Huawei Mate 20 Pro owners are getting something that Mate 30 Pro owners can only dream about

Huawei's latest flagship phones, the Mate 30 series, run on an open-source version of Android and can not use Google's core apps like Search, Gmail, Maps, the Play Store and YouTube. That's because Huawei was placed on the U.S. Commerce Department's Entity List back in May for security reasons. As a result, the manufacturer is not allowed to access its U.S. supply chain. That means it has been unable to license the Google Play Services version of Android with Google's apps. Sales of the Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro outside of China are going to fall far short of what the company planned on earlier this year when it estimated that it would ship a total of 300 million handsets for 2019. That probably would have made Huawei the world's largest smartphone manufacturer by the end of this year. Instead, it looks like Huawei will have to settle for third place behind Samsung and Apple. For the first half of this year, Huawei trailed only Samsung having delivered 118 million units.

While the Mate 30 line is running open-source Android, this weekend last year's Mate 20 Pro is being updated to Android 10. Any phone already sold or under development prior to the May 16th Entity List placement is able to use U.S. components and software such as the licensed version of Android. According to DroidApp (via Android Central), the Mate 20 Pro is being updated to Android 10 in the Netherlands. The latest build of Android takes the half-assed gesture navigation system seen on Android 9 and replaces it with a full gesture system.

For example, in Android 9, pressing on the pill-shaped home button takes users to the home screen. Sliding the pill halfway up the screen reveals the open apps and the back button takes users back a page. In Android 10, the pill is gone and swiping up from the bottom of the screen from any app will take the user home. Swiping up halfway reveals open apps, and swiping to the left from the right edge or swiping to the right from the left edge takes the user back to the previous screen. Android 10 also features the system-wide Dark theme toggle, Live Captions and more.

The Mate 20 Pro remains quite a serviceable phone with its 6.4-inch AMOLED display carrying a 1440 x 3120 resolution and an aspect ratio of 19.5:9. Powered by the Kirin 980 chipset (produced by TSMC using the 7nm process), there are three different configurations including 6GB of memory and 128GB of storage, 8GB of memory and 128GB of storage, and 8GB of memory with 256GB of storage.

The Mate 20 Pro is equipped with a triple camera setup on back (40MP Wide + 8MP Telephoto with a 3x optical zoom + 20MP ultra-wide). In the front is a 24MP selfie snapper and a 4200mAh battery keeps the lights on. A 40W fast charger takes the battery from 0% to 70% in only 30 minutes and wireless charging takes place at 15W. And speaking of wireless charging, the Mate 20 Pro introduced us last year to reverse wireless charging. This means that the back panel of the Mate 20 Pro can be used as a wireless charging pad to charge a compatible phone, earpods in a wireless charging case or a compatible smartwatch.  The host phone's battery shares some of its power. Along with Android 10, the Mate 20 Pro is also receiving Huawei's EMUI 10 interface and the September Android security update.

The U.S. and China have just agreed to the framework of a new trade agreement and while Huawei hasn't been mentioned so far, any deal could result in the removal of the company from the Entity List. If that happens, the head of the manufacturer's consumer group, Richard Yu, said that a software update would go out overnight adding the Google Play Services version of Android to the Mate 30 line. But those with the Mate 20 Pro are now receiving what Mate 30 Pro owners outside oif China can only dream about.