The Huawei Mate 20 Pro is landing on October 16, so this close to launch it’s no surprise that details of the handset are leaking extensively, and the latest leak takes the form of a benchmark suggesting that this could be the most powerful Android phone on the planet.
 
According to a Geekbench listing spotted by Telefoonabonnement, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro has 6GB of RAM and achieves a single-core score of 3,390 and a multi-core score of 10,318.
 
For comparison, in our own tests the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 managed an average multi-core score of 9,100, though its single-core result was slightly higher at 3,698. That’s with the Exynos version of Samsung’s phone, which scores higher than the Snapdragon version.
 
But there’s a reason for the Mate 20 Pro’s even higher score – it’s not using either of those chipsets. Rather, it’s using Huawei’s new octa-core Kirin 980 chipset, which is the first 7nm chip to be used in an Android phone – 7nm chips offer improved performance and efficiency over the 10nm design used in most current flagship phones.
 
We have to specify Android though, because Apple got there first with its 7nm A12 Bionic chipset in the iPhone XS range. Apple also scores higher in this benchmark, with the iPhone XS Max for example averaging a multi-core score of 11,465 in our tests.
 
Of course, this is a pre-release version of the Mate 20 Pro, so it may score higher with final hardware and software, but it’s not unusual for Apple to outscore Android rivals.
 
The only other thing the benchmark reveals is that the Huawei Mate 20 Pro will seemingly ship with Android 9 Pie, although that’s hardly surprising.
 
And if you had any fear that the Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s launch date might slip, the fact that it's now received both TENAA and NCC certification should set your mind at ease.
 
These are two certification bodies the phone needs to pass through before it can go on sale in certain regions, and certification usually arrives shortly before launch.
 
ITHome spotted the listings, revealing in the process that the Huawei Mate 20 Pro apparently comes in five different configurations. The base model seemingly has 6GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, but there are also models with 6GB/512GB, 8GB/128GB, 8GB/256GB and 8GB/512GB setups.