After months of speculation and rumors, Huawei has unveiled one of the most anticipated smartphone lineups of 2020, the Huawei P40 series today. This year, the lineup has a special addition, the Huawei P40 Pro Plus. This is the company’s most powerful camera phone to date, upgrading its cutting edge RYYB camera technology and bringing a new generation of its periscope camera setup. The P40 Pro Plus gets exclusive features that sets it apart from the already powerful P40 Pro. Let’s take a deeper look at the two new models.
Huawei P40 Pro & Pro Plus Design
Both models feature the same design with a curved screen and rectangular camera housing at the back. The P40 Pro builds on the material and color scheme of its predecessor by offering a soft matte glass finish in five color options: Deepsea Blue, Silver Frost, Ice White, Black, and Blush Gold.
While the Huawei P40 Pro Plus uses the same form factor as the P40 Pro, it features a different texture and material. In fact, the P40 Pro Plus is one of the best-looking smartphones in the market right now. The phone features a premium ceramic body that comes in just two plain colors: Ceramic Black and Ceramic White. What makes this design special is the amount of processing that’s required to bring this design to reality.
Huawei reveals that the P40 Pro Plus’ body uses a nanotech technology to compress the ceramic powder and kiln it for five days at 1500 degrees. The resulting material has a refractive index similar to diamond and the strength of sapphire. So you don’t have to worry about scratches or fingerprints on the phone’s back.
The P40 Pro Plus brings a really powerful camera setup onboard, featuring five cameras (as opposed to P40 Pro’s quad-cameras), a first for Huawei’s P-series lineup. The five cameras are placed in a rectangular camera housing on the top left corner.
The Huawei P40 Pro Plus is also IP68 certified, just like the P40 Pro, so it is dust and water-resistant.
Huawei P40 Pro & Pro Plus Display
Huawei P40 Pro Plus comes with the exact same display as the P40 Pro model. The phone features a 6.58-inch 19.8:9 aspect ratio display with 2640 x 1200 resolution and 441 PPI. In case you are wondering, yes, the P40 Pro and P40 Pro Plus come with a 90Hz screen refresh rate.
The company is calling it as an ‘overflow display’ that’s inspired by the surface tension of a cup filled with water up to the brim. So the display is curved on both the edges with really thin bezels (1.7mm side bezels).
There are two punch-hole cameras in its display and both the P40 Pro and Pro Plus models feature IR face unlock. So, there’s a 32MP AF camera and another IR camera for Face Unlock and depth sensing. This ensures that you can accurately unlock your device even when the lighting is dim. The IR sensor also helps add an Attention Aware feature and Smart Gestures. You can simply Swipe in the air to scroll and grab to capture the screen.
Note that the standard P40 also features a front IR depth sensor, it only comes with a regular AI face unlock.
Huawei has also upgraded the screen fingerprint sensor. So now all the three Huawei P40 models including the P40 Pro Plus features a 30% larger screen fingerprint sensor which is 30% faster as well.
Huawei P40 Pro Plus Cameras
The biggest difference between the P40 Pro and P40 Pro Plus is in the camera department. The Huawei P40 Pro comes with a quad-camera setup while the P40 Pro Plus features a penta-camera setup. The Pro Plus variant features an additional Super Periscope telephoto sensor that captures up to 10x optical zoom and 100x digital zoom.
The Huawei P40 Pro Plus camera setup is as follow:
- A 40MP f/1.8 Ultra Wide Cine Lens
- An upgraded 50MP RYYB f/1.9 sensor with OIS
- An 8MP f/2.4 Optical Super Periscope Telephoto camera with OIS and up to 10x optical zoom (240mm)
- 8MP f/2.4 Optical Periscope camera with OIS (80mm)
- ToF depth sensor
- Color temperature flash
The biggest upgrade in the camera department this year is the 10x optical zoom capable Super Periscope camera. This makes the Huawei P40 Pro Plus as the world’s first smartphone camera with such high optical zoom support! This is achieved by using a dual prism design with multiple reflections inside the periscope camera setup. So you have multiple optical zoom modes like 3X low-range zoom, 5x mid-range zoom, and 10x long-range optical zoom.
Another highlight of this Super Periscope camera setup is the use of the RYYB sensor. This also makes it the first smartphone from Huawei to use two separate RYYB sensors, which shows Huawei is confident about its RGB alternative. The company claims that the use of the RYYB sensor for telephoto significantly increases light intake for clearer zoomed-in shots.
In short, the Huawei P40 Pro Plus is capable of capturing 10x optical zoom, 20x Hybrid zoom, and up to 100x digital zoom.
As mentioned above, the Huawei P40 Pro model skips this super periscope sensor. The rest of the camera setup is the same as the Pro Plus. So the P40 Pro is able to capture 5x optical zoom, 10x hybrid zoom, and 50x digital zoom – similar to the P30 Pro.
Both the P40 Pro models feature 16-in-1 pixel fusion technology that can churn out pictures with a 4.48um pixel size. The 40MP UltraWide Cine lens on these two devices is actually the industry’s largest ultra-wide camera sensor with 1/1.54-inch sensor size.
The P40 Pro Plus takes the ISO sensitivity to an incredible ISO 51200 for videos. The two models can capture 4K HDR+ time-lapse videos, 4K 60 fps videos, 7680 fps super slo-mo videos, as well as real-time bokeh videos. Dual OIS + AIS ensures stability for the videos shot from the phone.
The P40 Pro Plus can also take Super Zoom videos, for example, Huawei claims that it can capture the zoomed-in video of the moon clearly. There’s also a special Dual View video mode that outputs a combined ultra-wide and close up view on the screen.
Upfront, the Huawei P40 Pro and P40 Pro Plus feature a dual 32MP selfie shooter and an IR depth sensor. This front selfie shooter features AutoFocus and is capable of capturing 4K selfie videos.
Huawei P40 Pro & Pro Plus Specs
The Huawei P40 Pro duo is powered by the Kirin 990 5G processor. The chip features a brand new NPU that offers a 460% improvement in performance and a 290% improvement in efficiency. Both the models naturally support SA/NSA 5G networks. The phone also features a 4-layer VC Liquid Super Cooling system to ensure that the phone stays cool, even under heavy load.
The Huawei phone comes with Wi-Fi 6 Plus support with transfer speeds up to 2600Mbps. All the models come with EMUI 10.1 out of the box with Android 10 onboard. Note that the P40 models don’t have Google services. Instead, the phones feature Huawei Mobile Services with its own AppGallery App Store.
The new phones also offer dual SIM and also supports eSIM (only for its single SIM variant). Note that you can also use one of these SIM slots to add more storage to the device via a nano memory card.
Huawei P40 Pro & Pro Plus Battery
Both the models feature a decent 4200mAh battery on board with 40W wired Charging. But the P40 Pro Plus gets an equally fast Wireless Charging too! Yes, you read that right, the P40 Pro Plus features the world’s fastest wireless charging technology with 40W charging speed. Like its predecessors, the P40 Pro duo also supports reverse wireless charging.
Huawei P40 Pro & Pro Plus Pricing & Availability
The Huawei P40 Pro starts at €999 ($1095) for the 8GB RAM and 256GB storage model.
The Huawei P40 Pro Plus starts at €1399 ($1533) for the 8GB RAM and 512GB storage model.
The P40 Pro will be available on 7th April while the P40 Pro Plus will be available a while later in June 2020.
