A few days after the announcement of Huawei’s conference date, the Huawei Mate 40 series has just been unveiled. The Huawei flagship tries to seduce us with its curved screen, Kirin 9000, fast charging, and photo performance that promise to be at the top of the game.
On Thursday, October 22, 2020, Huawei finally lifted the veil on the Mate 40, Mate 40 Pro, and Mate 40 Pro +. As announced at the conference, only the Mate 40 Pro will be marketed in European countries. In the wake of the event, Huawei also announced the Freebuds Studio, its first high-end headphones.
A CAREFUL FAMILIAR DESIGN
By looking at the new Mate 40 series, we discover a smartphone which takes up some design codes of the Mate 30, in particular with a gigantic OLED Horizon display. Huawei insists on edges that stretch across the phone with a curvature of 88 degrees on the Mate 40 Pro and 68 degrees on the Mate 40.
We find a flexible 6.5-inch touchscreen at 90 Hz refresh rate and with a definition of 2376×1080 pixels on the Mate 40 and a 6.76-inch screen at 90Hz with a definition of 2772×1344 pixels on the Mate 40 Pro and higher models. The screens cover the DCIP3 color spectrum and are HDR compatible, they also
include a fingerprint reader housed under the panel.
On the Mate 40 Pro, the borders maintain the shortcuts to the applications and the sound management of the smartphone even if Huawei has returned the physical volume buttons that had disappeared with the Mate 30. An AI is also responsible for limiting the reactions of the smartphone when pressing on the edges to avoid false touch.
There is also the famous red button to turn on the device and trigger photos faster. Huawei especially inaugurates a new design on the back of its device
with the “Space Ring” and photo sensors in the form of a ring.
As for the colors, The Mate 40 and the Mate 40 Pro are available in several choices including a brand new Mystic Silver with quite impressive and multicolored holographic reflections, black, white, green or yellow vegan leather. The higher models, the Mate 40 PRO+ and the Porsche Design Huawei Mate 40 RS features a ceramic white or ceramic black finish.
The two higher models are IP68 certified while the base mate 40 comes with IP58 rating, so be careful around water with the latter!
PERFORMANCES WITH STRONG PROMISES
In terms of performance, the Kirin 9000 benefits from an engraving in 5 nm, a first for Huawei which allows the brand to have more than 15.3 billion transistors on board of its Soc, which is 30% more than the iPhone 12 chipset, for example. The Kirin 9000 offers an 8-core CPU associated with 24-core Mali-G78 GPU cores which ranks it well beyond the performance of its main competitor, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865+. It is also the first SoC of the brand to embed the new 5G modem which is 5X faster in uplink and 2X faster in Downlink than the X55 of the Snapdragon 865+
Thanks to its 5 nm engraving, the Kirin 9000 also consumes much less energy than the competition. In fact, the Mate 40 is equipped with a 4400 mAh battery which will offer a record autonomy. And if this isn’t good enough, these phones feature 66W fast charging and 50W wireless charging.
CAMERA AND PHOTOS: ALWAYS ON TOP
On the camera side, there is the main module of 50MP RYYB at f/1.9, it is a large-format sensor of 1/1.28″. On the Mate 40 the latter is associated with an ultra wide-angle sensor of 16 MP at f/2.2, a 3X telephoto 8MP at f/2.4 with optical stabilization and a 5X optical zoom.
On the Mate 40 Pro, the main sensor is supported by a 20 MP Ultra Wide-Angle Cine sensor at f/1.8, a 5X periscopic telephoto lens of 12 MP at f/3.4 with image stabilization and a 7X optical zoom.
The Pro + version retains the same main sensor associated with a 10X periscope telephoto of 8 MP at f/4.4, a 3X 12 MP telephoto at f/2.4, a TOF lens, a 20 MP Ultra-wide angle Cine camera and ’17X optical zoom. On the Pro + version, we also note the presence of an additional lens on the ultra wide-angle aimed at reducing the distortion of the shots.
On the other hand, The selfie camera is particularly interesting with a dual sensor for the Mate 40 Pro including an ultra wide-angle associated with an algorithm that will automatically select the zoom level to take care of group selfies, or more adjusted selfies depending on the setting or backgrounds.
The wide-angle lenses display 100 degrees of action, while the Cine modules take advantage of XD Fusion HDR technology to offer colorful and clear images even in backlight situations.
The Mate 40 range also offers slow motion video at 240 frames per second and a tracking function to automatically follow a subject after having designated it on the screen.
EMUI 11
The Mate 40 series will embed the EMUI 11 with its share of improvements and in particular advanced multitasking features
Huawei highlights an “eyes on display” mode on the Mate 40 Pro and Pro+ which allows you to keep your smartphone on standby and automatically display certain notifications as soon as you make eye contact with the phone.
New smart gestures are taken into account such as page scrolling, answering a call, adjusting the sound level, activating the smartphone, etc.
But above all, Huawei emphasizes certain services that fill the absence of Google equivalents, which leads us to the next point.
HELLO, HUAWEI MOBILE SERVICES
The Mate 40 Pro continues Huawei’s forced adventure into Android without Google. The EMUI 11 interface relies on Huawei Mobile Services and its in-house app store: AppGallery. The store in question benefits from a catalog that continues to grow so that the user can find a number of popular apps.
In addition, the Petal Search tool allows you to quickly find a whole bunch of applications on other download sources apart from the AppGallery and, above all, to warn the user if one of these apps requires an update. Huawei is also planning a more serious alternative to Google Maps with Petal Maps, a new mapping service that is made available in beta.
PRICE AND AVAILABILITY OF HUAWEI MATE 40, 40
PRO AND 40 PRO+
As for now no release date has been announced. However, The Pre-orders start today October 22 and end on November 11, and here are the prices of each model:
- The Mate 40 will be offered at 899 € in 8GB RAM and 128GB storage version
- The Mate 40 Pro will be offered at 1199 € with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage
- The Mate 40 Pro Plus will be offered at 1399 € with 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage
- The Mate 40 RS Prosche Design will be offered at 2295 € with 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage.
THE CONFERENCE VIDEO
If you missed the live broadcast of the conference, You can re-watch the video below:
