Hardware face-off: Which smartphone does it better?

Laid side by side, you'd think they were similar but no, they are far from it.

The Huawei P20 Pro was released in May, and more recently, Samsung released the Note 9 and Apple released the iPhone XS Max.

NZME's tech guru Glenn Hart gives his views on each, beginning with Apple.

"I'm trembling as I pick it up the gold... iPhone XS Max, which is perhaps the most ridiculous name of a phone ever.

"And because it's not the iPhone XI or the iPhone IX, which are names that haven't been used yet, you know that it's just an incremental improvement on last year's model," he says.

He does however point to a new processing chip which is supposed to be faster and that they've improved the battery life "a little bit". The smartphone with 512 GB of storage won't come cheap though, Hart says, at $2799.

When compared to the Samsung Note 9, Hart says there's "just a bit more design going on" and it's more modern.

"The major difference with the Note device is it comes with a stylus attached to the phone.

"From the moment you pull that out, you can start making notes on the screen, which you can save and send."

And the smartphone can also be used as a remote, he says. And it's cheaper than the iPhone XS Max at $1999.

Hart says the Huawei P20 Pro comes in at the cheapest at $1100 and has something neither Apple of Samsung have, three lenses.

"It's not just a gimmick... these are Leica lenses, these are real photo lenses here.

"It means they combine their wide aperture lens, their telephoto lens, their monochrome lens all together to give you the best shots."