Bucket Tech: Huawei P40 Pro

To say I'm a fan of Huawei's P series products is putting in mildly, I'm on my 4th device right now, the P30 Pro and its absolutely brilliant. Negate the phenomenal camera which allows you to zoom and take pictures of the moon and in no light at all, the phone itself is capable of multiple tasks with ease. No over heating, no stalling, no unexpected restarts and that is what you essentially want in a phone. To perform what you need it to do with out any hassles. So when Huawei sent me their new P40 Pro a couple of weeks ago to test out, I was very interested to see how different it would be given that this phone is after the US trade ban era, so the biggest thing from that would mean zero Google services present on the device. I knew it wasn't going to be a smooth transition but apart from that, what would be the major noticeable changes in terms of performance and general functioning of the device? Find out more below. 

DESIGN

I'll be straight up with you, I hate the bevel sides on a phone, yes when Samsung first launched the "curved" sides it was pretty cool but for me, its a solid no. I still curse it with my P30 Pro but as the common saying goes "it is, what it is". Design on the P40 Pro is similar to the P30 Pro, the metal unibody is still the same great quality, it feels a bit more slicker and stylish. Comfortable in hand and in pocket. The actual finish feels a bit slippery but in saying that, I didn't have a scare with it and I took the phone to some interesting spots which required quite a tight grip or its gone forever, needless to say I still had it and sent it back in one piece. I think in terms of build quality there's not much to add to Huawei, they really know what they're doing, the quad camera layout on the back is pretty to look at and has a glass back plate over it to protect the lenses. With the screen being slightly bigger than the P30, it has a more prominent screen to body ration so it looks great. The "notch" has been moved to be more on the left side with the dual sensors. It doesn't really hamper your view of things so this is good. 

PERFORMANCE

There's no shortage on power when it comes to this device, powered by the Kirin 990 5G processor, the P40 Pro has an Octoa-core which is made up of 2 x Cortex -A76 based 2.86 GHz + 2 x Cortex - A76 Based 2.36 GHz + 4 x Cortex-A55 1.95Ghz. GPU is 16-Core Mali-G76. So very close or slightly better than previous chipsets we're seeing in competitor devices. The operating system is Huawei's EMUI 10.1 which is based on Android 10, so it's not completely different, as there will be similarities for you to go on from when getting the device. Memory, the phone has 8GB RAM and an internal memory of 256GB, the P40 Pro supports NM SD Card of up to 256GB. Battery life has been really great on the P40 Pro, it has a 4200mAh, it gave me roughly 2 days of usage, so 16+ hours of use which included taking pictures and videos. The SuperCharge works superbly, with a max of 40W, its considerably faster that the P30 Pro. I didn't have a 5G Sim to test the true 5G speeds and the number of 5G networks currently available are few and far between at the moment. 

CAMERA

We don't need to delve too much into this aspect, while the P40 Pro and P30 Pro cameras are pretty similar in terms of functionality, there is a difference in the quality with a much better, crisper end product on the P40. Even with the hybrid 50x zoom, the images are sharper with more detail. This is obviously thanks to the rear 50MP Ultra Vision Camera. The Image stabilization is incredible, either in video or when utilizing that mad zoom on the 12MP telephoto camera. The 3D depth sensing camera also adds levels to your pictures, giving you that real feel when looking at pictures. 4K video recording is brilliant, I'm yet to watch it on a 4K TV but so far on the phone it looks crispy and smooth. The super slow video also manages to capture so much more detail at an insanely slow frame rate. Overall, one of the best cameras on the market and this isn't even the Pro+ which I have news about at the end of the blog. 

VERDICT

You've read the brochure part of the review, now its time to talk about the hard truth. Without Google Services, it was a bit of a mission. I think it will be for anyone, most would understand this sort of issue when migrating for IOS to Android on vice versa but its not all that bad given that EMUI is based on Android in anycase. So there's a lot more familiarity with this user interface. It's about making the adjustment and finding apps which you're normally used to use on Playstore on the Huawei App Gallery. While there are app's being populated by the thousands every week on the Gallery, there's no significant ones to speak off. Huawei are still working very hard on getting this right, most of the major banking apps are there, funnily enough FNB wasn't one of them but they do say they are in the process of releasing one soon. For more Gmail, I used to just log on via the browser, same goes for some social media applications. The lack of notifications was actually a blessing and also aided to not draining the battery. Being still based on Android software, there are always hacks and ways to get around this There's tonnes of videos online on how to get Google Playstore on the device and get all your favourite apps. Like I said previously, something has go to give, either guys like Facebook and Twitter will come to the party and release versions for the device or the US may take a u-turn on their decision.  While there is a learning process, its not something that will cripple your use of the phone and once you get into it, you will soon realise what a masterful piece of tech this is. 

Huawei have announced that the Huawei P40 Pro+ will be available to purchase locally from tomorrow, August 1st 2020. Check their online store for more. 

SAMPLE PICS FROM THE P40 PRO

 

Bucket Tech: Huawei P40 Series - First Impressions

Even with half the world on lockdown or practicing social distancing, Huawei, the Chinese mobile giant went ahead with it's launch of the P40 Series flagship smart phone. The event which was very different to the norm was live streamed globally and presented by Huawei's CEO of Consumer BG Richard Yu, with millions watching in anticipation to see what Huawei had up their sleeve with this new device. I personally had huge expectations, while I do not doubt the quality of their devices, after owning four devices from their P Series range, I can vouch that build quality, user interface and general appeal of their phones is up there with the big guns, and market stats don't lie as well. But after the US sanctions prevented American companies from partnering with Huawei, the major one being Google which suspended all services to newer model devices, it did come as a severe shock to the once loyal client base. 

With Google being the number one app based portal for most Android devices, his was going to be one major hurdle that Huawei would need to over come. Hence I figured with the P40, the company needed to come up with some drastic to still have some appeal to their brand, something big, something other than a really really nice camera. After watching the live stream I felt a bit disappointed that what I had hoped for didn't materialize, there was no major breakthrough, nothing that the P40 offered that no other smart device on the market doesn't offer already, all they did was a slap a really really nice camera to it. 

Don't get be wrong, the camera is fantastic, probably the best on the market at the moment but nothing to say, wow, okay maybe it's worth a gamble on sticking with the brand. However after a sleep on it and having digested everything I have watched, I can say that everything that Huawei is offering on the P40 is almost the same or even better than Google Services. HMS have been hard at work, starting from scratch, developing tools that mimic or better what is or has been offered by the Google, who are considered by many as the benchmark when it comes to mobile app developments. This for more hit home as remarkable, they're doing this all by themselves, there's no recipe they could look up, there were no ingredients on the side of the container for them to see and try to replicate. This was all done in house in record time. Some of the tools demonstrated by Richard Yu yesterday were outstanding. Huawei have used their most power AI yet to help integrate with normal tools that we're so used to in our normal devices and have made them better to use, imagine beating Google at their own game?! And all it took was a year or less to do so, I don't care which brand you have affiliation to, if you cannot respect that, then you cannot respect anything technology related. 

Some examples of these tools on the P40 Series, first is Huawei's answer to Google's voice prompt AI tool, Celia. Triggered by saying the words "Hey Celia, she can, using the phones Kirin 990 chipset can perform a host of tasks, faster than any other AI interface around at the moment. One tool that Huawei seemed to have pulled away from many is their Share services, which essentially is NFC but on steroids. The P40 Series devices can link with any digital device capable of sharing simply by touching it with the device, will get back to more of that later with a product that Huawei launched at yesterdays event. Huawei's answer to Apple's favourite FaceTime, is MeeTime, again simple service but they've clicked up a few notches with you being able to share your screen in real time, switch cameras and continue the conversation on other devices like your laptop or TV with Huawei Share. using Huawei share on your laptop will have your mobile phone display on the side of your screen, so you don't even have to pick it up while working. 

Huawei also took the opportunity to launch their wireless speaker, the Sound X, which has an interested design with dual reflex subwoofers, made with good quality materials to maintain crystal clarity sound and a deep bass than many wireless speakers cannot compete with. What I loved about this speak is how well it syncs with the mobile device with Huawei share, beauty is when receiving a phone call, not only does it pause the music playing, it also reverts back to your mobile speaker instead of having the speaker broadcast your entire phone call, saving you the trouble from disconnecting the the device but if you want to have a conference call or having people listen in, just tap your phone to the speaker and it's done. 

Okay back to the phone, there's three models as many of you would know by now, the P40, P40 Pro and P40 Pro+. Most of the insides stay the same but the camera various between them all. Huawei's theme for this phone was Visionary Photography and while we can all agree that they always had pretty dope cameras, they just getting better and better. Developed with Leica, the P40 comes with a triple lens camera, the P40 Pro a quad camera and the P40 Pro+ a Penta 5 lens system. Pro+ comes with a 50MP Ultra Vision camera, a 100x SuperZoom Array which is made up of two 8MP camera's, 40MP Ultra Wide Cine camera and 3D Depth Sensing Camera. All which make for extraordinary pictures with immense detail, better pictures in low light and with the AI, focusing the best shot for you every time. The P40 also takes multiple pics at once so you can chose the best one, the built in AI also edits out unwanted objects from your picture, something that you could only do via 3rd party apps in the past. The screen is certainly one of the biggest on the market so far with the curved edges now extending over each four sides, gives the you a limitless display. The P40 is 5G ready and really is a powerful device, prices for the device does seem a bit stiff given that Huawei are still trying to compete with a relatively unknown ecosystem. Whether sales will reflect positively for the brand is another thing