Huawei P40 Pro Review - Refinement done right - Android
Last year, the Huawei P30 Pro was one of the best camera phones the industry had ever seen. Its innovative periscope zoom camera and impressive image quality were nothing short of excellent, and we loved it.
This year, thanks to the controversy with the US government and the loss of Google apps, the P40 Pro bursts from the gate with an arduous handicap. Its lack of Google services will likely have some consumers dismissing it as an upgrade option. Are its hardware strengths enough to make up for its software weaknesses? Stick around to find out in Android Authority’s Huawei P40 Pro review.
One of the most refined aspects of the P40 Pro is its design — though not in the way you might think. See, the P40 Pro has raised corners with glass that’s curved on all four sides to mimic water on the brink of breaking surface tension. This results in a unique aesthetic that won’t be to everyone’s taste — certainly not mine. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the ultra-thin bezels just look odd, especially head-on. However, the design’s byproduct is fantastic ergonomic improvements.
Continue reading: Waterfall displays: The latest design trend nobody’s asked for
For example, swipe gestures have become the default way to navigate our phones. Some devices struggle to make the gestures feel seamless due to the harsh transition from metal to glass, particularly the top and bottom edges. With the P40 Pro’s curved glass, swiping in from any direction feels smoother than anything I’ve ever used.
The slightly angled aluminum sides help the phone rest in your hand effortlessly. By contrast, last year’s P30 Pro felt sharp to hold due to the thin side rails, and the Mate 30 Pro felt too slippery due to the excessively rounded waterfall display glass. This, combined with almost perfect weight-distribution, leads to a phenomenal feel in the hand. I’m convinced that this is the best-feeling phone on the market.
The volume rocker and home-button on the right edge feel precise and crisp. The top-mounted IR-blaster and microphone are satisfyingly aligned, and the same goes for the bottom-mounted SIM tray, microphone, USB-C port, and speaker. Everything feels calculated and clean. The handset is IP68-rated to give you peace of mind that your $1,000 device will survive some spillage or a brief swim.
Huawei’s design choices may keep some cause some potential buyers to shy away from the P40 Pro. The excessively rounded screen corners, the massive camera bump, the distractingly-big punch-hole, and the strange raised corners take it down a peg or two for me. You can tell Huawei was trying to 2020-ify the P30 Pro and the result is simply not quite the prettiest phone out there.
Huawei was trying to 2020-ify the device and it's done exactly that.
Huawei has finally added a high-refresh-rate display to one of its flagships. The P40 Pro’s 90Hz AMOLED panel looks great. Despite its middling resolution compared to the competition, this looks like the best screen ever fitted to a Huawei device. Viewing angles are superb, with little to no color shift when tilting the device off-axis. At over 440 nits sustained brightness, it’s not topping any charts, but I found it bright enough for viewing in direct sunlight. I got to test that out in my garden during the annoyingly sunny quarantine period we’ve had in the UK.
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, though. First, the shadowing caused by the curved glass edges is noticeable when looking at flat colors. This is particularly obvious on the left and right edges. Second, whilst 90Hz is an improvement, the lack of 120Hz and Quad HD resolution means that the P40 Pro doesn’t quite match the competition. This wasn’t an issue during everyday use, but it’s likely to put some buyers off an already sketchy purchase.
Continue reading: Refresh rate explained: What does 60Hz, 90Hz, or 120Hz mean?
Last year’s Mate 30 Pro gave us a preview of the P40 Pro’s performance thanks to its identical processor/memory setup. In summary, the Kirin 990 is a decent system-on-a-chip (SoC) with similar CPU power to the Snapdragon 855, but with lesser GPU performance.
The P40 Pro was mostly buttery smooth thanks to the Kirin 990 5G and 8GB RAM. There were a couple of frame drops in high-intensity 3D gaming titles, particularly Fortnite and PUBG Mobile. They weren’t game-breaking by any means, but they were noticeable. This is likely due to the inferior GPU. To help the phone sustain high frame rates, Huawei really will need to upgrade the GPU in the next iteration of the Kirin chipset.
Continue reading: The best phones for gaming
Spec heads might be disappointed with 8GB of RAM when there are phones with 12 and 16GB of RAM out there. However, I can safely say that 8GB is enough memory in 2020. It helps that Huawei’s task management is brutal and constantly freeing up memory by killing old apps. On the flip side, this can detract from the experience. Some users have reported podcast and music apps disappearing from their recents due to Huawei’s aggressive RAM management.
The P series gains 5G thanks to the Kirin 990 5G chipset, which supports sub-6GHz 5G bands. Its lack of mmWave support puts it at a disadvantage compared to the Snapdragon 865 on paper. That said, there’s far more sub-6 coverage right now.
Unlocking the phone is as quick as should be expected from a device costing four figures. The optical in-display fingerprint scanner, which Huawei claims is 30% larger and 30% faster than the previous model, is a noticeable improvement. It registered my thumb with a way better hit rate than the P30 Pro.
The face-unlock is super quick, too, though not quite as snappy as the Pixel 4’s in my experience. The P40 Pro relies on infrared technology to help detect the user’s face, even in the dark. It works as advertised.
Huawei has developed a reputation for creating smartphones that last forever on a charge. Two days is what I’ve come to expect from a Huawei flagship. The P40 Pro is absolutely no different, and I consistently got two days out of the phone.
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