Huawei Announces P40, P40 Pro and P40 Pro+: A New Generation of Cameras

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It’s been a year now since Huawei had launched its successful P30 series smartphones, and a lot has happened since then. Following a trade-war between the United States and China, Huawei ended up being sanctioned, with the most notable effect being that the company no longer has access to Google’s services. Last autumn, we saw the launch of the Mate 30 series, the company’s first flagship phone to ship without GMS. We had argued that those phones lacked sufficient hardware differentiation to be able to make up for the lack of Google’s services, and it would be some time before we would see Huawei’s own HMS (Huawei Mobile Services) mature to a state that represents it being a valid every-day alternative. That goal is inching ever closer as Huawei spends large resources and efforts to get developers onboard its own ecosystem.

Today, Huawei is doubling down on its efforts to regain western market share, revealing brand-new hardware as well as expanding the company’s AppGallery app store, introducing the new P40, P40 Pro as well as the P40 Pro+.

The trio of phones are successors to the company’s photography-focused P series, yet again pushing the envelope in terms of innovative camera hardware, adding to the mix some new exclusive sensors, including a new large 1/1.28” 52MP RYYB unit, as well as coming with an array of various other modules – including an expansive telephoto module selection, and the first ever 10x optical zoom module in the industry.

                              

Notable about the Kirin 990 5G is that it’s integrating the 5G modem into the SoC – Huawei here is claiming that this is particularly beneficial to battery life as the power consumption is much reduced compared to say Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865+X55 modem combination.

                               

Connectivity-wise, it’s also the first phone to employ the new Kirin W650 WiFi-chipset, supporting WiFi 6 as well as 160MHz channels at 5GHz, meaning it can reach speeds of up to 2400Mbps, double that of competing solutions such as on the Galaxy S20 for example.

                              

The super-start of the new camera hardware is Huawei’s new 1/1.28” 50MP sensor of the main unit, allowing Huawei to now claim they have the largest camera sensor in a smartphone as it’s a hair larger than the 1/1.3” unit of the S20 Ultra and Xiaomi’s 108MP phones.