1. Huawei P40 Lite

Huawei doesn’t like to be loud with its Lite series in general. With the P40 Lite, it is of no difference. The flagship P40 lineup’s lite version was quietly announced.

But this isn’t the first time the P40 Lite was unveiled. The device had already been launch in the Chinese market in December 2019 as Huawei nova 6 SE. A month later, it was launched as Huawei nova 7i in Malaysia.

It is a pity since the device wasn’t loudly announced since the Huawei P40 Lite does have a lot to offer. It is another beautifully made smartphone with a premium screen, a trendy quad-camera, and a speedy Kirin 810 chipset.

The bad news is that similar to the flagship P40 lineup, the P40 Lite doesn’t have Google Play Services because of the US’ ban.

2. Display

On paper, the Huawei P40 Lite comes with a lovely display. It has a 6.4-inch LTPU IPS LCD screen with a resolution of 2310x1080 pixels. At the top corner in the left of the screen is a not so small punch-hole for the selfie camera.

There is no information about the manufacturer of the screen glass. But judging the history of Huawei with screen glass, it is some kind of durable glass.

You will notice that the backlight is uneven around the punch hole. It is only annoying on something bright or vivid, or a full white screen. But with the LED screen, it is to be expected as the backlighting isn’t perfect.

Other than that, the screen of the P40 Lite is bright and punchy. It is vivid to the point that you can even mistake it is an OLED screen rather than a LED screen.

Unfortunately, its performance isn’t stellar. The maximum brightness of the screen is 460 nits. And for an LCD screen, it is average.

The P40 Lite can accurately represent the sRGB color space. And unlike the Honor 9X Pro and Huawei Mate 30 Pro, this Huawei device supports Widevine L3 to run Amazon Prime Video and Netflix. But unfortunately, no HD content, only SD videos.

3. Chip

The Huawei P40 Lite is powered by Huawei’s latest mid-range chip, the HiSilicon Kirin 810 SoC. And in the mid-range segment, it is considered to be a beast.

The Kirin 810 chipset goes through a notable upgrade, compared to the Kirin 710. It is manufactured on the 7nm process of TSMC. It is equipped with a different octa-core processor and with newer cores, 6x Cortex A55 clocking at 1.8GHz and 2x Cortex A76 ticking at 2.27GHz.

The most interesting part is probably the GPU. It is a six-core Mali-G52.

The smartphone has impressive benchmark scores. The new Kirin processor can easily outperform any competitor and is ranked at the top for its performance.

The same with the GPU, which turns out to be a snappy performer. With the AnTuTu 8 test, the smartphone also has an outstanding score and wins against other competing smartphones.

So far, the Kirin 810 is truly the most powerful mid-range chip with excellent thermal performance.

4. RAM – Internal Storage

The P40 Lite only has one variant with 6GB of RAM and 128GB internal storage.

5. Battery Life

Huawei has always been known for its smartphones’ strong battery life. The P40 Lite comes equipped with a 4,200mAh battery. Considering it isn’t a flagship device, it is understandable that there isn’t any wireless charging capability. However, it does have a 40W charging rating, meaning it needs no more than an hour to charge a depleted battery from 0 to 100%. When pushed to its limit, the battery managed to last for over 15 hours. However, for the average user, it will probably last for the whole day without you having to recharge it.

6. Camera

On the back of the smartphone is a quad-camera setup. There is one 48MP main camera with an aperture of f/1.8, an 8MP f/2.4 ultra-wide lens, a 2MP macro shooter with an aperture of f/2.4 and a 2MP depth sensor. The setup also consists of a single LED flash.

The main camera probably uses Sony IMX582 or IMX586. By default, the camera produces 12MP images. But you can still take photos in 48MP. Under good lighting conditions, you can have a native 48MP image.

Huawei uses AI to improve the quality of the photos. For a single photo, it will take six seconds. And it is a must to keep the phone steady. And it will be worth it. The 48MP with AI Ultra clarity option photos look much more detailed compared to the regular 42MP photos.

There is an AI mode, which can be switched on or off quickly with a toggle in the viewfinder. The AI will recognize different scenes and then adjust the image parameters.

There is also a Night mode that produces excellent night-time photos.

The 12MP photos delivered by the main camera of the phone look sharp and detailed. The colors are accurate even when the skies sometimes look oversaturated. The dynamic range is great.

48MP AI Ultra Clarity photos take around five or six seconds to take. And each photo consumes around 6MP. This AI mode only works with abundant light. And you have to go to the settings to manually switch to it.

The 48MP AI photos look excellently detailed. And if these photos are downscaled to 12MP, compared to the regular 12MP images, they are way more superior in detail.

The P40 doesn’t have a dedicated zoom camera, which means it’s a digital zoom. A zoomed photo (12MP) takes around a second to be saved. And they have excellent quality.

The camera can zoom as far as 6x. But the photos look bad. Meanwhile, the photos delivered by the 8MP ultra-wide lens look sharp and details even when the color is somewhat washed out. The dynamic range is quite low.

The macro camera produces nice 2MP images with punchy colors and enough detail. But this is only when you are standing 4cm from the object. The fourth snapper is to create a bokeh effect for portraits.

Low-light photos also have good color saturation and detail.