Everyone keeps hyping the cameras on Huawei's smartphones, so I tested up one of its top models against the best smartphone camera we've tried so far

• I've received several requests to compare Huawei's smartphones against other phones from companies I typically cover, so I finally got a Huawei smartphone to see what all the fuss is about.
• I tried out the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, and guess what. It's quite good!
• But it's not as good as all the hype claims it is. 

When comparing the cameras on the Huawei Mate 20 Pro and the best-in-class Pixel 3 from Google, I found myself confused as to how I should take photos with the Huawei Mate 20 Pro. The camera app made it difficult to compare these two smartphone cameras, as the Pixel has an automatic HDR mode, whereas HDR must be activated manually the Mate 20 Pro. 

There were times where I knew that HDR mode would be good for certain shots, but seeing as turning HDR on or off manually involved extra steps before taking individual photos, I simply opted to keep HDR off. 

I enabled the Mate 20 Pro's "Master AI" camera setting to let it decide the best settings, hoping that would include HDR, but it didn't seem to work that way.

All that jargon above is a giveaway that the Mate 20 Pro's camera app is way more complex than the Pixel 3's, which some people might actually like. But if you just want to point and shoot at something and get a good-looking photo, the Pixel 3 is still the best phone for that.

Want proof? Check out the photos from the Huawei Mate 20 Pro against those from the Google Pixel 3:

Both the Pixel 3 and Mate 20 Pro took great shots of my town's totem pole, except the Mate 20 Pro chose a warmer color setting that doesn't quite look as good as the Pixel's cooler color.

The Mate 20 Pro's 5x lens takes sharper shots than the Pixel 3's 1x lens and digital zoom, which is hard to see in the small image below, but it's very noticeable when the photos are enlarged.

Neither the Mate 20 Pro nor the Pixel 3 did a good job of brightening up my town's local dinosaurs, despite the Mate 20 Pro's AI mode and the Pixel 3's automatic HDR mode.