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HUAWEI Mate40 Pro Review

Charles TYK

Introduction

This is the HUAWEI Mate40 Pro, HUAWEI’s second flagship of the year 2020. This phone actually came into Malaysia quite late due to the current pandemic, which is understandable. By the time I finished testing this phone, it’s already 2021. Without further ado, here comes the full review!

HUAWEI Mate40 Pro Specs

Design

In terms of design, the HUAWEI Mate40 Pro shares the same design language as the P40 Pro that I reviewed last year. It doesn’t have the Quad-Curve Overflow Display like the P40 Pro, but you still have curves on both sides. HUAWEI calls it Horizon Display, which offers remarkable immersion, with on-screen content splashed across the surface, streaming colors, icons, and text as if spilled from a waterfall. One weird thing though, the pre-applied screen protector of the phone doesn’t have the rounded edges following the border of the glass, but weird sharp edges cutout.

Like the P40 Pro, the phone has a wide camera cutout on the top left corner of the screen. It houses a 13MP selfie camera, 3D depth-sensing camera, and an IR sensor for face recognition purposes. Unlike the P40 Pro, it now has a tiny earpiece on top of the display, which is a good thing since the piezoelectric driver on the P40 Pro doesn’t have good audio quality. The optical in-display fingerprint sensor works pretty fast and accurate, quite useful especially for times like this where most of us have to wear a mask.

The right side of the phone has the volume rocker and power button in red. As for the top, you’ll see there’s a speaker next to the IR blaster. Yes, the Mate40 Pro now comes with two stereo speakers for a better audio experience, another one is at the bottom, the same row as the SIM slot (also the NM card slot) and USB-C port.

My review unit is the Mystic Silver variant, which creates a reflective tapestry of light and color, it’ll change to different colors depending on the angles. The back also has a matte finishing, less finger-magnet than a regular glossy glass back. The Space Ring camera system actually reminds me of Apple’s iPod click wheel in the old days. it houses a triple-camera setup and a Laser AutoFocus, co-engineered by Leica.

Display

The HUAWEI Mate40 Pro sports a 6.76-inch OLED 90Hz (2,772 x 1,344 pixels) display, which is more than the Full HD resolution. Once again, HUAWEI opted for the 90Hz refresh rate, probably due to the battery life concern. I’m not really complaining about that even though most flagships nowadays already have a 120Hz refresh rate as I think 90Hz is already smooth enough.

Overall, it has a top-class display but there are two issues with the curved screen — accidental touch and color shifting on the curved part. These two issues are common issues on phones with curved sides on the screen. Double tapping any of the curved sides brought out the volume control for you to adjust the volume so that you don’t need to press the physical button.

Performance

The HUAWEI Mate40 Pro is powered by the company’s own Kirin 9000 processor with 8GB RAM and 256GB UFS 3.1 storage. It is HUAWEI’s latest flagship chipset built on a 5nm process, which supports 5G connectivity. The phone performs quite well throughout day-to-day usage.

When it comes to gaming, its 24-core Mali-G78 GPU isn’t as powerful as its competitors. I was able to play Call of Duty: Mobile in “Very High” graphic quality and frame rate. As for PUBG Mobile, I was able to run “HD” and “HDR” graphics with “Ultra” frame rate, if you want to hit the “90fps” frame rate, you’ll have to change it to “Smooth” graphics. Throughout the gaming period, there might be some frame drops, but the phone temperature kept under control all the time and the battery doesn’t drain as quickly as other phones with other chipsets.

Software

The HUAWEI Mate40 Pro runs on EMUI 11 based on Android 10 with HUAWEI Mobile Services (HMS). HUAWEI AppGallery now has more apps than before, but it is still far behind Google Play Store. The phone still has the Air Gestures feature, making use of the IR sensor on the front. The phone can track your eyes so that it’ll keep the screen on as long as you are looking at the screen.

When I’m side-lying on the bed looking at the phone, the phone will not rotate the screen to landscape mode without needing to turn off auto-rotate. That’s a neat feature for people like me scrolling the phone before my sleep, but sometimes it also doesn’t rotate when I want to rotate to landscape mode to watch a video.

Camera

The HUAWEI Mate40 Pro has quite an identical camera setup to the P40 Pro. Inside the Space Ring camera system houses a 50MP Ultra Vision Camera (Wide Angle, f/1.9 aperture) + 20MP Cine Camera (Ultra-Wide Angle, f/1.8 aperture)  + 12MP Telephoto Camera (f/3.4 aperture, OIS) + Laser AF. The telephoto lens supports 5x optical zoom and 10x hybrid zoom. Selfie wise, there’s a 13MP Ultra Vision Selfie Camera coupled with a 3D Depth Sensing Camera on the front.

Ultra-Wide

12MP Main

5x Optical Zoom

10x Hybrid Zoom

12MP Main

50MP Main

Night Mode (Ultra-Wide)

Night Mode (12MP Main)

By default, the 50MP main camera outputs 12.5MP photos, you’ll have to switch to the “High-Res” mode to shoot a 50MP photo. Image quality generally is quite good and I think there’s no point to shoot 50MP photos as the 12.5MP photos are already good enough. You can check out all the camera samples here.

Battery Life

The HUAWEI Mate40 Pro packs a 4,400mAh battery, which also supports 66W HUAWEI SuperCharge and 50W Wireless HUAWEI SuperCharge. It took the phone just less than 40 minutes to charge from 20% to full, that’s impressive! In terms of battery life, the phone can last through a day easily with more than 6 hours of screen-on-time.

Final Words

Retailing at RM4,299, the HUAWEI Mate40 Pro is now available at HUAWEI Official Online Store. Like the P40 Pro, it is actually a pretty good phone with great design, top-class display, flagship performance, great cameras, and impressive battery life.

Unfortunately, the phone doesn’t support Google Mobile Services, which is still a huge factor preventing many consumers to buy this phone. It is still a tough buy as many of us actually rely on Google services quite a lot. The good news is, HUAWEI AppGallery now has more apps than before, I can even download Telegram straight away from AppGallery now. Hopefully, HUAWEI is able to sort out something with Google one day.

Yay

Nay

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