I tested the Banned Huawei Products.

I used to love Huawei products they're one of the very few tech companies that no matter what I would always tune in to see what they were announcing next cuz it just felt like they were consistently trying something new then they got banned in 2019 they got banned from selling in the US they got banned from working with us companies and they even got banned from working with companies that just use us technology it was brutal and given how critical US tech is in the making of a smartphone everything from the software to the chips to the antenna to get signal everyone just kind of assumed well Huawei is just going to slowly die over the next couple of years and made into history but 4 and 1/2 years have passed since that ban and Huawei is not dead they're still making new products with new features that you probably didn't even know Tech products could do right now which begs two questions how are they doing that with all the restrictions and also how good are the products now I've been surprised I think you will too so this is their latest stuff let's go from the tablet to the earphones to the watches to the thing that I'm most curious about the smartphones so this is the mate pad paper match and on the face of it it seems pretty unremarkable it feels very mid-range like nothing bad about it but just standard standard materials standard looking camera standard screen bezels it's all about what you'd expect for a tablet just under $500 so it doesn't feel as good as Samsung or Apple's top- end tablets the screen is this matte IPS panel it's not OLED and so you might be able to tell that while it can reach a high level of brightness it just looks a tiny bit faint it lacks that crunchy contrast and also has a school computer from your it Suite kind of vibe to it and also it's running a mid-range Snapdragon 7 gen one chip so it's not the fastest like if you check out the delay between my finger hitting this capture button and the tablet actually capturing that's pretty criminal but this is where we start to diverge from the tablets you might know see this is not running Android this tablet is running Harmony OS so years before the US ban actually came into place clearly huwei saw it coming and they'd started working on a backup plan an operating system of their own that didn't rely on Google's Android and I guess to compensate getting kicked out of the Google group a way to create their own group to seamlessly integrate all of their products now on one hand this is basically Android to make sure that every Harmony OS product is still compatible with Android apps while we had to start with the basic open-source available to everon version of Android and then layer their OS on top of that but then on the other hand this whole unification of their various devices that they talked about years ago I feel like they've done it so if I swipe down from the control panel I'll see something called Huawei super device click into that and this is basically my entire a system of Huawei gadgets and then if you want to link two products you just drag one into another so if I drag my earphones into this tablet they become the audio Source instead of the speakers on the tablet and then within that I've got settings for how I want that relationship to function like what kind of sound output I want my tablet to give to these earphones but the coolest thing is what happens when you also throw a phone into the mix so I'm getting to the phones themselves later but just for the purpose of showing this feature if I link my phone and my tablet together using Huawei super device this is what happens so that is my phone's home screen and it's not just showing me what's on my phone I can use my phone from this and I spent the last few days figuring out all the things that means you can do and it's very cool so for example if I'm watching a YouTube video on my phone and then I realize I actually want to go big screen I just go into full screen on my phone and then automatically it will not just full screen on the tablet but actually turn it into the full YouTube tablet experience with the tablet user interface even though it's still actually running off the phone and that then also clears the phone to do something entirely different you can do things like drag a photo that you've just taken on your phone into your tablet I got to give them credit for this the devices feel so integrated that you actually forget when you do that that you're sending something that's here to here but then also crazy stuff like let's say for example I set my phone up here and then from my tablet I can have control over both sets of cameras like a oneman Production Studio The more I've looked into the Super device feature The more I've been surprised at how free form it is essentially it's however you want your huawe products you work together they can do that like if you have a Huawei tablet and a Huawei laptop super device means that your tablet can become a second monitor all wirelessly or let's say you wanted to draw something on your laptop but your laptop's not touchscreen well mirror that screen to your tablet use your Huawei pen and draw on that so far it's kind of like the Apple ecosystem in that you feel both strongly encouraged and rewarded for each extra one of their products you buy into so in isolation I'd give this tablet a 6 out of 10 but that rating will increase as we add more products into the mix but first what are the earphones like I got to say before this video i' never even considered actually using Huawei audio products and I had no gauge on how good or bad they actually are and well let's start with their entry level free buds se2 ironically named cuz I also got them for free when I bought the phones but you can very much tell that these were designed to be huawei's version of the basic apple airpods very similar in terms of material they look the same apart from this weird c-shaped cutout and the case actually has a really nice opening and closing mechanism it's not in the slightest bit loose the main difference versus airpods is actually the price Apple's earphones are $170 alls are 49 so surely surely there's going to be a massive Gap in sound quality right well actually no these earphones considering the type of earphones they are and that they don't go inside your ears and they just kind of sit next to them they sound amazing you notice a little bit of when loads of instruments are playing at once a lack of separation between them but apart from that the sound is Punchy it's detailed they don't leak as much noise as airpods do I'm actually playing Taylor Swift right now not Taylor Swift I'm listening at my normal listening volume and you probably can't hear anything and then also these things last 40 hours of listening time versus Apple's 30 when you're using the case for recharging my only real gripe was setup you know when you're first trying to pair your earphones you think oh maybe when I open the case it'll activate Bluetooth and connect to my phone no okay well maybe there's a button on the case that will activate the pairing mode no you know what you actually have to do touch and hold the small visible part of the touch sensitive area on both earbuds at the same time while they're still in the case it doesn't feel like it's been completely thought through and then I had further problems getting the app on my phone to recognize them fiddly but at least you only have to do that once and it is all sorted now so I would genuinely give these a 9 out of 10 and strongly recommend them and they actually had me quite excited for the next tier and that is the free buds 5 which at $170 of 3 and 1/2 times the se2 use exactly the same price as the airpods and definitely not free with the phone and honestly I have no idea what Huawei was thinking when they made these you know like within any given company's product lines you expect some sort of design consistency right but I mean spot one similarity between these two earphones apart from the fact that they're both earphones I do wonder if these were designed by completely separate teams I mean it wouldn't surprise me Huawei actually has a lot more employees than you'd think they're over 200,000 which is actually more than Apple who are just over 150,000 I mean these freebuds 5 they look like some sort of alien drop pod From Another Dimension but do you know what I respect that you immediately notice a lot more Tech like these earphones they know when they're out of the case they know when they're in and out of your ears so they can pause and resume what you're playing and yes the case actually has a pairing button on it and the app's actually really good you can make your own equalizer you can click find my earphones and they'll start beeping for you it's a good feature and also as we were saying earlier these eniz really well the more Huawei products you have cuz that's I'm listening through earphones on my tablet but I want to transfer those earphones now to listening to the audio from my phone how do you do that well open Super device on your phone you'll see all the available Huawei devices floating around this one drag the earphones in and the switch in connection is instant plus the freebuds 5 have noise isolation you very rarely see active noise cancellation on earphones that don't actually go inside your ears and upon using them you can kind of see why you can notice it the second can you turn it on like it does muffle the background noise but you kind of have to pay attention to it to notice the difference it definitely doesn't have that sitting in your own bubble feeling that you get with proper noise cancelling buds mostly because with this type of design there's way more likely to be slight gaps where outside noise can still get to Ora drums and you know what they're actually not even that comfy you know you kind of expect with the design this wacky that huawei's figured out some sort of ergonomic secret that no one else has which is kind of what they painted out to be but no really they're just like you took a normal pair of earphones and you started melting them they're similar feeling to the S2s but because they're heavier and a bit girthier you just notice them a lot more and the sound quality is yes slightly better than the SE it's high res audio but really these are not worth three and a half times the price of these so I'm giving them a seven and then the final pair of earphones is the top-of-the-line freebuds Pro 2 which have a pretty similar style to the fives but they're a bit less weird and these are also co-engineered by dvla and yeah most of these types of collaborations they are a bit of a stretch but I'd be lying if I said that logo didn't at least get me a bit excited after all the most impressive speaker I've ever heard in my life was made by dvla and you know what yeah these are pretty Pro they're actually dual driver earphones meaning that each earb bird has not one but two little speakers inside of it which can help for specialization you can have one focused on bass and one focused on higher notes and honestly these are a big step up in sound surprisingly comfy given their chunkiness and very isolating you put them in the world around you disappears this is a good product it's just well the Finish is very glossy so you put one finger on it and you will see that and also the battery life is not great they say it should last 30 hours I'd say it actually lasts about 25 which feels low compared to the 40 that you can get out of their most basic earphones so I would give the pros an8 okay so so far the answer to our original question of how good are Huawei products now is actually pretty good better than I expected and that's without even talking about the smart watches which I think is where they're doing some of their cooler stuff so there's two new models as part of their GT4 range they've got a 46 mm version which is a bit too active looking for me but this 41 mm is completely different I guess they've decided to use these two different sizes to not just Target people who want a big watch versus a small watch but two types of people with completely different watch tastes and that's the second thing the fact that they're circular means that they actually do look like watches I'm wearing this 46 mm one for the last week and even though it's not my personal favorite I've already had two people specifically divert conversation to tell me they love my watch I was torn about it at the start cuz I thought well the more rectangular shape of the Apple watch should be more practical cuz it's a bit closer to the smartphone form factor but honestly I have not once felt like I'm missing out on functionality these watches are running a formatted version of Harmony OS the same OS as the tablets but the thing is that every baked in app feels like it uses the space of the screen fully and efficiently you get thorough detailed insights that link straight to the Huawei Health app on your phone this definitely gives the impression of a really high-end bit of Kit with some really good quality sleep tracking on top that and oh yeah this is modly creepy anytime you lose your phone I'm here what is that about the fact that it's a circle means your watch faces can be much more realistic and this idea they had to have a blooming watch face where the flower opens up more and more the more exercise you do is so smart probably the best thing actually is the battery most high-end SmartWatches will get you through a full day this will legitimately get you through a full week I think these watches have really high potential you know just useful like the number of times I've been sitting for long periods of time and then my watch will actually tell me that encouraging me to get up and walk around for a bit it's just there's two things that let them down for me one is the App Store there's a more limited selection than most other SmartWatches and those apps have to be installed via your phone app and then two is the consistency between the apps some apps are beautiful to look at and they run at silky smooth 60 frames per second others look incredibly basic and run up poor frame rates like genuinely quite reminiscent of the apps that you got when the very first smartphones were just appearing Huawei actually has a ton of SmartWatches like probably more than any other company out there all the way from sub $100 to plus $2,500 but this should give you an idea of the core software that underpins all of them right time for the most interesting product of them all let's talk about the phones so huawei's had two major Flagship launches recently this one is the Huawei p60 Pro which still comes with a fullsize box including everything you need for the phone I think this is still the default for phone sold in China whereas it's more in the west where we have this whole focus on Eco packaging and I genuinely think this phone looks decadent Huawei isn't afraid to try different things in the name of fashion and in this case I'd say it's worked but then this is the new Huawei mate 60 Pro and let me tell you as a piece of Hardware this is the nicest phone I think I've ever held in my hands I just think this company has made every possible correct decision and then gone further than anyone else has this triple do setup is I think a pretty cool way of still having proper 3D face scanning ability while minimizing the amount of solid black permanently on your screen it's less of an interruption than Apple's Dynamic Island and actually faster at face scanning plus we just realized today something else very cool it allows it to do which is to constantly be looking to see if your eyes are looking at the phone screen if they are the screen will be on and as soon as you look away the screen will turn off which is great for battery and also being able to check your notifications it's like a smarter version of the always on display because it's only always on when you need it to be always on the body of the phone is matte all the way around and while the bottom can get some fingerprints the top section is completely resistant the corners extremely curved it doesn't feel like you're holding a sharp object it's the opposite and the fact that the back plate smoothly transitions into the sides means there's no seam to worry about but then also this screen we've seen curved sides on a screen before but this is really softly evenly curved from every single angle top bottom corners and they've done that without making the borders uneven or having any weirdness with the corners which you tend to get when you try and do this and like you have with the p60 honestly if I could snap my fingers right now and make my iPhone or my s23 ultra feel like this I would do it right now the glass on this is also meant to be something quite special it's called kunlun glass 2 and they're saying it's the strongest smartphone glass in the world so tell you what let's look at the rest of the phone and then we will actually test it against Apple ceramic Shield the hard way of course so honestly I think the software which is harmony OS again is very pretty I mean it's packed with bloatware don't get me wrong I'm counting 58 pre-installed apps not to mention a separate popular apps folder which is obviously just a way to advertise without it feeling like an advert but animations very smooth similar quality to the iPhone but just with more flexibility and flare and it works so well with the curved glass from every angle to create this feeling of Elegance and gracefulness and if you're enjoying this rare look into Huawei right now then a lot has gone into making it happen so a sub to the channel would be harmonious also I'm heading off to Japan today for a once in a lifetime trip where I'll get to see lots of cool Tech like this so follow me on Instagram if you want to keep up with that anyway everything responds to your touch in a way that makes sense like when you move an app on your home screen the apps around the point where you drop it they pulse as if they've just felt the impact of your move when you're flicking between your recent apps the app that you're currently holding actually pulls away from the rest like it has real elasticity and the transitions when you select your quick settings it's clear that time has been spent here but also you can do some really unusual stuff like your apps by color which the ultra organized part of me finds highly satisfying and you can Peak into Apps not just by holding them down like you can on other phones but swiping up on their icons like isn't this such a cool way to be able to speed dial and there's so many really high quality widgets with even the ability to group multiple into one tile so they're more space efficient and drag One widget on top of another to merge them into one okay so all this surface level stuff that's all well and good but one of the big questions on my mind here is years on after the ban where they lost contact with with Google and so many other app and Hardware suppliers what has Huawei decided to do about it how have they adapted their phones to still make them viable so you do have a Huawei app store they call it the app gallery I would say it's functional but it's janky I think huawei's realized that if they really want to compete you can't feel like there's no app out there that you can't use because you're using a Huawei phone so they found a way to make just about everything work but it's not necessarily the smoothest workaround like there are a lot of mainstream apps that you can just go onto app gallery and download straight away like booking.com and Snapchat and telegram but there's a lot that aren't like Instagram and when that happens the store no joke it takes you to the app Parks website to download the APK file and install it yourself but also then there are some apps whose entire codebase runs on Google services which are banned from Huawei like the map system in Uber for example so installing the app on the phone via APK file it still wouldn't allow the app to run properly so what huawei's done is instead of linking you to the apps to download creating quick apps for the apps basically things that look like native apps but are actually just shortcuts that take you to the mobile web pages they work they're not pretty now there is also a tool they're bundling in called g-space which seemingly does give you full access to Google Apps but it's just those apps have to be accessed via this specific g-space portal cuz I guess what's happening is when you enter the space it's masking the real identity of your phone it does work but the fact that it is allowing you to access something that's banned makes it feel like a legal gray area oh and it has a full screen ad every time you click on something so if you're wondering what the state of Huawei is right now then it's basically if you decide that you want to use a Huawei phone and you're not in China you still can there's a way to make just about every single thing that you want to do work you've just got to be ready to put up with some jankiness the only thing that you can't change is chipsets and this is where it gets really weird so basically when the US band first happened the reason it seemed like the end for Huawei was the chipset situation Huawei was at the time having their chips made by tsmc in Taiwan but they were then blocked from that because tsmc was using us technology Qualcomm was another option for chips but since they're an actual us company they couldn't really help out either and then it didn't seem like any Chinese company could make their own high-end chips because the extreme ultraviolet lithography machines required to do so were literally being made by one company who also couldn't talk to them but two things have happened since then one that Huawei has now been granted a license to work with Qualcomm on the basis that they only buy 4G versions of their chips instead of the 5G versions and older versions of those chips at that so this Huawei p60 Pro for example even though it's a 2023 phone it uses a nerfed 4G version of a 2022 Qualcomm chip but then this new mate 60 pro has done what the US didn't even think was possible somehow out of nowhere this thing apparently has its own made in China modern architecture 7 nanometer Kirin 9000s chip capable of 5G download speeds these are all things that according to us sanctions should not have been able to happen even though not bleeding Ed Tech it seems like the idea of the US sanctions was to effectively send Huawei back into the Stone Age of technology and this is a clear demonstration of how that actually hasn't happened so there's a lot of rumors going on right now some people speculate that it's actually a 14 nanom process that's been modified to act like a more recent 7 nmet chip some reports are saying it's a reskinned version of a chip that Huawei used to get from tsmc before they were banned or a Chinese company actually has internally rebuilt from the ground up the tech required to make proper high-end 5G chips no concrete answers yet but it's all just very weird all right but the cameras were always the highlight of Huawei phones so where are they now well if you watch my video about the smartphone camera explained you'll find this especially interesting because these phones as well as using their Ultra wide cameras can also use their 3.5 times telephoto cameras or closeup macro shots which is honestly better it means you can get super close to objects without actually needing to get super close and distort them or block all the light getting to them and the end shots just look really high quality and cinematic and also these phones have a completely variable aperture so you go into Pro mode and just like with a real high-end lens you can adjust this dial to select any aperture you want in between f1.4 and F4 I got to say I miss these cameras so much I mean they have like the fastest shutter time of any phone the stabilization is amazing I took this on a Motorway my car was shaking this camera was not they have super wide front cameras for big group shots and the night mode the night mode is as capable as I remember it to be versus its peers actually took these against my iPhone 15 Pro Max and while Huawei has a slight leg up because its main camera is naturally more zoomed in it's equally pretty clear that they haven't fallen behind here okay so you film on the p60 pro and I'm going to do this durability test okay have you ever got one of these texts or one of these fake login attempt emails I know I get them like three times a week and essentially when that happens someone is trying to either hack you or scam you but how do they even get your information okay this is height one drop on Apple ceramic Shield completely unmarked well let's say that you play an online game and that game servers got hacked now anyone who's hacking Game servers they're not doing it because they just got bored on their day off no they're going to sell that data to people who want to use it for stuff like this and if you use the same username and password across multiple accounts then you're basically exposed from every angle all right height drop two yikes still okay and that is why I use guardio guardio is pure security it alerts me in real time once my passwords leak it lets you know where those passwords have leaked from so you can take immediate action okay this has to break now 3 2 1 unbelievable enough of this ball Hammer from height two there we go that was quite serious damage Guardia also protects you from emails which you might think are Innocent but are actually designed to steal your data web pages that are constructed to get a hold of your payment details and also just malware and general and we've got a 7-Day trial as well as 20% off the already affordable subscription cost which covers five users under one account and that'll Auto apply if you head to guard. i/ boss the iPhone is very durable let's see if this is the same there's nothing okay let's drop from H2 still nothing and the final test to see if kunlun glass can beat ceramic [Music] Shield that took three smacks so actually yes that is the toughest glass I've ever seen on a phone

Channel: Mrwhosetheboss

Views: 6,063,047

Keywords: huawei, Huawei p60, Huawei mate 60, Huawei phone, huawei review, huawei ban, US ban

Id: IhYDtLzmRQI

Length: 22min 25sec (1345 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 04 2023