of this. Additions like granular controls for
gaming mode that stops notifications and locks
brightness are the sort of thoughtful changes to
Android that we approve of – there if you need them,
but completely out of the way and silent if you don’t.
Verdict
The 6T is the best OnePlus phone yet along with the
now-defunct OnePlus 6. It’s the first OnePlus phone
without a headphone jack, but it is also the one with
the best battery life, speaker, display and cameras.
Compared to the rest of the market the cheapest
model is still very competitive and this is a no-
brainer purchase if you are looking to buy outright.
Performance is as fast as the Pixel 3 and the flavour of
Android is one we might even prefer to Google’s own.
If you really want a headphone jack, waterproofing
and wireless charging you’ll look elsewhere, but we
are able to look past all three omissions and can
recommend the OnePlus 6T to anyone looking for a
well-priced, flagship Android phone. Henry Burrell
Specifications
• 6.4in (2,340x1,080; 402ppi) Optic AMOLED
capacitive touchscreen

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• Android 9.0 Pie

• Qualcomm SDM845 Snapdragon 845 processor
• Adreno 630 GPU
• 6/8GB RAM
• Dual rear-facing cameras: 16Mp, f/1.7, 25mm (wide),
1/2.6in, 1.22μm, OIS, PDAF; 20Mp (16Mp efective),
f/1.7, 25mm (wide), 1/2.8in, 1μm, PDAF
• 16Mp front-facing camera: f/2.0, 25mm (wide),
1/3.1in, 1.0μm
• Bluetooth 5.0
• NFC
• Non-removable 3,700mAh lithium-polymer battery
• 157.5x74.8x8.2mm
• 185g

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Huawei Mate 20 Pro

Price: £899 inc VAT from fave.co/2q8bvJb
L
ast year, Huawei unveiled the Mate 10 Pro, which
had not only the new Kirin 970 processor but
also a noticeably diferent design from the Mate
9 which preceded it. The Mate 20 Pro continues that
trend with another completely new design, a next-
generation CPU and the camera setup everyone
wants: standard, wide angle and telephoto.
Huawei has obviously listened to our wishes,
ditched the monochrome camera and replaced it
with an ultra-wide angle colour camera which means
you can now go from an efective 0.6x zoom right
the way through to a 5x hybrid zoom.

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With other new features such as the innovative

in-screen fingerprint sensor, 3D face scanning
unlock and reverse wireless charging, it’s a very
tempting 2018 flagship to add to your shortlist.
Design
If the Galaxy S9+ had a notched screen, the Mate
20 Pro would be a dead ringer for it. That’s because
Huawei has used similar curved edges, both back
and front, so the phone is thinner on its sides than
at the top and bottom. It looks and feels fantastic
in the hand, though as with any glass-sandwich
phone, you’ll have a constant fear of dropping it
and smashing the front, back or both.
Huawei provides a clear silicone case in the
box, just as with other Mate phones, but there’s no
screen protector this time around, possibly because
of the curved screen and in-screen scanner. So
you’ll have to take extra care not to scratch it and
invest in a curved glass screen protector if you can.
Huawei hasn’t yet said whether these will afect the
fingerprint scanner.
Although the Twilight gradient finish (opposite)
makes a welcome return, there’s a new glass finish
which is preferable. It’s akin to a vinyl record, with fine
lines running diagonally across the back of the phone
and adding a tactile finish that is both resistant to
fingerprints and a bit grippier than standard glass.
The ‘hyper optical’ pattern is only available with
the Midnight Blue and new Emerald Green, but
the latter is the one we’d pick: it looks unusual
and with the quadrangle camera arrangement, it’s

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The Twilight gradient finish

makes a welcome return
certainly distinctive. Your other two colour options

are Black and Pink Gold.
Water resistance gets a bump from IP67 on the
Mate 10 Pro to IP68. This means you can leave the
new phone submerged at a depth of 2m for 30
minutes, and there’s a new underwater camera mode.
(There’s also an underwater case, though this won’t
be sold in the UK.)
Since the sides are much thinner, the SIM tray has
been relocated to the bottom edge next to the USB-C
port. There are tiny holes on the top and bottom,
which emit surprisingly loud stereo sound.
Volume and power buttons are on the right-hand
side and the power button is a fetching red colour
on all models (some people hated this in our oice
poll, and some don’t mind it). The 6.39in screen

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takes up the entire front of the phone with a sizeable

notch that houses the face unlock camera, the selfie
camera and the earpiece for phone calls.
Fingerprint scanner
It isn’t the first phone to have an in-screen
fingerprint scanner, but it’s likely to be your first
one. Since it’s impossible to see where the scanner
is located, a fingerprint icon appears on the lock
screen and whenever the scanner can be used so
you know where to press.
Registering a finger is no diferent to a normal
scanner, although you have to press a little harder
and longer to get it to accept the edges of a finger.
We’re not quite sure why the fingerprint scanner is
necessary at all because you can unlock the Mate 20
Pro using the new 3D face scanner. This does the job
Registering a fingerprint is
quick and easy using the
in-screen scanner

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in a fraction of a second when you pick up the phone.

Enrolment is exactly the same as on an iPhone X: you
roll your head around so it can scan around it. During
our testing it worked quickly and reliably. In complete
darkness the success rate is slightly lower, but we’ve
had the same experience with the iPhone X and XS.
Display
Love it or hate it, the screen has a notch in the top
edge. As you might expect, the screen is OLED
just as with the Mate 10 Pro. It has a resolution of
3,120x1,440, which is a decent increase over the
Mate 10 Pro and gives it an aspect ratio of 19.5:9,
close to the cinema standard of 21:9. It supports
HDR, and covers the DCI-P3 gamut.
Huawei doesn’t provide any figures for brightness
or contrast, but it looks similar to the Mate 10 Pro and
P20 Pro’s screens. It certainly has the same vibrant
colours, wide viewing angles and high brightness.
As usual, you have control over colour temperature
and whether you want vivid colours or natural colours.
Unfortunately neither setting is the one we’d pick: it
would be better to have a third option somewhere
in-between or a saturation slider for choosing any
value in between. Or, simply do what Apple does
and ofer no control at all, and ensure the screen
produces accurate colours in all light conditions.
You can enable Natural tone to adjust white
balance automatically, but colours were never
quite ‘right’. It was most noticeable in games where
contrast seemed to be boosted and colours were
a few shades darker than they should be.

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Content appears
to wrap around the
edge of the device
Overall, this is still a great screen but if you want

absolute accuracy, you might prefer the iPhone.
Like Natural tone, another setting that’s disabled
by default is always-on display which shows the time,
date and notifications when the phone is in standby.
That’s something you won’t find on the iPhone,
despite its OLED screen.
We’re big fans of the new curved sides. Just as
on the Samsung Galaxy S9, content appears to wrap
around the edges when you scroll. But there are
no ‘edge’ features in EMUI 9.0 as you’ll find on the
Galaxy, so they’re not useful per se.
When you enable the new full-screen navigation,
it’s comfortable to swipe in from the edges, but
swiping down from the top must be done in the centre
where the notch is, otherwise you’ll bring up Huawei’s
HiSearch instead of the Android control panel.

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Powering the Mate 20 Pro is the Kirin 980, paired
with 6GB of RAM. The new chip was announced a
while back, but the Mate 20 Pro is the first phone to
get it. Compared to the Kirin 970 in the Mate 10 Pro,
it’s claimed to be about 70 percent faster overall and
40 percent more power eicient. That’s largely down
to the new 7nm manufacturing process, the same as
Apple uses for the A12 Bionic in the iPhone XS.
In Geekbench 4, the Mate 10 Pro managed 1,920
and 6,725 for single- and multicore tests. The P20
Pro’s scores were virtually identical as it has the
same processor. The Mate 20 Pro scored 3,320 and
9,862, which is almost exactly 70 percent faster for
the single-core test and 47 percent quicker in the
multicore-test. This makes it the fastest chip in an
Android phone yet, but not by a huge margin. The
Snapdragon 845 isn’t too far behind, and the 2017
iPhone X is still a little quicker.
The Neural Processing Unit has been given a
significant boost in the Kirin 980. There are now
efectively two NPUs, with one dedicated to regular
tasks such as image and scene recognition. The other
deals with real-time natural language processing
and real-time video processing. Huawei says it’s
134 percent faster compared to the NPU in the Kirin
970 and 88 percent more power eicient. It can
scan through your photo library at 4,500 images per
minute, identifying faces, objects, and more. It’s also
used to create highlight reels from your videos. Tap on
a person’s face and you’ll get an auto-generated video
featuring the person you chose.

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Geekbench 4
GFXBench Manhattan

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GFXBench T-Rex
JetStream

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The GPU hasn’t been overlooked: the Mali G76 is

said to be almost 50 percent faster than the G71 in
the Kirin 970. It’s also about twice as power-eicient,
so you should be able to game for longer. We saw
around a 20 percent increase in 3D performance in
GFXBench’s Manhattan 3.1 test, with the Mate 20 Pro
managing 47fps compared to the P20 Pro’s 39fps.
In other tests, such as Car Chase, the increase was
much less, just 3- to 4fps faster.
Check in the Settings app under Battery and
you’ll find a Performance mode, which you can
enable to squeeze every last drop of speed out of
the phone at the expense of battery life. In this mode
we saw an average of 1fps more in games, and these
figures in Geekbench 4: 3,363 for single-core and
10,059 in multi-core.
Internal storage is 128GB, and we applaud Huawei
for continuing to put a decent amount of storage in
the flagship model rather than forcing people to pay
more if they want more than 64GB. Now, though,
you can insert a ‘nano memory card’ to add an extra
256GB. These cards are new to us, and we’re unsure
when they will go on sale: they’re not around yet.
Connectivity and audio

The Kirin 980 is the first chip to build in Cat 21 LTE,
for theoretical download speeds of up to 1.4Gb/s. Of
course, this will remain theoretical at least in the UK
where no mobile operator can yet ofer such speeds.
There’s no support for 5G, which means the Mate
20 Pro won’t be able to take advantage of the new
tech when it launches later in 2019 (but neither will

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any of its rivals, apart from possibly the Galaxy S10).

You’ll find the SIM tray in the bottom edge. It will
accept a nano-SIM on each side, but as we mentioned,
you’ll forfeit one of these if you use a nano memory
card. Be careful when buying, because most Mate
20 Pros sold in the UK will be the LYA-L09 model,
which is single-SIM. If you want dual-SIM you need
the LYA-L29 model. Double-check this when you see
listings claiming to be dual-SIM: all Mate 20 Pros have
the same SIM tray so could appear to be dual-SIM, but
are restricted in software. One place you can get the
dual-SIM version is from Three.
There’s Wave 2 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and NFC
built in. And, as mentioned, the speakers are arranged
like the Mate 10 Pro’s which has one front-firing and
one bottom-firing speaker. Cunningly, this uses the
USB-C port to emit sound, but it also means the
speaker is blocked if you plug in a USB-C cable.
Yet again, the balance isn’t quite spot on, with
the bottom speaker being louder than the top one.
The Mate 20 Pro has three

cameras on the back

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It doesn’t sound bad, but it’s not quite on a par

with the iPhone XS.
USB-C headphones are provided in the box,
but Huawei tells us that there won’t be a USB-C
to 3.5mm adaptor in the box, which is a shame.
Cameras
Despite Huawei pitching the Mate series at young
entrepreneurs and saying that the cameras aren’t as
important as they are on the P Series phones, we all
know that the cameras are important on any phone.
And thankfully the Mate 20 Pro’s snappers are very
impressive indeed. Even indoors in dim light, we were
able to capture sharp photos of people with good
colours and minimal noise.
Low light shots

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Noise is certainly evident when you use the

telephoto camera in low light, but using the main
camera you have access to the incredible Night
mode, which allows you to shoot long exposures
without a tripod and get surprisingly good results.
The images opposite were taken in very low light,
yet you wouldn’t know it. The ultra-wide lens can
also be used for macro, allowing you to get as close
as 2.5cm. This is great for insects and flowers.
Our test photos overleaf are all taken from the
same place, illustrate the diference between the 0.6x
ultra-wide lens, the standard, 3x and 5x zooms, with
the latter being a combination of optical and digital
zoom (there’s no interpolation because the extra
pixels in the 40Mp sensor are used).
Macro shots

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0.6x ultra-wide
lens shot
3x zoom 5x zoom

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Standard shot Portrait shot
It’s impressive stuf, and it makes the Mate 20 Pro

very versatile. It’s a slight shame the telephoto lens is
paired with an 8Mp sensor rather than 12Mp, which
would have ofered more detail.
All the images here were shot with Master AI
enabled, and it looks like Huawei has toned down the
oversaturation for more natural-looking pictures.
We’re also impressed by the depth sensing, which
leads to more accurate subject isolation and therefore
more realistic looking bokeh in portrait photos.
Above is the diference between a standard and
a portrait photo. Note that Master AI automatically
enables portrait mode when it sees a person’s head
and shoulders in the frame. It will ofer to switch to the
ultra-wide camera if it detects a landscape, too, and
give you on-screen buttons for Standard and Wide.

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Master AI is more advanced

now, able to recognize 1500
scenes and it can track the
important objects in a scene,
such as a child’s face, and will
help to ensure your photo is in
focus when you take it.
But, oddly, there’s no
automatic HDR. It’s still a
separate mode under the More
section, so you have to manually
enable it to benefit from the
new software improvements. Selfie shot
Not very intelligent.
There’s one camera on the front, the same 24Mp
selfie camera we’ve seen before on Huawei phones.
It does a great job as you can see above, and there’s
plenty of detail if you turn of the Beauty mode that is
on by default and which smooths out skin. There was
clearly an issue with the early software on our test
phone because we couldn’t get the portrait mode to
blur the background at all, but the feature is there.
Video still tops out at 4K at 30fps, but the big
change is that there’s stabilization at all resolutions.
There’s no longer a tick-box to turn it on and
of: it’s on all the time. Huawei calls it AIS, or AI
Stabilization because it uses the NPU to analyse
and smooth out the jerkiness.
There’s a noticeable diference between 4K video
shot on the Mate 20 Pro and the P20 Pro/Mate 10
Pro. The latter two were almost unusable with no
stabilization, but that’s not the case now.

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Video tops out at 4K
The new NPU is also put to use with the AI cinema

mode which lets you add filters to your video in real-
time. One new mode detects skin tones and will keep
your subject – including their clothes – in full colour
while making the background black and white.
Battery life
Huawei has increased capacity to 4,200mAh, which
is the biggest we’ve seen in one of its phones. To
alleviate fears over the safety of packing such capacity
into a thin device (and no doubt a reference to
Samsung’s woes with the Galaxy Note 7) the entire
charging system is TÜV certified from the charger
to the cable to the battery.
And unlike Apple, which bundles a basic, slow
charger with the iPhone XS, Huawei includes a new
40W Super Charger that provides a 70 percent charge

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in 30 minutes to an empty battery. It’s so fast that

the charging percentage runs to two decimal places
so you can watch the numbers race as it charges in
Super Charge mode. It’s very satisfying.
For the first time, there’s support for wireless
charging, 15W wireless charging in fact. That’s twice
the wattage and twice the speed of many wireless
charging systems in phones.
But while that’s good news, there’s another new
feature. Reverse wireless charging allows you to
charge your friend’s phone, so long as it supports the
Qi standard. Once enabled in the settings, you simply
place the other phone back to back with the Mate 20
Pro and it will charge it up. Ideal when your friend’s
phone is running low, but you have plenty to spare.
In the Geekbench 4 battery test, the Mate 20
Pro lasted an amazing 11.5 hours with brightness
set to 120 nits. This translates to a reliable two-day
battery life with normal use, and is pretty much what
we expected. That doesn’t take away from how
impressive this is: few phones can last this long.
Software
It’s no surprise that Mate 20 Pro runs Android 9 Pie
out of the box. It would be disappointing if it didn’t.
Of course, you also get Huawei’s EMUI interface as
well, now on version 9 to match Android. Overall, this
looks no diferent to previous versions, but it has been
streamlined. There are now 10 percent fewer settings
items, with some being combined into one setting
or menu to reduce the bloat. We’re so used to EMUI
that it doesn’t take much efort to find what you’re

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This is the first Android

phone with this type of
3D face unlock
looking for, but can understand why some people still

don’t like it. It’s better looking than it used to be, but
still isn’t the most intuitive around. One niggle is that
the small amount of space available either side of the
screen notch isn’t used eiciently. There’s no need
for the NFC icon, for example, but there’s no way to
customize what’s shown and what isn’t.
But there are also some benefits such as Huawei’s
use of Android toast messages (the little pop-up
notifications), which tell you when, say, the network
connection changes from Wi-Fi to mobile data.
As this is the first Android phone with this type of
3D face unlock, you won’t find support for it in many
apps. You’re more likely to find your banking and
password apps let you use the fingerprint scanner, but
not your face… yet. This might happen in the future.

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As there’s no home button or visible fingerprint

scanner you can use full-screen gestures to navigate,
just as Google has done with the Pixel 3.
Huawei says much work has been done to improve
responsiveness and speed, so the built-in apps now
launch over 50 percent faster than on the Mate 10
Pro, and there’s a faster response when you tap on
something in an app. This certainly rang true using
the Mate 20 Pro: it’s as slick as you’d expect the
latest flagship to be.
One new feature is HiTouch. This is a new icon in
the top-left corner of the camera app. It works like
Google Lens: if you press two fingers on screen, you’ll
get information about anything on the screen that
is recognized. Similarly, HiVision uses the camera to
recognize what it sees and provide more information.
The on-board database has details on landmarks
in 15 countries and 10 million artworks. You can even
point the camera at food to get an estimate of the
calories, and it can tell the diference between, say, a
large and a small apple or a whole or half-eaten pizza.
We found this worked when pointed at an apple, but
it couldn’t recognize London landmarks such as St
Pancras Renaissance Hotel and the Shard at London
Bridge. Huawei says that the database will quickly
grow thanks to machine learning, but as it stands
there are just 80 UK landmarks it can identify.
In shopping mode, show the phone an item
of clothing or a product and it can direct you to
buy it on Amazon, Debenhams, Harrods or Harvey
Nichols. That’s the theory, but when we tried it with
the Amazon Assistant app installed, it would only

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recognize the general product type (such as a PC

mouse), not the exact item. Not particularly useful.
Of more practical use for some people, HiAI
can process photos of screens taken at an angle,
straighten them and use OCR to convert them to
an editable PowerPoint presentation. Thanks to the
3D camera, you can use Huawei’s Qmoji which first
appeared on the Nova 3. These are similar to Apple’s
Animoji, but are less expressive and responsive.
As with the Mate 10, there’s a built-in Desktop
mode. Except now no cable is needed. You can
connect your Mate 20 Pro to any screen with
Miracast support. This gives you a Windows-like
environment which can be useful for working, but
is handy if you need to make a presentation. It’s
been improved in a few ways, including the fact
that the on-screen touchpad now lets you highlight
portions of the screen being projected.
Huawei says the built-in apps

launch over 50 percent faster

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Finally, there a new app called Digital Balance. This

is pretty much a carbon copy of Apple’s Screen Time,
and gives you a dashboard where you can see how
much you’re using your phone. You can set time limits
for certain apps, and a ‘Wind down’ option minimizes
interruptions before you go to bed and turns the
screen monochrome. Some of the new features,
such as the ability to scan 3D objects, are coming in
later software updates. We’re told the 3D Live Object
Modelling app and the Touch to Share function will
be available in late November, with the former being
a separate app available in Google Play.
Verdict
The Mate 20 Pro is Huawei’s best flagship yet. It has
better cameras and better performance than both
the Mate 10 Pro and P20 Pro. Thanks to the power of
the Kirin 980 you’ve not only got a very fast device
in your hands, but it can finally stabilize video at 4K,
though it’s a slight shame that it can’t quite manage
60fps given the price. We hope that issues with screen
colours can be sorted via a software update and
that app developers will add support for face unlock
swiftly. The same goes for the AI capabilities, which
are mostly limited to the built-in apps: only in China
will you find apps which use the power on ofer.
The bottom line is that we’re happy to
recommend the Mate 20 Pro. Jim Martin
Specifications
• 6.39in (3,120x1,440; 538ppi) AMOLED capacitive
touchscreen

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• Android 9.0 Pie

• HiSilicon Kirin 980 (7nm) processor
• Octa-core (2x 2.6GHz Cortex-A76, 2x 1.92GHz
Cortex-A76, 4x 1.8GHz Cortex-A55) CPU
• Mali-G76 MP10 GPU
• 6GB/8GB RAM
• 128GB/256GB storage
• Rear-facing cameras: 40Mp, f/1.8, 27mm (wide),
1/1.7in, PDAF/Laser AF; 20Mp, f/2.2, 16mm
(ultra wide), 1/2.7in, PDAF/Laser AF; 8Mp, f/2.4,
80mm (telephoto), 1/4in, 5x optical zoom, OIS,
PDAF/Laser AF
• Front-facing camera: 24Mp, f/2.0, 26mm (wide)
• Bluetooth 5.0
• A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO, QZSS
The P20 is Huawei’s

best flagship yet

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• NFC
• Non-removable 4,200mAh lithium-polymer battery
• 157.8x72.3x8.6mm
• 189g

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Google Home Hub

Price: £139 inc VAT from fave.co/2OMdrWL
G
oogle Home Hub combines a Google Home
digital assistant with a 7in screen, allowing a
graphic display of your schedule, weather, and
commute traic all at the command of your voice.
There’s more in there too: it has a good speaker
for playing music, will act as a digital photo frame
when not otherwise in use, and you can use it to
watch your favourite shows if you have a compatible
pay television service, or monitor the feed from your
home security cameras.
In many ways it mirrors what a modern Android
phone can already do, but with a better speaker and

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a bigger, always-on screen. There’s a lot to like about

this impressive little gadget, and its thoughtfully
designed software is a big improvement on a phone.
Design
The Home Hub will almost certainly surprise you with
its small size. When you look at photos of the device,
you expect something bigger. I think that’s because
the wide white bezel makes it look like the 9.7in
iPad The Google Home Hub’s 7in display is closer to
an oversized iPhone XS (6.5in screen) or Pixel 3 XL
(6.3in display).
Don’t get the wrong idea, though. For what it
does, the Home Hub’s screen is just the right size,
although I do wish that white bezel was a bit thinner
and I’m curious how it would look in a diferent colour.
Google said the screen is meant to appear to float and
I suppose it does, but to me it really looks like a tablet
PC attached to a fabric-covered base, and it’s available
in four soft colours: Chalk, Charcoal, Aqua, and Sand.
It measures 178.5x118x67.3mm and weighs 480g.
At first glance it looks like it might have a camera,
but that spot in the centre above the screen is the
light sensor that automatically adjusts the screen
brightness. Google said it made a conscious decision
to not add a camera to the device, so people would
feel more comfortable having it around the house.
I believe it’s a sound choice. People already fear
smart speakers are listening to them unawares.
The last thing Google needs is anyone worrying
about being spied on. It could easily be seen as a
shortcoming, on the other hand, if you like to make

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The Google Home Hub

is much smaller than it
appears in photos
video calls, perhaps with members of your family

in distant locations. It’s a personal preference. You
can use the Home Hub to make voice calls to local
businesses or anyone in your Google contacts list.
The rest of the Home Hub is pretty minimal.
There’s a hardware mute button at the top rear of
the screen and a volume rocker on the rear right
side of the screen. The power connection is a barrel
connector, not a USB connector like smaller smart
speakers. That’s because of the power required. The
wall adaptor for the Home Hub puts out 14 volts at
1.1 amps, which is several times more power than is
possible over a 5-volt USB connection.

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Display
The 7in screen is bright, sharp and the colours are
good. The brightness changes with ambient light and
when the lights go of in the evening, it switches to a
clock display that is almost too dark to see – that’s just
what you want if this ends up next to your bed.
When it’s not being used to provide information,
the display can either show a clock or a selection
of images from a personal Google Photos library or
curated images and artworks.
The success of this personal photo mode depends
on how much you use Google Photos. The artificial
intelligence built into the service is quite good and
allows you to search for pictures of, say, a beach, your
dog, a holiday you took, or your children and pull
them all together without having to manually create
an album. Of course, you can curate your own album
and have only those photos appear.
Google hasn’t revealed the resolution of the
display, but I don’t think that matters too much. I
didn’t find the screen lacking and a product like this
is much more about what it can do than tech specs.
Audio performance
The Google Home Hub won’t replace your audio
system but it packs enough oomph to happily fill
most rooms with sound. The audio is good, though
its small size means it really lacks the ability to
produce any sort of deep bass.
It connects to Google Play Music, YouTube Music,
Spotify, Pandora, and Deezer. You can stream many
radio stations through the voice interface, too. The

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The Google Home

Hub displays album art
and other information
about the music you’re
listening to
screen shows details of the track or radio station

you’re listening to.
A surprise though was that the smaller Google
Home Mini sounded a little bit louder when the
same song was played on both at maximum
volume. An iPhone app developed by the National
Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
confirmed it. Left in the same spot, the phone
measured an average continuous sound level (LAeq)
of 78.7dB from the Google Home Hub and 80.3dB
from the Google Home Mini.
Making use of the display

The Google Home Hub does everything a Google
Home smart speaker can do, but with the added
visual interface. Ask about traic on your way to work,
for example, and you’ll get a live traic map showing

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where the delays are. Ask about the weather for the
rest of the week and you’ll see a day-by-day rundown.
One of the slickest uses is for recipes. The software
repackages the information on a cooking site and
presents it in an easy-to-read format. The ingredients
are displayed one by one and then the cooking
instructions are presented step by step. You’ll press
a button or tell it to move on to the next step when
you’re ready and if the recipe calls for cooking for a
specific length of time, a shortcut to a timer for that
period appears on screen.
A lot of this depends on the intelligence behind
the device and that’s getting better all the time, but
it’s still not perfect. For example, it can’t tell you
what’s on TV tonight, and when I asked about flights
to San Francisco it read out the cheapest flight and
how long it took, but the corresponding information
didn’t come up on the screen.
Smart home integration

The best thing about the Home Hub is the way
it pulls Google Home and Google Assistant-
compatible devices together onto a common
interface, all accessible through voice commands.
Products from Google-owned Nest work best,
as you might expect: you can use voice or the
touchscreen to adjust a Nest thermostat or stream
video from a Nest home security camera. If you have
a Nest Hello video doorbell, an image from it instantly
appears on screen when someone rings the bell.
I also tested the Google Home with a few non-
Google products, such as a TP-Link Kasa security

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The Google Home

Hub is a good
companion for
smart home systems
camera. “Hey Google, show me the oice” was all that

was required to bring up a feed from the camera on
the display. I didn’t need to install or program a TP-
Link to get this done. That’s a step beyond the phone
experience, where you still need to use a TP-Link
app to see the camera feed. Device compatibility, of
course, is dependent on the third-party manufacturer.
You can browse your smart home devices by
product group or by room. For example, you can
quickly see all the Chromecast-enabled devices and
what they are playing. The same screen lets you stop
playback on some while keeping others going. Or you
can browse to, say, the living room and on a single
page control the lights, turn the music down and
check the temperature.
The promise of a smart home is that all these
gadgets will work together in harmony and we’ve

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The Google Home Hub has a

very good user interface for
controlling smart home devices
always appeared to be a long way from that. The

Home Hub takes a step towards that future where an
entire house is controlled from a single interface.
But, the Home Hub won’t replace your phone.
The Google Home app is still where new devices
are added, and where basic control and settings for
the gadgets on your network reside. And because it
doesn’t have a radio for the popular Z-Wave or ZigBee
networking systems used by smart home gadgets,
you’ll still need to use an additional controller for
anything that doesn’t use Wi-Fi. In this respect, the
Home Hub is a smart interface to your smart home,
but it’s not where ultimate control resides.
Verdict
If you’re trying to cut down on screen time and the
amount of time you spend on the Internet, beware of

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REVIEW
what the Google Home Hub might do to those goals.

I found the photo frame mode constantly drawing
my attention when I walked into a room and my eyes
kept darting to it every time it changed photos.
I installed it in my dining room and it quickly
became all too easy to stream the TV news or
whatever else was on while I ate a meal. I don’t want
to spend more time staring at a screen, so it’s a
temptation I need to resist. If you’re trying to reduce
screen time like me, carefully consider whether you
want to introduce another display into your home.
Martyn Williams and Adam Patrick Murray
Specifications
• 7in LCD touchscreen
• Google Assistant
• 2 far-field mics
• Light sensor
• Dual-band 11ac Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 5.0
• Full-range rear speaker
• 178x118x67mm
• 480g

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Best Android phablets

Lots of smartphones have large displays, but these are the best
big screen phones you can buy today. HENRY BURRELL reports
M
ost phones with displays over 5.5 inches are
considered phablets, but in recent times
phones have got taller and thinner displays
in order to fit in larger overall displays. Most of the
phones in this buying guide have these taller aspect
ratios as they are known
Not all phones with large screens could be
considered ‘big’ though – despite its 5.7in screen
we wouldn’t consider the regular Galaxy S9 to be a
phablet, because its tiny bezels mean it’s not a huge

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handset, yet we would consider the iPhone 8 Plus a

phablet with its 5.5in screen, a regular 16:9 display
aspect ratio and big bezels.
Samsung, Huawei, LG and others all have phones
that require two-handed use most of the time, such
is the size of their displays. But big phones have other
great benefits like larger batteries and the pay-of
is often well worth it. Though some need the large
battery as the big screen drains the cell faster.
The benefits
Watching films and TV becomes much more pleasant
on a large screen phone and you’ll find yourself
appreciating the photos you take even more when
viewed on a big, vibrant display.
Take into account that the number of pixels will
be stretched over a larger screen area, so a Quad-HD
screen will be appreciated here more than it would on
a compact phone. That said, though, even a full-HD
screen will look crystal clear on a big phone – just
watch out for anything lower in resolution than this.
1. Google Pixel 3 XL
Price: £869 inc VAT from fave.co/2zqZkf0
Read our review on page 19.
2. OnePlus 6
Price: £469 inc VAT from fave.co/2x12Z4Z
It’s four-and-a-half years since OnePlus released

its first phone, and the firm is already on its eighth

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BUYING GUIDE
handset. The OnePlus 6 arrives a point where notches

are all the rage and while it might not have every
feature a phone can have, it’s still an amazing deal.
Design
If you’re familiar with the OnePlus 6’s predecessor,
the 5T, then this isn’t a huge departure in terms
of design and build. It’s largely that phone with a
collection of tweaks and improvements.
The headline news is that the phone is made
from Gorilla Glass 5, but has a metal border with
glass on the front and back. Three diferent finishes
are available: Midnight Black, which has the classic
OnePlus look; Mirror Black is heavily polished and
has that quintessential glass look and feel; while
Silk White, has both white and pink tones thanks
The OnePlus 6
looks and feels like
a premium device

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to crushed pearl along with a soft powder finish to

the touch similar to the original OnePlus.
Despite rumours of wireless charging – which
requires glass to work – this is not a feature of the
OnePlus 6. The glass is there for a premium look
and feel only, and there’s a silicone case in the box
to help protect it.
The phone certainly looks and feels like a flagship
device (and the antennas are more hidden now),
but there are downsides. The device is, for example,
more slippery in the hand and, particularly with the
Mirror Black model, the glass shows up fingerprints.
We were hoping that this would be the first
waterproof OnePlus phone, but unfortunately
this isn’t the case. It does ofer improved water
resistance, so no IP rating, but it will cope better
in the rain or an accidental drop into a puddle.
Some smaller things to note before we move on
include the fact there’s still a headphone jack and that
the camera array, which still sticks out, has moved
to the middle of the phone above the fingerprint
scanner – this is a slightly diferent shape.
Finally, the Alert Slider has moved to the right
side of the phone above the power button, so you
can use it with your thumb – sorry left handers.
The OnePlus 6 is the same size as the 5T
(156.1x75mm), but slightly thicker and heavier
– 7.75mm and 177g aren’t bad, though.
Display
Despite having the same footprint as the 5T, the
OnePlus 6 ofers a larger screen thanks to much

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smaller bezels – it’s now 6.28in rather than 6.01in. The

phone uses with the same Optic AMOLED technology,
so the main diference is the notch at the top.
The resolution is slightly higher at 2,280x1,080
due to that extra bit of screen and the new 19:9
aspect ratio. That might be lower than the Quad HD
resolutions on more expensive phones, but for most
people this is plenty good enough.
Opinions on phones with notches are split, but
we’ve found that you do get used to it and OnePlus
gives you the option to hide it if you prefer. This
makes the background black, while still displaying
icons that are dimmed, so it provides a diferent style.
The main goal here is to ofer as much screen as
possible and an 84 percent screen-to-body ratio is a
decent efort. It just means that such a large screen
can be tricky to use one-handed seeing as our hands
aren’t getting bigger to match the trend.
Luckily, you can do things like pull the notification
pane down by swiping down in the middle of the
display rather than having to reach right to the top.

The OnePlus 6 comes with the latest Qualcomm
Snapdragon 845 flagship processor. The firm is known
for packing in a serious amount of memory and this
handset is no diferent as you get either 6- or 8GB.
There’s no microSD card slot, but you get at least
64GB of storage as standard. There are also models
ofering 128- or 256GB.
OnePlus’s tag line for the phone ‘The Speed
You Need’, and there’s no denying how fast it is. It’s

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Geekbench 4
GFXBench Manhattan

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GFXBench T-Rex
JetStream

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noticeably quicker in operation than many other

phones and benchmark results are up there with (in
some cases better) phones a lot more expensive.
Connectivity, audio and biometrics

The OnePlus 6 comes with dual-band 11ac Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth 5.0 with aptX HD, GPS and NFC. It’s still
a dual-SIM phone and the only change is that it’s
now 4G Cat 16, which means it’s the first OnePlus
to get Gigabit speeds – you won’t see that in real
life, though. Once again there’s a USB-C port, a
headphone jack and a single down-facing speaker.
The rear-mounted fingerprint scanner has a
slightly diferent shape to that found on the 5T,
but it’s basically the same and works quickly. Most
of the time, though, you’ll probably end up using
Face Unlock, which is extremely quick, and even
works well in low light.
Cameras
The cameras might have moved position on the back
of the phone, but they’re not hugely diferent to the
ones on the 5T. The OnePlus 6 still has dual cameras,
one at 16Mp and the other at 20Mp. They are both
Sony sensors and have an impressive aperture of f/1.7.
The biggest addition this year is that the main 16Mp
sensor now has optical image stabilization (OIS) and
the sensor is slightly larger to take in more light.
There’s a telephoto option in the camera app for
2x zoom, though this doesn’t switch to the higher
resolution sensor, it just crops the image. Instead,
the 20Mp lens is mainly used for the depth efect of

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Default shot

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portrait mode. You can take photos in 4:3, 1:1 or even

19:9 to fill the screen, but it’s worth noting that aspect
ratio will look odd elsewhere.
The front camera is still 16Mp with an f/2.0 aperture
and is able to record video at up to 1080p at 30fps.
We like how simple and easy the app is to use,
including changing modes and settings.
As you can see in our samples, opposite, the
OnePlus 6 performs very well. The camera ofers
excellent detail, colour, exposure and white balance
– in a range of conditions, even low light. It’s not the
best phone camera but at the price, you’re getting
much better quality than you would normally expect.
In terms of video, you can shoot at up to 4K
at 60fps and results are impressive with the OIS
doing a decent job of smoothing things out. We
would recommend shooting in 1080p at 60fps for
the best combination of quality and file size, though.
Slow motion is all the rage right now and although
the OnePlus 6 ofers 720p at 480fps or 1080p at
240fps, which is half the frame rate of rivals such as
the Samsung Galaxy S9 and Sony Xperia XZ2, you
can shoot for up to a minute in one go making it
easier to capture the moment you’re after.
Battery life
Like the 5T, the OnePlus 6 has a 3,300mAh battery.
We’ve been fans of Dash Charge since it was first
introduced and it makes an appearance here. In our
tests, it enabled our test unit to reach whopping 55
percent from a 30-minute charge from a dead phone.
That’s seriously impressive and for some users that

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could be a whole day of usage as promised, if you’re

not a heavy user that is.
Software
The phone comes with the firm’s own OxygenOS,
which is a stock version of Android 8.1 Oreo.
OnePlus hasn’t messed around with the interface and
importantly you don’t get loads of bloatware. It does,
however, come with lots of little tweaks and additions
that have been around for a while, namely the Shelf
which is a swipe away from the home screen. This
provides quick access to recent contacts and apps,
as well as providing useful information such as data
usage and available storage.
Customization is good, so you can really use the
phone how you like. This means you can, for example,
hide the notch, or change the font. The OnePlus 6
The OnePlus
6’s OS is a
stock version of
Android Oreo

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also gives you the option to hide or even switch of

the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. The
latter means you’ll use gestures that are available
already on the 5T via a software update. They’re similar
to those used on the iPhone X and the ones coming
in Android P, so you swipe up from the bottom of the
screen to go home, swipe and hold to open recent
apps and swipe from the right side to go back.
Verdict
The OnePlus 6 might not have everything on the
ultimate phone tick list, but that doesn’t really matter.
There are more expensive phones on the market
with additional features such as waterproofing and
wireless charging, but those are luxury items that a lot
of people won’t actually use very often. What OnePlus
has done is nailed all the most important stuf and
made a phone that ofers excellent design, specs and
performance at a frankly ridiculous price. So for most
people, the 6 is an absolute bargain. Chris Martin
Specifications
• 6.28in Full HD+ (2,280x1,080, 402ppi) AMOLED
display
• Android 8.1 Oreo with OxygenOS
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 octa-core processor
• Adreno 630 graphics
• 6/8GB RAM
• 64/128/256GB storage
• 16- and 20Mp rear cameras, f/1.7, support for 4K
video at 60fps
• 16Mp front camera, f/2.0

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• Bluetooth 5.0
• 4G LTE (Cat 16)
• Dual nano-SIM
• NFC
• Headphone jack
• Fingerprint sensor (rear)
• USB-C
• 3,300mAh non-removable battery with Dash Charge
• 156.1x75x7.75mm
• 177g
3. Samsung Galaxy S9+

Price: £869 inc VAT from fave.co/2zw3PEK
The Galaxy S9+ might not be the biggest upgrade

compared to the Galaxy S8+, but it’s perhaps better
than having to wait longer for a new device. Overall,
you might struggle to tell the two apart, but there
are improvements namely in the camera department,
which Samsung says it has “reimagined”.
Design
Since the Galaxy S9+ is an incremental upgrade from
2018’s smartphone, there’s not a huge amount to say
when it comes to design and build. In fact, you might
struggle to figure out which one is the new model
in a side-by-side test unless you’re looking at the
new Lilac Purple model. It’s also available in Midnight
Black, Blue Coral and Titanium Grey.
At the front, the phone looks near enough identical
to the S8+. It’s really no surprise Samsung is sticking to

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From the front the

S9+ is similar to the S9
the gorgeous design that features the Infinity display.

The phone is marginally shorter and the firm has made
the bezels a tiny bit smaller, though it’s not noticeable.
The metal frame’s matte finish looks nicer compared
to the S8+’s glossy coat. Another minor tweak is a
single slot for the speaker rather than five small holes.
The main giveaway that this phone is the Galaxy
S9+ and not an older model is on the rear. First,
there are dual cameras, previously a feature only
available on the Note 8. The other tweak is the
placement for the fingerprint scanner, which is now
below the camera array rather than to the side. This
was a bugbear on the S8 phones, especially the
S8+ where the sensor was quite a stretch to reach.
You’re still at risk of smudging the lower camera,
but at least the sensor isn’t annoying low down the
phone such as the Xperia XZ2.

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So with a near-identical design, Samsung is sticking

to an aluminium band with glass front and back. The
Galaxy S9+ still ofers top-end IP68 waterproofing
and gladly hasn’t ditched the headphone jack.
The glass rear looks great when it’s clean, but is
a fingerprint magnet and the phone feels slippery
in the hand.
We don’t mind that the device is a bit thicker at
8.5mm. Although the S9+ has more tech to ofer, it
is still a bit unwieldy, and weighing in at 189g it isn’t
exactly a featherweight.
Display
The 6.2in screen remains the same as the S8+’s. It
uses Samsung’s Infinity Display, so you get an 18.5:9
aspect ratio and curved edges on both sides. A Quad
HD Plus resolution (Full HD Plus is used by default,
Samsung has opted

against using a ‘notch’
at the top of the panel

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BUYING GUIDE
but you can change it) means images are crisp and
it’s no surprise Samsung sticks to its bright (maximum
324cm2) and colourful Super AMOLED technology.
As usual, the screen is always on, so displays
useful information without consuming much battery
while the screen is ‘of’. You also get the edge panels,
which bring shortcuts to apps, contacts and far more
by swiping in from the side.
Samsung has opted against using a ‘notch’ at the
top of the panel. We’re not sure why others are so
keen to copy Apple, and even though some provide
a way to switch the feature of, we like the fact
Samsung has stuck to the regular style here.

The Galaxy S+ is powered by the new Exynos 9810
chip. It’s still octa-core, but gets a bump in clock
speed to 2.7GHz for the faster four. Power users will
be pleased to hear that the S9+ has more memory
and storage compared to the S9 with 6/128GB. That’s
an extra 50 percent in RAM and double the storage.
We have seen a spec sheet with a 128GB model, but
this seems to be very elusive at best. There’s less need
to use the microSD card slot, which now accepts up
to 400GB, but it’s great that Samsung continues to
ofer the feature where others often don’t.
As you can see in our benchmarks, the S9+
impressively breaks the 9,000 barrier in Geekbench 4,
which isn’t too far of the iPhone X. Graphics, tested at
the default Full HD Plus resolution, are excellent, too.
Overall, it’s exactly what we’d expected from a
flagship phone at this price and with these specs.

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Geekbench 4
GFXBench Manhattan

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GFXBench T-Rex
JetStream

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In the real world, the S9+ is a smooth performer

and there are plenty of other areas where phones
are diferent in 2018, so don’t worry about the
numbers too much.
Fingerprint and Iris sensors

As mentioned earlier, the fingerprint scanner has been
moved to a much more sensible location below the
camera. It’s a lot easier to find with your finger without
stretching too much, although there’s still a risk of
smudging the lower lens. Samsung has also made it
easier to add fingerprints as you only need to swipe
three times per finger – we did it in just two.
There’s still an iris scanner, something which we’ve
not been a fan of on previous Samsung phones.
However, Intelligent Scan means you can use it in
combination with facial scanning. It’s a lot better than
previously, but rival face unlock systems, including
those from Apple and OnePlus, are still better.
The fingerprint scanner has been

moved to below the camera

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Connectivity and Audio

Top-level connectivity means the S9+ is packed with
the tech you’d expect, including dual-band 11ac
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC and GPS.
There are also plenty of sensors, including the
pressure sensor in the screen that is used a sort of
physical home button. The Galaxy S9+ still comes with
features such as a barometer and heart-rate monitor,
which not many phones have.
The change comes in the audio department as
the smartphone now has stereo speakers. They’re
still tuned by AKG and Samsung has also teamed up
with Dolby to ofer Atmos, a feature you can toggle
to provide a bigger, more spacious sound.
They’re not the best speakers on the market, but
are a lot better than before. Plus, we’re pleased that
Samsung has kept the headphone jack.
Cameras
As teased with its ‘The Camera. Reimagined’
campaign ahead of the launch, it’s the camera on the
Galaxy S9 phones that’s had the biggest upgrade.
The rear Super Speed Dual Pixel camera is still
12Mp, but has an innovative mechanical aperture
akin to a dedicated DSLR. This can automatically
adjust between f/2.4 down to f/1.5, depending on
the lighting conditions you’re shooting in.
The Galaxy S8 was an already impressive f/1.7,
so this is a nice step up. Samsung says it means 28
percent more light. The phone can also now use
information from 12 photos shot at once to reduce
noise by 30 percent.

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Default shot
Macro shot Low light shot

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Compared to the S9, the plus models brings with

it an additional lens. Like the Note8, it’s a telephoto
lens with a 12Mp telephoto with an f/2.4 aperture –
great if you like getting a closer shot without using
digital zoom. Overall, the Galaxy S9+ is an impressive
all-rounder for photography and video). The camera
app is easy to use with diferent modes and excellent
results from simply firing it up and shooting in auto.
Shots are detailed, crisp and nicely exposed,
though it’s not the best camera out there in great
lighting conditions. The Pixel 3 XL can provide
better contrast and detail in darker areas. We’re
nitpicking, but we have to at this level.
The Galaxy S9 is a better performer in low light,
though, and that dual aperture is handy when you
don’t want the shallow depth of field enforced by
a wide aperture.
The Galaxy S9+ can now match Sony for super
slow motion at 960fps (at 720p), which means you
can watch 0.2 seconds of footage over six seconds.
Such a short period of time can be hard to
capture, as we found on the Xperia phones,
but Samsung has a clever motion detect which
automatically starts the super slow motion when it, er,
detects motion in a user selected area of the frame.
It works really well and you can even record up
to 20 slow motion sections in one video.
It terms of regular video, the S9+ is a decent
performer. The phone features optical image
stabilization (OIS), which helps keep things nice and
smooth. By default, it will record at Full HD, but you
can switch it up to Ultra HD at 60fps if you want (and

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don’t mind larger files and a limit of five minutes).

Selfie fans will still get decent photos from the front-
facing 8Mp f/1.7 camera, which now has a feature
to rival the iPhone X’s Animoji. Samsung’s version is
called AR Emoji and created a character based on you.
It instantly created 18 preset Gifs, but you can
customize your own with the front camera, winking
and frowning to your hearts content. You also don’t
need to worry about who you’re sending them to as
they don’t need an S9, too. They’re easily accessible
from the default keyboard, which is handy.
The problem comes when you want to animate
the AR Emoji yourself using the front camera. What is
accurate tracking on the iPhone X is jittery and poor
on the S9+. It’s not enough to put us of the phone
though as the feature is a gimmick and a minor part
of the overall experience.
You can create an

emoji of yourself
using Samsung’s
AR Emoji feature

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Bixby Vision is an existing feature but it’s now

improved with things like live translation, better
recognition for places and food features like calories
and recipe suggestions. It’s handy as the feature is
built into the camera app but while some elements
are useful, others are just gimmicks.
Battery life
Another advantage over the regular Galaxy S9 is
that you get a larger battery here – 3,500mAh
compared to the S9’s 3,000mAh.
The Galaxy S9+ will comfortably last a full day of
average users and lighter users might even get a day
and half out of it. In the Geekbench 4 battery test,
the S9+ managed an impressive seven hours and 55
minutes with an eiciency score of 4,750.
That’s similar to the LG V30 and more than a hour
longer than most flagships. The S9 managed six
hours and 38 minutes as 3,890.
Once again you have the option to charge
over USB-C or with wireless charging – both ofer
fast charging. In our usual test, the S9+ managed
a decent 38 percent in 30 minutes starting from
zero. That’s two percent more than the regular S9
despite having a larger battery.
Software
Moving onto software and the Galaxy S9+ comes
preloaded with Android 8 Oreo. Things are pretty
much they same as last year with only small tweaks,
the main things come inside the camera app, which
we’ve already detailed.

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Samsung has preloaded the Galaxy S9+ will

plenty of apps, but nothing too annoying or
intrusive – they’re the usual selections from
Google and Microsoft, so you’ll likely use most of
them regularly. We’d still like the ability to uninstall
them, not just disable though.
Tweaks come in the form of a new landscape
mode, so you can carry on using the interface
lengthways to browse your home screen panels or
your apps. A notification system means you’ll still see
what’s going on but in a subtle way at the top.
A new SmartThings app is a nifty way, similar to
Google and Apple Home apps, to combine multiple
apps into one. It means you have one place to handle
all the connections to and features of other Samsung
devices such as televisions.
Samsung has
preloaded the Galaxy
S9+ will plenty of apps

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Those wanting to use the Galaxy S9+ for

productivity can make use of the new DeX dock,
which means the phone can be easily plugged into
a monitor for a desktop-like experience.
The docking station is now flat, so the screen
can be used as a trackpad or keyboard, and it will
be around two-thirds the price of the original.
Verdict
The Galaxy S9+ is a gorgeous and almost flawless
phone, ofering premium specs and features in a sleek
and well-made design. There is the issue of it being
very similar to its predecessor, but we’re glad Samsung
hasn’t dropped the headphone jack and introduced a
notch – if it ain’t broke.
It’s easily one of the best smartphones money can
buy but a key question is whether you should get it
over the regular S9. The answer is yes, but only if you
can aford the extra cost, don’t mind the larger size
and will make use of the additional features such as
the second rear camera. Chris Martin
Specifications
• 6.2in (2960x1440, 529ppi) Super AMOLED
capacitive display
• Android 8.0 Oreo
• Exynos 9810 Octa processor
• Octa-core 4x 2.8GHz Mongoose M3 and 4x 1.7GHz
Cortex-A55 CPU
• 6GB RAM
• 64/128/256GB storage, microSD up to 256GB

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• Iris/fingerprint scanner
• Dual rear-facing cameras: 12Mp (f/1.5-2.4, 26mm,
1/2.55in, 1.4μm, Dual Pixel PDAF) and 12Mp (f/2.4,
52mm, 1/3.6in, 1μm, AF), OIS, phase detection
autofocus, 2x optical zoom, LED flash
• 8Mp front-facing camera: f/1.7, autofocus, 1440p,
dual video call, Auto HDR
• 802.11ac Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 5.0
• Micro-USB 3.1 Type-C
• Non-removable lithium-ion 3,500mAh battery
• 158.1x73.8x8.5mm
• 189g
4. Huawei Mate 20 Pro

Price: £899 inc VAT from fave.co/2q8bvJb
Read our review on page 45.
5. Samsung Galaxy Note 9

Price: £899 inc VAT from fave.co/2BTVkIj
Like clockwork, Samsung has launched the

Galaxy Note 9, the big-screen, stylus-toting cousin
of the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus. It looks a lot like the
Note 8, but despite the hype we think the upgrades
are significant enough to make this Samsung’s best
phone alongside the S9 Plus.
While headline changes are the (variant depending)
yellow S-Pen with Bluetooth, a bigger battery
and improved cameras, the general look, feel and

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The Note 9 is a
stunner right out
of the box
performance of the Note 9 means this is Samsung’s

most refined Note to date.
Since the launch of the iPhone X, the idea of a
£1,000 phone is less alien now, and that’s roughly
the price you’ll pay if you want a Note 9 of contract.
But it’s such a pleasure to use, such a complete
smartphone, that it feels just as justified as Apple’s
price tag. Like any phone though, it’s not without
its flaws. Here’s our full Note 9 review.
Design
The Note 9 is a stunner right out the box. Yes, it’s
a big phone, but we expect that by now with the
Note range. By slimming the bezel ever so slightly
Samsung has stretched the screen up from 6.3- to
6.4in, but the dimensions of the phone are practically
the same as the Note 8. It comes in Midnight Black

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The Ocean Blue Note 9

comes with a yellow S-Pen
or Lavender Purple with matching S Pen, and Ocean

Blue with a yellow S Pen. There’s also a Metallic
Copper option in some countries.
You’re probably going to want the blue one with
the yellow pen, but we also really like the purple
model, which is a light metallic hue and looks great.
Samsung continues to use Gorilla Glass 5 on the front
and back. The back of the blue and purple models
shimmer beautifully, while the black version is duller.
We were hoping for an in-screen fingerprint
scanner as phones such as the Vivo NEX already have
this technology. It seems we’ll have to wait for the
Galaxy S10 to get it from Samsung, but the sensor is
in a much better place below the cameras rather than
next to them as it was on the Note 8. It’s still a small,
fiddly sensor compared to other phones though.
The Note 9 has those familiar Samsung curves
with the so-called Infinity Display, but it has put on

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weight. It’s 205g and we generally don’t like it when

a phone feels like we’re carrying a brick, but there’s
a good reason for it here, and the phone is slight
enough to feel manageable – but this is a two-hand
phone for most tasks.
At 161.9x76.4x8.8mm, it’s going to stretch most
pockets, but its heft makes it feel premium. A larger
4,000mAh battery, up from 3,300mAh, is the main
cause for the weight increase. If there’s something we
don’t might extra weight for, it’s longer battery life.
The phone feels even more luxurious than the
Note 8, with grippier metallic edges to the chassis
and a better oleophobic coating to the back of the
device meaning noticeably fewer fingerprint smudges
though it still gets pretty greasy back there.
It’s interesting to note that Samsung continues
to buck two major trends in the phone world. The
Note 9 has a headphone jack but doesn’t have a
notch in the screen compared to the iPhone X and
many other Android phones this year. We’re very
happy with both these things and hopefully signals
that notches are not always necessary, seeing as
Samsung can deal so elegantly without them.
Its sides are graced by a speaker, USB-C port,
S-Pen silo, volume and power keys and a pesky,
unmappable Bixby button.
Display
The screen is bigger at 6.4in but that’s only
marginally diferent to the 6.3in size used before.
It’s a 2,960x1,440 Super AMOLED and the level of
detail, brightness and clarity is stunning. Samsung has

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managed to outdo itself again and this is, at release,

the best display ever on a smartphone. The familiar
Infinity Display means curved edges with a Quad HD+
resolution and the best brightness in direct sunlight of
any phone on the market alongside the LG G7 ThinQ.

The new model also gets a specs boost in the engine
room. Samsung has stuck with a split strategy for
processors in diferent markets, so many countries
will get the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 while the
UK and others will get Samsung’s own Exynos 8910
(the model reviewed here). Our unit was the 6GB
RAM/128GB storage option but the more expensive
version available hits 8GB/512GB. It’s of the first
phones to have 512GB on board and underlines
Geekbench 4

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GFXBench Manhattan
GFXBench T-Rex

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JetStream
Samsung’s belief that the Note customer requires

more storage than many modern laptops.
Samsung calls the Note 9 “1TB ready” as you can
add up to 512GB via the microSD card slot. That’s
some serious media management should you want to
carry around an entire music and video collection with
you at all times. In our use, the Note 9 was faultless for
performance and finally feels as fast as a Pixel 2 XL and
OnePlus 6. The only slowness we saw in comparison
is Samsung’s use of animations between app switching
and opening, which can make the software feel slower
than the bare bones approach taken by OnePlus.
We benchmarked the phone against the Note 8
and S9 Plus, as well as the iPhone X, OnePlus 6 and
Huawei P20 Pro – phones using those companies’

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choice of top end processor at the time of the Note

9’s launch. The Geekbench test measures pure
processing power, GFXBench looks at diferent levels
of GPU processing and frame rate, while JetStream
is a browser benchmark. It’s clear that the Note 9 is
an exceptionally fast phone here and the diferences
are negligible. Even if it looks like the iPhone is
more powerful, you won’t notice a diference in
real-world use – we didn’t.
Connectivity and audio

This phone has every extra feature you’d hope for
considering the price: fast charging, wireless charging,
IP68 waterproofing, NFC and 4G LTE.
It’s a bit disappointing that the Note 9 ships with
a Quick Charge 2.0 charger when Android rivals
mostly ship with 3.0 and are even compatible with
4.0. It means that while not as slow as a bundled
iPhone charger, the Note 9 will charge slower than
the OnePlus 6, Pixel 2 and others. A brilliant upgrade
on the Note 8 are the stereo speakers – one on the
bottom edge and one in the earpiece. Like most
phones, the drivers are too small to discern actual
stereo separation, but the extra volume boost is
much appreciated. Call quality is fantastic, with voices
coming through particularly clear over 4G and Wi-Fi.
And Intelligent Scan, Samsung’s melding of face
unlock and iris scanning, is faster than ever.
S-Pen
It’s top-notch specs all round (without the actual
notch) and Samsung has gone one further by

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Samsung has improved the

already excellent S-Pen
improving the already excellent S-Pen. Adding

Bluetooth Low Energy tech, you can now use the
stylus as a remote for things such as taking photos
and selfies and clicking through presentations. It’s also
fully customizable (unlike the Bixby button on the left
edge of the phone), so you can use it how you like.
The S Pen only takes 40 seconds to charge once
slotted into the phone and lasts for 30 minutes for its
remote control duties. You can still use the old direct-
to-screen functions when it’s dead, though.
Hovering over menus and icons often displays
what the action will be before you tap, and being
able to take the S-Pen out when the phone is locked
to scribble a note down is still fun and useful. But
it’s still a niche thing to want from a smartphone
and while some might see it as convenient, most
people will prefer to keep on using the normal notes

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app and typing stuf in. If you want to take group

selfies, then the S-Pen is your best friend, working
as a remote shutter perfectly. But the S-Pen is still
something that is fairly black and white – you’ll either
love it or forget that it’s there. The advantage of note
taking by typing is you can copy and paste it quickly
cross-apps, or write whole passages on your phone.
Samsung wants you to write notes down with
the S-Pen and save them, and if that works for you
then you’ll love it, but what you can then do with
those notes is limited. As an artistic tool, even a 6.4in
display is fairly restrictive. You’ll be better of with the
10.5in Galaxy Tab S4 if drawing is your game.
Cameras
Like the S9 Plus, the Note 9 has dual rear cameras with
dual aperture and OIS. In fact, they are the exact same
sensors: the variable aperture 12Mp f/1.5-2.4 main and
a 12Mp f/2.4 for 2x optical zoom and depth sensing.
New technology for the Note 9 specifically includes
Flaw Detection and Scene Optimizer, which in simpler
terms tell you whether you’ve taken a blurry photo
and selects the best scene mode for the shot.
The low-light prowess of the S9 Plus is ported
over here, and it’s a noticeable step up from the
Note 8 for this reason. Images are wonderfully crisp,
devoid of the saturation that mars the otherwise
excellent shots on the Huawei P20 Pro.
Colour reproduction is stunning on the improved
display, though Samsung camera app is still too
crowded and unintuitive. Sure, you can do a lot,
but it’s a steep learning curve to find it all.

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Default shot
Portrait shot Low light shot

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Battery life
One of the best things about the Note 9 is its battery
life. It is a country mile ahead of the 3,300mAh
cell of the Note 8, packing 4,000mAh into an only
marginally thicker frame.
The trade-of is totally worth it. On average we
found the Note 9 gave us four and a half hours of
screen on time on a full charge with brightness on
auto, using tens of apps at once and streaming Spotify
to Bluetooth headphones over 4G and Wi-Fi.
Less intense usage sees the Note 9 pushing an
hour longer than that, and we never once worried
about finding a charger – something that frequently
happened when using the Note 8.
In the Geekbench 4 battery test with brightness set
to 120cd/m2 and screen not dimming (our standard
test), the Note 9 lasted seven hours, 27 minutes. That’s
a tad under the Galaxy S9 Plus at seven hours, 55
minutes, but the screen here is bigger.
It’s a great score considering the OnePlus 6, LG
G7 and HTC U12+ lasted for much less time, and it’s
great to see Samsung getting a 4,000mAh battery
into the phone after the Note 7 disaster.
Software
Bixby is still bad. Only available, still, in US English
or Korean, it frequently misunderstood our English
accent (and some colleagues’ American ones) and
couldn’t give answers. Three examples of how to
use Bixby pop up when you turn it on. For us, one
was ‘What is the time diference between Paris and
London’ (we are based in London). We tapped on

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it, and were given a screen, where it brought up the

time diference for East London in South Africa.
Bixby sucks, and what sucks more is that on the
Note 9 you can’t turn of the dedicated Bixby button.
It has never been remappable, but on other Galaxy
phones you can disable it, but not here, meaning
about a third of the time we pull the Note out a picket,
we accidentally press the button and load up Bixby.
Bixby Home to the left of the home screen is still
awful, with huge tiled apps that are clunky and not
as customizable as we’d like. Just ignore Bixby and
use the Google Assistant.
The Note 9 ships with Android 8.1 Oreo and
Samsung Experience 9.5 (formerly TouchWiz). It
is largely a similar design language from the past
two or three years of Samsung phones, but in its
current state is a pleasure to use – if a long way of
from stock Android. We hope it will get an upgrade
The Note 9 comes

with Android 8.1

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to Pie at some point in 2018. But Samsung tends

to drag its heels somewhat with software updates
and the Note 8 will probably get Android P after
OnePlus and Sony phones at least.
The software is largely the same as on the S9
phones but as well as the S Pen features mentioned
above, the Note 9 has DeX built in. This means you
don’t need to buy a separate docking station to run
Samsung’s desktop experience on a monitor. You
just need an HMDI to USB-C cable to plug the phone
into a monitor and the Note will display its software
like a Windows desktop. Of course, you also get
other Samsung things like Bixby and AR Emoji, and in
recent years Samsung has become better at pushing
Google apps to the user rather than doubling up
with Samsung alternatives.
But the software skin is quite heavy compared to
stock Android, and we found the Note 8 slowed down
a tad over the course of a year. Hopefully the Note 9
will be a diferent story as it zips along out of the box.
Verdict
The Galaxy Note 9 is the best Samsung phone you
can buy right now, but it’s also oddly the most niche.
If you don’t want all its expensive features such as the
S-Pen and huge 6.4in display, then the standard S9
will suit you for around £300 less.
But the Note 9 is supremely powerful with every
feature you could hope for, stellar battery life, slick
design and amazing cameras.
In the world of £1,000 phones, it’s as good as
the iPhone X but a diferent beast. If its productivity

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BUYING GUIDE
features and niche software suits you, you’ll love

it – but it isn’t for everyone despite its excellence.
Henry Burrell
Specifications
• 6.4in (2,960x1,440; 516ppi) Super AMOLED
capacitive touchscreen
• Android 8.1 Oreo
• Exynos 9810 Octa processor
• Octa-core 4x 2.7GHz Mongoose M3 and 4x 1.8GHz
Cortex-A55 CPU
• 6/8GB RAM
• 512GB storage (microSD up to 512GB)
• Dual rear-facing cameras: 12Mp, f/1.5-2.4, 26mm,
1/2.55in, 1.4μm, dual pixel PDAF, OIS; 12Mp, f/2.4,
52mm, 1/3.4in, 1μm, AF, OIS, 2x optical zoom
• Front camera: 8Mp, f/1.7, 25mm, 1/3.6in, 1.22μm, AF
• 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 5.0
• NFC
• Iris scanner
• 161.9x76.4x8.8mm
• 201g

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HOW TO
HOW TO Connect an
Android device to a TV
CHRIS MARTIN reveals how to show of photos, videos and
content from your Android phone on your TV
T
o connect an Android phone or tablet to a TV,
you can use an MHL/SlimPort (via Micro-USB)
or Micro-HDMI cable if supported, or wirelessly
cast your screen using Miracast or Chromecast. Here
we look at your options for viewing your phone or
tablet’s screen on the TV.

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HOW TO
Wirelessly connect Android to TV

There’s little to beat the wow factor associated with
beaming video straight from a tablet to your TV.
The good thing about Android is that there’s more
than one way to do it. Miracast is a wireless standard
that creates an ad-hoc network between two
devices, typically your tablet and a set-top box that
supports Miracast.
An increasing number of TVs support Miracast
without the need for extra hardware. Miracast uses
H.264 for video transmission, which means eicient
compression and decent, full HD picture quality.
Better yet, Miracast supports Digital Rights
Management (DRM), which means services such as
iPlayer and YouTube can be streamed to a TV. Not
all services work, though.
An alternative (and most user-friendly) is Google’s
Chromecast. This inexpensive £30 ‘dongle’ plugs into
Google Chromecast

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HOW TO
a spare HDMI port on your TV and connects to your

wireless network. Chromecast support is burgeoning,
which means content from services such as iPlayer,
Netflix, BT Sport and others can be played with the
Chromecast dongle doing all the legwork instead
of your tablet, and that’s good news for battery life.
It’s possible to use Chromecast to mirror the
display on your Android device, allowing you to
hit play on a tablet and have (non DRM-protected)
video start playing on your TV. The same goes for
anything the screen can display, including apps,
games and photos. You can also pick up the pricier
Chromecast Ultra to stream 4K content, too.
HDMI
HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) is the
interface standard du jour. If your TV was bought in
the past decade it has an HDMI port, as does almost
every set-top box, games console and a decent
number of still and video cameras.
The benefit to HDMI, apart from its ubiquity (which
means it’s cheap), is that it accommodates HD video
and audio simultaneously, allowing you to connect
devices without worrying about watching a film in
full HD but having to make do with your tablet’s
tinny speakers. An HDMI output is an advantage that
many Android tablets have over Apple’s iPad.
HDMI plugs come in three sizes. Regular HDMI
(or Type A, left) are the full-size ports you’ll find on
devices where space isn’t an issue: think TVs, laptops
and games consoles. The sockets you’re likely to
find on tablets and phones will be either Type C (also

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HOW TO
known as Mini HDMI, middle) or Type D (Micro HDMI,

right). Of these, Micro HDMI, or Type D, is the smallest.
Whichever type of port your tablet has, connecting
it to an HDMI socket isn’t going to cost you the Earth:
expect to pay under £10 (under £5 in some cases) for
an HDMI to Mini- or Micro-HDMI cable.
A range of tablets have either HDMI or its
miniaturized variants. It’s the simplest approach.
MHL and SlimPort

HDMI is easy to understand: it’s a port that only does
one thing. The drawback is that not all tablets have
an HDMI output, and very few phones do. The good
news is that a pair of widely-supported standards have
emerged that allow Android owners to connect to
external displays using their Micro-USB port.
The standards in question are MHL (Mobile
High Definition Link) and the newer SlimPort. Both
look the same, which is stating the obvious as
they simply use the Micro-USB port on an Android
device to deliver video.
Like HDMI, SlimPort and MHL support both video
and audio, with up to eight channels of surround
sound available. Both normally require breakout
boxes: a small dongle between your device and TV
that converts the signal from your phone to one
compatible with HDMI.
Expect to pay between £5 and £25 for either a
SlimPort or MHL signal converter. That makes things
a little more expensive than using a tablet with an
HDMI port, but MHL in particular is supported by a
wide range of phone and tablet makers.

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HOW TO
MHL has undergone various versions: we’re

currently on version three, which improves the
maximum resolution to 4K, though costs slightly
more. This is the same as SlimPort, and means both
standards ofer pretty similar technical specs.
One advantage that MHL has is support from
various TV manufacturers: look on the back of your
TV, and if the HDMI port has an MHL logo above it,
you can use an HDMI to Micro-USB cable to connect
the two – the HDMI cable will pass power to your
tablet or phone, meaning no need for extra adaptors
or cables. Bonus.
If your TV doesn’t support MHL, or you have a
SlimPort device, you’ll need an adaptor. SlimPort users
should expect to pay around £15, while MHL users
may spend slightly less. If you’re using MHL it’s likely
you’ll need an external power source: MHL 3 can draw
up to 10 watts from its host device.
With SlimPort no external power supply is needed
(it draws a small amount of power from your
device), making setup less cluttered. Both
devices need a tablet’s screen to be on,
though, so breakout boxes normally
come with a Micro-USB port so a
charger can be connected.
Support for MHL and
SlimPort varies enormously.
With three diferent versions
of MHL available plus
SlimPort, you’ll need to check
the specifications of your device
before buying an adaptor. SlimPort

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