The heavyweight fight of 2022: HUAWEI Mate50 Pro vs iPhone 14 Pro vs Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra

As 2022 comes to a close, we have already witnessed flagship launches from all the major smartphone brands. So, now it is time for the mandatory end-of-year contest between the smartphone giants, where we get to find out the one and only true winner. And for this year’s battle, we have 3 candidates — iPhone 14 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, and none other than HUAWEI Mate50 Pro. Let’s compare the features of these flagships one by one and see how and where HUAWEI Mate50 Pro wins.

Design
Huawei really pushes the boundaries of smartphone aesthetics and clearlty wins with HUAWEI Mate50 Pro. The phone combines the iconic symmetrical Space Ring design with an elegant touch of Clous de Paris step-patterned embossing, which creates an intricate yet subtle texture. The Clous de Paris pattern is a time-honoured embossing process that originated in France. Originally this took the form of handcrafted ornamentations on luxurious wristwatches, jewellery, and other accessories. With its intricate pyramid-shaped ornamentations, the Clous de Paris pattern is a tribute to elegance, perseverance, and classic design. And Huawei has brought this elegance to its latest premium flagship smartphone.
From the back, it’s hard to tell the iPhone 14 Pro apart from last year’s iPhone 13 Pro. Well, except for the slightly larger camera module of the newer model. But on the front of the iPhone 14 Pro, the notch is replaced by the new pill-shaped cutout that houses the front facing camera and Face ID. Along with this new design, you also get the Dynamic Island interface, which is basically a new way to view and interact with notifications. Just like the pill-shaped cutout, Dynamic Island is only available in the Pro models of the iPhone 14 Series.
The Galaxy S22 Ultra is different from the rest of the Galaxy S22 Series in many ways. Most importantly, the Galaxy S22 Ultra marks the merging of the Galaxy Note Series and the Galaxy S Series. Another stark departure from any Galaxy S series phones before it, the Galaxy S22 Ultra comes with a built-in S Pen that the Note Series was known for. This shift is also visible in the aesthetics of the phone with curved sides and a gently curved display in contrast to Galaxy S22 and S22+, both of which follow the same design as the Galaxy S21 Series with only minor refinements.
Incorporating Clous de Paris in the design of HUAWEI Mate50 Pro illustrates its approach to aesthetics. Moreover the symmetrical design of HUAWEI Mate50 Pro looks better.

Cameras
The Ultra Aperture XMAGE Camera system on the HUAWEI Mate50 Pro is here to redefine smartphone photography. Its optical system features a 10-size adjustable physical aperture that uses six aperture blades. This gives you more granular control over the depth of field while shooting in Professional mode. In Auto mode, the smart aperture adjusts the aperture size based on the shooting conditions. With a large F1.4 aperture and the power of XD Fusion Pro, the HUAWEI Mate50 Pro gives you unmatched low-light capability. On top of that, the Night mode enables you to capture photos with highly distinct bright and dark regions, even in dim environments. The Portrait mode feature adds a pleasing natural background blur to allow the subject to stand out from their surroundings. On the other hand, if you want some one-of-a-kind wildlife shots or impressive close-ups of intricate architectures, the periscope telephoto camera with up to a whopping 200x zoom range has you covered.
This year, the iPhone 14 Pro main camera comes with a 48MP sensor instead of the 12MP sensor that has been the standard for iPhones for the past six years. That being said, the images snapped by the main camera are still 12MP by default, although it lets you take 48MP ProRAW images if you fancy more flexibility during editing. The ultrawide and telephoto cameras continue to use 12MP sensors. And you might find the 3 times optical zoom of the telephoto camera helpful when taking portraits.
Galaxy S22 Ultra comes with a 108MP main camera, a 12MP ultrawide, a 10MP 3X telephoto, and another 10MP 10X telephoto. While this is not much different from last year’s Ultra model, Samsung has made some improvements to its image processing system. The new night mode, which Samsung calls Nightography, promises improved low-light performance.
The Ultra Aperture XMAGE camera takes smartphone photography to new heights. Moreover, HUAWEI Mate50 Pro doesn’t fail to impress with its low light capability, vibrant colours and dynamic range.

Battery, charging speed and performance
HUAWEI Mate50 Pro packs a 4700 mAh battery and supports 66W wired and 50W wireless fast charging to strike an optimal balance between battery life, fast charging, and portability. While the battery is large enough to sustain heavy usage, the innovative low-battery Emergency Mode gets activated when the battery level falls to 1% to extend the battery life further. In the low-battery Emergency Mode, the phone can support 3-hour standby or 12 minutes of calling. The phone also comes with a handy feature called SuperStorage that can automatically detect duplicated files on the phone and offer you the option to compress them in the HUAWEI Optimiser app.
Apple doesn’t advertise the battery capacity of iPhones. Regardless, iPhone 14 Pro supports 20W wired and 15W wireless charging through MagSafe. The 20W wired charging will be able to fill up 50% of the battery in 30 minutes.
Galaxy S22 Ultra packs in a 5000mAh battery and supports 45W wired charging and 15W wireless charging.
The interesting thing here is that the wireless charging on HUAWEI Mate50 Pro is faster than even the wired charging speeds of iPhone 14 Pro or Galaxy S22 Ultra. Huawei’s 66W wired and 50W wireless fast charging, when combined with a large 4700mAh battery, means that battery should be the least of your concerns.