Huawei Mate 40 Pro Review: Incredible Hardware But Have No Google Apps

Huawei Mate 40 Pro is one of the best smartphones when it comes to hardware but without the software support as a result of the US ban, users will have a hard time using it as their only phone.

Huawei Mate 40 Pro Price And Availability

The phone comes at the price of around $1,400. Huawei Mate 40 Pro price in India is expected to be Rs. 104,490 for the model with 256GB of onboard storage and 8GB of RAM.

Huawei Mate 40 Pro Design

Huawei Mate 40 Pro is a premium phone and its appearance can attest. The phone is sandwiched between a glass screen and a glass back with an aluminum frame.

With a dimension of 162.9x75.5x9.1mm and a weight of 212g, it seems like a big phone but given the screen size and the curved-edge display, the phone doesn’t feel especially huge.

The volume rocker and power button are on the right of the phone. Since the headphone jack is absent here, fans of wired headphones will have to use USB-C wired options or a converter.

While the back of the phone looks sleek, it’s a fingerprint magnet. The highlight here is the pretty camera bump housing the lenses and the flash module.

Huawei Mate 40 Pro Display

Huawei Mate 40 Pro has a great display but since users’ options of streaming services are rather limited, they won’t have much of a chance to enjoy what it can do.

The phone’s screen measures 6.76 inches and has a resolution of 2772x1344, higher than many other handsets on the market. The display features OLED HDR10 so colors pop and look vivid on it. The phone also has high max brightness.

The handset’s refresh rate caps at 90Hz, a little bit low given the fact that Huawei Mate 40 Pro is a premium phone. Users can opt for the 60Hz option to save battery life, or enable the dynamic mode to let the phone switch automatically between the two rates depending on what you are doing.

If we have to point out one problem with the screen, it’s the camera cutout which is quite big and cuts a considerable amount out of the screen estate.

Huawei Mate 40 Pro Camera

Huawei Mate 40 Pro ranks among the best camera phones on the market with a larger number of options and modes than most other smartphones out there.

The 50MP f/1.9 camera sports an RYYB sensor meaning it can take in more light. The primary snapper is paired with a 12MP f/3.4 periscope telephoto and a 20MP f/1.8 ultra-wide camera.

Shots taken by the Huawei Mate 40 Pro look great, from portraits, close-up pictures to scenic vistas.

The ultra-wide camera features a free-form lens that can effectively reduce distortion we usually see on this kind of snapper.

The 5x zoom of the periscope telephoto lens is excellent as it’s hard to tell shots have been zoomed at all. The phone does have support for 50x zoom but pictures will look rather grainy.

Portrait is another excellent mode as it tweaks shadow and highlight to make the subject stands out naturally.

Huawei Mate 40 Pro shines in low-light photography with shots having balanced shadow and highlight, along with plenty of details.

On the other side, the phone features a dual-camera setup with a 13-megapixel f/2.4 ultra-wide camera paired with a time-of-flight snapper. Selfies taken by this setup have bold colors. Plus, since there is an ultra-wide lens presence, users have the choice to adjust the framing.

Huawei has gone big with AI Optimization for this phone. But users won’t be enticed to turn the feature on as the phone is capable of taking great pictures without it. Some shots may benefit from this ability but not all.

Videos are shot with the ultra-wide camera, not the primary one. With image stabilization off, you will have at 4K 60FPS, but with it’s on, the best you have is 1080p and 30FPS.

Overall, footage, even without image stabilization, looks great for phone videos.

Huawei Mate 40 Pro Specs And Performance

Under the hood, the phone runs on a Kirin 9000 chipset paired with RAM of 8GB.

Doing tasks like playing games and edit images feels snappy on this phone. However, the real problem here is app situations. AppGallery can’t replace Play Store.

AppGallery has a lot of apps, but not many social media options except for TikTok and Snapchat. Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and Spotify are absent on the Huawei Mate 40 Pro.

The US ban is a real bummer for users as we had to use a second phone to access Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter.

The phone is powered by Android 10 with EMUI 11 built on top, offering a slew of options to change the way the phone works, from functional to visual tweaks.

Huawei Mate 40 Pro Battery Life

Huawei Mate 40 Pro has a durable battery that can well last a whole day with ease.

The 4,400mAh battery does contribute to durability but we attribute most of the extra time to the software optimizations.

Charging options include 66W wired charging that can fill the battery in under an hour. The phone also supports 50W wireless powering.

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