The P40 Series is available to pre-order now in two coloured versions. Deep Sea Blue and Silver Frost, offering great value for Kiwis.
If a phenomenal camera is a must for your new phone, it's hard to beat Huawei's latest offering, the P40 Pro.
Prices start from RRP$999 for the P40 and RRP$1499 for the P40 Pro, with great deals from its retail partners PB Tech, Noel Leeming, JB Hi-Fi and 2Degrees.
The camera offers vastly improved performance in low light conditions and a strong point and shoot mode. Paired with its premium look and feel, the P40 Pro is a masterpiece of design and capability.
Although the phone won’t have Google services preloaded, users won’t miss out. There is a range of solutions for app installation, a dedicated hotline for Kiwi customers and an online community offering tips and tricks.
Here’s what you need to know.
The camera
The Leica branded camera packs four lenses. 50MP f/1.9 primary and 40MP f/1.8 ultra wide cameras and a 12MP f/3.4 aperture telephoto lens that's able to deliver 5x optical zoom or 50x digital zoom. There's also a ToF (time of flight) sensor for creating bokeh effects in portrait-mode shots.
The primary camera uses an RYYB sensor, the largest that Huawei has ever used. The design is red, yellow, yellow, blue, allowing the sensor to collect more light than more traditional designs.
Huawei's XD Fusion engine is used for the P40 series. This allows AI to optimise the photos and the results are extremely good.
There’s a great new feature called Golden Snap where its AI can remove photobombing friends from a picture and the reflections that appear when you're trying to photograph something behind glass.
For video, the ultra-wide sensor supports the same asset ratio as DSLR cameras. Video can be recorded in 4K and there are options for slow-mo and improved light. There's also a feature which allows you to zoom in and record video in telephoto mode.
The 32MP selfie camera along with the IR depth sensor are housed in the small oval cutout on the front of the device. The depth sensor is used for the face unlocking security function and portrait shot modes.
Design
The phone is a glass sandwich with a metal frame. Huawei calls its OLED screen a Quad-curve Overflow Display, a design that's inspired by nature. It has curved glass at all four edges like water that is overflowing. It's very pretty. The bezels on the phone also look thinner compared to competitors' devices.
The 6.58-inch screen is bright and large with a resolution of 1200 x 2640 which equates to a pixel density of 441 ppi. It looks amazing, particularly when watching video. As the refresh rate of the screen has been increased to 90Hz, images are also smoother on screen when playing mobile games or thumbing through social media feeds - yet no so high as to take too much of a toll on the phone's battery life
The fingerprint reader is in-screen and offers 30 percent faster biometric authentication.
The power button and volume keys are on the right side of the phone and the USB Type-C port is on the base along with a speaker that generates decent audio at good volume. There's no speaker on the screen as the sound during calls comes through the glass.
At the bottom is also where you'll find the dual nano SIM tray which can be used to expand storage.
Performance and battery life
A Kirin 990 chipset provides the brains for the phone. The processor is paired with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage. This can be increased with microsSD cards.
The Huawei P40 Pro has a 4,200MAh battery which can get a user easily through a busy day with juice still left at the end. Light use gets two full days from a single charge.
The P40 Pro supports 40W fast-charging with the charger included in the box. Wireless charging is also available as is reverse-wireless charging for charging accessories such as headphones with the phone's battery.
Operating system and software
Huawei uses its own overlay EMUI 10.1 based on Android 10. This operating system introduces a host of new features that enable a richer, more seamless AI life.
There are plenty of ways people can make sure they have all the apps they need on a daily basis.
Phone Clone: This is the easiest way to get apps on the P40 Pro with most of your regularly used apps just transferring straight across from your old device. You can even get an even faster speed when phone cloning using the built-in WI-FI 6 Plus support.
Huawei App Gallery: Huawei has its own email client, browser, calendar and app store. In the store, you'll find plenty of big name apps such Snapchat, TikTok and Fornite and developers are constantly optimising new apps for the platform. The App Gallery also provides you with Quick App which will have plenty of applications to download.
You’ll also quickly be able to find suitable alternatives to some of the more popular Google apps. Used to using Google Maps? Try a third-party app called Here WeGo.
Huawei browser: For some apps you can’t find, you can use Huawei’s built-in browser to create a shortcut to the homescreen. You can also use www.apptaken.com to download the apps you want.
For any P40 or Huawei App Gallery related help, people can call a dedicated local hotline on 0226667888, or email servicenz@huawei.com. The global number is 0800-451199.
There’s also a special community area online where users can jump online and share their tips and tricks.
Huawei says it’s committed to grow with New Zealanders and it’s honoured to be working with Emirates Team NZ this year as its official smart device partner.
P40 users get 5GB of cloud storage and a further 50GB that’s free for 12 months.
Other amazing offers from Huawei-
The latest watch GT2E is available for pre-order on May 8 from PB Tech and Noel Leeming at RRP$279, and comes with a great offer. The two colours to choose are graphite black and lava red.
Two laptop models are Mate D14 and Mate D15 are available for pre-order from PB Tech. The first 50 cosumers will get a free Media Pad T5 as a gift. The colour space for this is grey.
This article was created for Huawei New Zealand
