Review of Huawei P40 Pro + - a smartphone with incredible zoom and a very high price

The Huawei P40 Pro +, the most advanced smartphone of the Chinese company, arrived in Russia. Let's find out what the novelty can surprise, except for the price.

Table of contents

• Specifications
• Design and ergonomics
• Screen
• Software and performance
• Sound and vibration
• Camera
• Autonomy
• Outcome

Specifications

Design and ergonomics

The first difference between Huawei P40 Pro + and standard P40 Pro - body materials. The backrest is made of ceramic, not glass. This has a positive effect on durability and scratch resistance, but now the smartphone weighs 226 g.

The novelty in black is like a magnet for prints: ceramics instantly become covered with greasy stains, and at the same time collects dust from pockets. To get decent photos of the smartphone, I had to thoroughly work with a microfiber cloth. On the white version, prints will be less noticeable.

Also, the case is very slippery - the smartphone is easy to drop out of hand, so you have to hide all the beauty with a case. The device itself is protected according to the IP68 standard and can withstand a half-hour immersion in water to a depth of one meter.

Almost the entire front side is occupied by a screen with curved edges. In the upper left corner there is a large cutout for the 32 megapixel front camera and a face recognition system. The latter works precisely even in complete darkness thanks to the infrared sensor. There is also a fingerprint scanner, it is built into the display and also showed itself perfectly.

There is no usual spoken speaker here, the sound is heard through the front glass using a piezoelectric element. At the top there is an infrared diode for controlling equipment. Power buttons and loudness are placed on the right side, and at the bottom are a multimedia speaker, a USB Type-C 3.1 connector and a hybrid slot for two SIM cards.

Screen

The Huawei P40 Pro + features a 6.58-inch OLED display with a resolution of 2,640 x 1,200 pixels. The dot density of 441 ppi is enough not to see grain in small print. The refresh rate is 90 Hz.

The image is very bright and contrasty, full DCI ‑ P3 color gamut and HDR10 support are claimed. The default color reproduction is saturated, lovers of calm colors can turn on the normal display mode. Fine-tuning in RGB circle is also available.

Since this is an OLED screen, low brightness settings cause backlight flickering, which causes eye strain for some users. Fortunately, there is flicker reduction in the settings. In addition, the UV filter reduces eye strain at night.

Software and performance

The novelty is running Android 10 with the EMUI 10 shell. Due to US sanctions, there are no Google services and a standard app store - AppGallery is installed instead.

The branded marketplace is no longer as useless as it was a year ago, but many programs from Western companies are not here. Some are emulated from browser versions, for example Instagram. Others can be installed by downloading the APK file from third-party sources.

The firmware itself looks clean and runs fast, which is to be expected from a flagship. Responsible for performance is the Kirin 990 chipset and 8 GB of RAM. Internal storage capacity is 512 GB and is expandable with NM format memory cards. The smartphone does an excellent job with World of Tanks: Blitz, delivering stable 60 FPS at maximum settings.

Sound and vibration

Huawei P40 Pro + received a single speaker at the bottom. Instead of a spoken speaker, there is a piezoelectric element under the screen, which did not allow realizing stereo sound. In this regard, the smartphone seriously loses to such models as Xiaomi Mi 10 or Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra. Although the sound is loud, it lacks even a hint of bass and volume. In addition, the speaker is easy to block with a horizontal grip.

The vibration isn't impressive either. The tactile feedback is strong and collected and is easy to feel when the smartphone is in your pocket. However, the vibration motor here, as in the models, is three times cheaper and is not capable of a wide range of responses.

Camera

The main thing in this smartphone is a system of five cameras. The standard module is built on a 1 / 1.2-inch Sony IMX700 sensor. The resolution is 50 megapixels, by default the camera shoots at 12.5 megapixels with the combination of four adjacent pixels into one. She also received optical stabilization and an f / 1.9 aperture lens, developed in conjunction with Leica.

In addition to the standard module, there is a 40 megapixel shirik with an f / 1.8 aperture, a Time ‑ of ‑ Flight depth sensor and two 8 ‑ megapixel zoom cameras: with 3x and 10x magnification. It is the latter that sets the smartphone apart from all the others: it has three mirrors and a prism that refract the light flux five times.

Daytime shots are amazing. There is not even a hint of aggressive compression or oversharpening, the camera retains a maximum of details and halftones. The good news is that there is an intermediate zoom: 10x magnification is excessive in many situations. By the way, because of the f / 4.4 aperture, the periscope does not shoot well in the dark.

The smartphone records videos in 4K resolution at 60 FPS and stereo sound. By default, shooting is carried out with a wide-angle lens, which gives the maximum angle of view and a little shake. The quality is also decent.

Autonomy

The Huawei P40 Pro + has a 4,200 mAh battery inside. Thanks to the energy efficient platform, the smartphone can easily withstand a day of web surfing, social networks and photography - about 40% of the charge remains by night. Games drain the battery more actively: it took 6% in World of Tanks: Blitz in half an hour. Recharging from the included 40W adapter takes just 40 minutes.

Outcome

The Huawei P40 Pro + is 35 thousand more expensive than the standard model and offers a ceramic body, more memory and, of course, 10x zoom. Is it worth the overpayment? Of course no.

Nonetheless, this is an amazing device, and at the same time a demonstration of the capabilities of Huawei. In a couple of years, such cameras will be available in affordable models, but now it is a luxury that will have to pay fabulous money. This is the price of progress.

Buy

The author thanks Huawei for the device provided for testing. The company had no opportunity to influence its outcome.