Huawei’s return to worldwide releases is welcome news for casual photographers and social media starlets. After successive snapping successes, Huawei P40 Pro aims to once again be the latest ‘best thing’ in mobile photography.
I don’t often get to review flagships from the same manufacturer almost back-to-back. Some of you probably still have the Mate 30 Pro review open in another tab. But anyway, I praised the device’s flawless engineering and its continuation of the line’s elegant visual style. Video, long the weakest area of Huawei devices’ captures, had almost caught up to the leaders in this field.
The biggest reservation I had was with App Gallery and the steps needed to get the apps that users of Google Play Store will want. After one last ‘Factory Reset’ then a final Phone Clone before the P40 release yesterday, I can say a fair bit has changed since my Mate 30 Pro installation and experience.
P-Series Visual Continuation
Relying on macro-detailing around the camera housing, minimised but present branding and an array of textures and colours; the Huawei flagship style is certainly established. Huawei P40 Pro is, again, simple with most of the rear visual intrigue resting on the lens surround. Our ‘Silver Frost’ review unit drops the colour-matched outer aluminium frame in favour of a highly polished silver one. The silver frame contrasts beautifully against the deep black of the screen.
The rear sports a gentle iridescence. The frosted glass rear allows light in, teases and distorts as it reflects back from the surface underneath. The effect is used conservatively with a ‘less-is-more’ approach working well.
The Quad-Curve Overflow panel lends a pleasing symmetry to the front – but only with the display off. That symmetry is disturbed when the screen is on by the floating pill-shaped notch. It’s a relatively large area to carve out of a screen, even on a display of this size and elongated aspect ratio. As trivial as it sounds, seeing your network name and signal strength at top-centre is strange. The pay-off for such a notch is covered below.
Hand-Feel and Extras
The textured rear, impression of solidity and balance add the sensory indulgence. There is a reassuring lack of any tiny ticks or rattles – specifically the audible zoom lens noise of Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra and Huawei P30 Pro.
The usability and design isn’t perfect though. The loss of the 3.5mm socket still hurts and Huawei’s insistence on a mono chassis speaker setup offers inferior standalone media consumption to its competitors.
While it’s always a good thing to offer the ability to expand a device’s storage, the proprietary NM cards needed to do so aren’t all that common in some parts of the world.
A Two-Daily Driver
With my usual, moderate use Huawei P40 Pro would last about two days. The 4,200mAh Li-Po battery is milked hard by EMUI’s AI; learning habits and snuffing background apps.
The two-day cycle is close to P30 Pro but falls a few hours short. The 90Hz display refresh-rate and 5G are probably causing the shortfall but the few hours shy are worth the new tech. The 40W Supercharger will fill the device in a handy 70~ minutes while a quick 30-minute blast will grant you a 70% charge; enough for the day for many of you.
Display Improvements
Huawei P40 Pro has both a higher resolution and refresh-rate than P30 Pro and Mate 30 Pro. The 91%+ display-to-body ratio fills the front from straight-on just like Mate 30 Pro. The screen-size of P40 Pro has increased from P30 Pro’s 6.1″ to 6.58″, facilitated by the almost bezel-less display. The drop-offs either side of the screen are less pronounced than on Mate 30 Series, retaining some of aesthetic quality while avoiding the darker areas at the the steepest part of Mate’s ‘Waterfalls’.
The 1200×2640 OLED display is crisp and bright with excellent saturation. Contrast is superb and the inky black adds magnificent depth to the panel. The increased refresh-rate gives scrolling and transitions a silky smoothness. It’s worth noting 90Hz mode is available at maximum resolution.
Returning Chipset
Huawei Mate 30 Pro’s Kirin 990 returns for P40 Pro. In terms of raw power, Huawei’s own chips have come a long way but still lag behind the very best. Samsung’s Rest-of-the-World Exynos SoCs are simply quicker in every theoretical and practical measurement. Though the difference in-use is imperceptible for most tasks.
8GB of RAM is par for premium phablets and is certainly enough for any multitasking or tab-blitzing you have in mind.
The integrated 5G modem can easily keep up with the current real-use maxima on offer in my area but 250-400 Mbps isn’t much of a test.
A Few Weeks Made a Huge Difference
When I reviewed Mate 30 Pro I felt that casual users would lack the confidence to tinker with settings and get the apps they wanted most. Privately, I felt that App Gallery could do with a localisation overhaul and that direct links to certain essential APKs would be extremely helpful.
Huawei had ‘Scout’s Honour’ed that our local App Gallery would be significantly different come P40 release day and it certainly is.
The addition of two separate curated ‘We Love’ sections for apps and games is welcome. App Gallery also offers a ‘Quick App’ function; basically Google Play Instant with leaner applets. Quick App is still in its infancy – the apps work and their footprint is indeed tiny but there are too many steps to return to your favourite baby apps amongst other inconveniences
The aforementioned download links are only available for certain apps but they delay the user having to third-party app downloads. The most casual of user can get some of what they want and most of what they need without resorting to guides, no matter how handy or well-written they are…
Phone Clone can bring (seemingly) any app from your old phone, including Google’s offerings. You won’t be able to sign in to your Google account in these apps so you will be stuck whatever functionality is available without doing so.
Gmail, Docs and Drive are useless in this case. Maps should be fine for most people. You may be better off with a YouTube alternative as some allow you to import your subscribed list so you can at least see when your favourite channels have fresh content.
There is still no easy way to sign into your YouTube account using any of the otherwise adequate alternative apps. So for now you will have to do without liking, commenting and subscribing. Unless you access the YouTube site through a browser as you would on a PC but quite a few of you won’t appreciate the inconvenience.
While it doesn’t match its competitors yet, it’s laudable how Huawei have managed to create a viable third option.
New Stills Heights
Huawei can claim the biggest effective pixel size in smartphone photography. The ‘Ultra-Vision’ sensor captures more 40% more light than the one used in Mate 30 Pro and P30 Pro. The extra photons seems to help most of the capture capabilities.
The two standout photography features of P30 Series have received improvements and fixes.
One complaint I leveled at P30 Pro in a review for a different publication was how the AI trickery was readily visible at higher zoom levels.
Huawei P40 Pro reduces the overall noise a little more and removes most of the tell-tale AI smoothness from the zoom shots. Thanks to image stabilisation it’s also much easier to shoot these longer shots.
The consistency of P40 Pro’s captures when dealing when masses of certain hues or a scene bathed in coloured lighting has improved over P30 Pro. The RYYB sensor that was introduced with P30 Series had some white balance issues that meant more tinkering with shots than sometimes seemed necessary.
Trick Shots
P40 Pro also features a quick way to remove passersby and other accidental photobombers. Along with this, the AI can remove reflections while snapping through glass. Chances to test these out fully have not materialised for obvious reasons.
Live Photo is a cool feature that takes a snap before and after you do – the AI tries to detect what you were after in case you miss it. Smiles, sporting images and some other common, fleeting scenes are programmed with AI.
The Live Photo system demands a speedy auto-focus and the dual-layer PDAF does the job well. Though mostly used for snapping just two people smiling during our review, it did offer some better shots than the one I had taken myself. Most of the alternate images were focused properly. You should be aware that the AI scene selection is not available while using Live Photo.
Video and Selfie
As stated in our Huawei Mate 30 Pro review, Huawei had made strides towards catching Samsung and Apple’s video quality but P40 Pro sits with the best. Improvements to the lenses and sensors yield impressive auto-focus and white balance.
Image stabilisation is excellent. Video while moving , with a little zoom or an unsteady hand is remarkably smooth.
The super slow-motion 720p capture runs at 7680 frames per second. When used appropriately the effects are stunning but the maximum frame-rate is only really for special occasions. Explosions, popping champagne, huge splashes and the wheels of fast-moving vehicles – anything else moves so slowly as to stand still at that speed.
Of the selfie additions, the ‘groufie’ feature stands out. AI and some depth trickery find the best focus for all faces with some excellent results; even with subjects at different ranges.
Some of the improvements to selfie cam shots are facilitated by the aforementioned notch. The depth sensor and larger camera sensor are welcome additions over P30 Pro; the former facilitating groufies and striking night selfies.
The latter, like the main cam’s implementation, augments just about everything about the selfie cam. Bright, colourful shots. Squeezing in a dozen people for a groufie. Low-light capture. A main cam of P40 Pro’s quality would have been outstanding just a few years ago.
Specifications
| Chipset: | HiSilicon Kirin 990 5G |
| CPU: | Octa-core (2×2.86 GHz Cortex-A76 & 2×2.36 GHz Cortex-A76 & 4×1.95 GHz Cortex-A55) |
| Memory: | 8GB RAM; 128GB ROM, 8GB RAM; 256GB ROM |
| Display: | 6.58”; 1200×2640 OLED; 90Hz; 19.5:9 |
| Rear Camera: | Quad Leica Lens -50 MP, f/1.9, (wide), PDAF, OIS (23mm) -12 MP, f/3.4, (125mm) (telephoto), PDAF, OIS, 5x optical zoom -40 MP, f/1.8, (18mm) (ultrawide), 1/1.54″, PDAF -TOF 3D, (depth) |
| Video: | 2160p@30/60fps, 1080p@30/60fps; gyro-EIS, OIS, ISO 51,200 |
| Front Camera: | 32 MP, f/2.2 (wide), 1/2.8″ |
| OS Version: | Android 10.0, EMUI 10.1 |
| Connectivity: | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-bandBluetooth 5.1, A2DP, LE |
| Battery: | 4,200mAh Li-Po |
| Dimensions: | 158.2 x 72.6 x 9mm |
| Colours: | Silver Frost, Ice White, Deep Sea Blue, Blush Gold, Black |
Another world-beating stills performance coupled with a considered design, Huawei P40 Pro woos. It would be for nothing without the software but Huawei have pulled off what seemed impossible.
There are still some apps to be properly replaced and certain App Gallery features need refinement but they have pulled off a remarkable feat – building a mobile service without Google Services in less than a year. And in that time, producing something viable for many bar the most basic Android user or hopeless Google addict.
