I've never been so conflicted by what is a relatively minor decision to make, I have both the Mate 20 Pro and my PIxel 3XL arrived this morning. I managed to get 25% off on the Pixel 3XL, having had the 2XL i know how good these can be.
Things I have noticed so far with my testing:
- Screen slightly better on the Pixel 3 XL (Mate 20 pro is more yellowish to the eye), both substantially better then the Pixel 2XL I had.
- Notch doesn't both me on both, Mate 20 pro is smaller but the Pixel 3XL is better with regards to how the notification icons are formatted into the notch area
- Hardware wise the Mate 20 pro has this beat easily, nice to hold and a better looking device, battery etc is great on my week long use
- Mate 20 Pro is generally faster.
- The Mate 20 pro finger print and facial recognition fail too much, at first I didn't mind but now it's getting very irritating when you just need to quickly access the phone. I've cleaned and re-added finger prints a few times now in just a week which doesn't bode well. Maybe it's still too early for this tech to be mainstream.
The cameras is where it gets interesting, pixel 3 is quicker to take snaps and they are nearly always perfect. With the Mate 20 pro if someone moves the picture blurs easily plus it's always telling me to hold if still for a few seconds to "sharpen the image". The colours are also a little saturated on the Mate 20 pro pics.
Saying that, The Mate 20 pro can take some incredibly sharp picture and has a great zoom lens, night mode is great on both. It's really difficult to call as they both have their strengths in the camera department.
Where the pixel wins as always is on the software front, I'm not worried Huawei will lose interest in the Mate 20 pro come feb as they release new phones and I won't be getting any more updates.
Problem is easy to solve... Mate 20 pro hardware with google pixel images and services ;o)