Everything we know so far about the Huawei P40 series (Updated March 20) - Android

Evan Blass

Update: March 20, 2020 (6:00 PM ET): Leaked Huawei P40 series renders keep rolling in, the latest of which give us another full-body look at the devices and reveal a few more potential color variants. Read on for more details!

Original Article: November 18, 2019 (11:11 AM ET): Huawei is on track to launch its flagship Huawei P40 smartphone series. The Chinese firm is clearly undeterred even though it is still barred from using Google services on its phones.

In fact, the US ban has pushed Huawei to strengthen its base in China, where its smartphone business is now doing better than ever. Huawei is investing a billion dollars into its own suite of mobile services, rivaling Google’s offerings. A big chunk of that investment is also going into creating a viable library of apps to counter the Play Store.

Related: Huawei rotating chairman says survival is ‘first priority’ in 2020

With all this in the works, it’ll be interesting to see how Huawei ups its game with the new P40 lineup.

Last year, the Huawei P30 series brought excellent cameras and great specs in a well-designed package. Can Huawei strike all the right chords once again with the Huawei P40, P40 Pro, and P40 Pro Premium Edition? Here’s what we’ve heard so far.

Huawei P40 series: Name and launch date

Huawei has confirmed that it’ll announce the Huawei P40 series on March 26, 2020. The manufacturer recently revealed a teaser banner for the launch, and it confirms that it’s now an online event.

According to recent leaks, there could be three new flagships in the P40 series — the Huawei P40, Huawei P40 Pro, and Huawei P40 Pro Premium Edition. There is also the Huawei P40 Lite, which the company quietly launched in Spain on February 27, 2020.

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Currently, only the P40 moniker is confirmed. Going by the names of last year’s flagships, it’s believed that at least two phones in the series will be called the P40 and P40 Pro. The name of the third premium version is still unconfirmed.

One of the major differences between the three rumored Huawei P40 flagships is their camera setup. The Huawei P40 is expected to come with triple rear cameras. Meanwhile, the P40 Pro and P40 Pro Premium Edition are said to come with quad- and penta-camera arrays, respectively. We’ll talk more about them in the camera section below.

Let’s first take a look at the design of the new phones.

Huawei P40 series design

91Mobiles

Leaked renders show that the Huawei P40 features a completely flat punch-hole display, though our recent “hands-on” suggests it could be slightly curved. The renders also reveal a pill-shaped cutout on the top left corner of the screen housing two selfie shooters.

The P40 Pro most likely features a curved display, and recent P40 Pro Premium Edition renders also reveal a similar curved display as seen below.

ITHome

Besides the possible varying displays and the camera layouts, all three devices look almost identical in renders.

Later leaks also reaffirm this earlier renders. Teen tipster Ishan Agarwal took to Twitter to post renders of both the standard Huawei P40 and P40 Pro in gold, black, and gray color variants.

Check out the P40 Pro renders:

#HUAWEI #P40Pro Official Renders in 3 colours (more soon)! This time with a front that will give you a better idea of how bezel-less the phone is, especially with all sides of the screen curved. I think it looks great in these colours. What do you think? #VisionaryPhotography pic.twitter.com/8v617QLMGK

— Ishan Agarwal (@ishanagarwal24) March 19, 2020

Here are the P40 renders:

Time for the #Huawei #P40 in the same 3 colour options. This one also looks pretty good but has a flat display, and one less camera. Stainless Steel Edges in both phones? #VisionaryPhotography #HuaweiP40 #HuaweiP40Pro #HuaweiP40Series pic.twitter.com/09o4UlLA9G

— Ishan Agarwal (@ishanagarwal24) March 19, 2020

Speaking of color variants, a recent report claimed the P40 and P40 Pro are expected to officially launch in five gradient colorways: Black, Blush Gold, Silver Frost, Deep Sea Blue, and Ice White.

However, tipster Evan Blass tweeted out an image of a sixth new color for the P40 Pro which can only be described as mint green. Do note, though, that that is not likely the official name of the colorway. You can see it in the image below.

Evan Blass

The rumored colorways just get more confusing from there. In a Twitter thread, Blass revealed several more renders of the P40, P40 Pro, and possibly the P40 Pro Premium Edition in seven different color variants, not including the above green color.

These images also give us yet another look around the body of the P40 and P40 Pro handsets and further reiterate much of what we previously knew about the designs.

Notably, none of the renders we’ve seen so far show a 3.5mm jack on either the P40 or P40 Pro. Instead, both phones are seen sporting a USB-C port and nothing else. We expected the Pro variant to skip the headphone jack, but the vanilla Huawei P30 featured the much-loved port last year. It seems that Huawei is fully abandoning it going forward.

A possible leaked image of the pro variant recently made its way to Chinese social media site Weibo that backs up some of the previous claims. We only see the front of the device in the image, yet there are still a few things we can glean from this potential hands-on.