Huawei P40 Pro 256 GB

The new flagship from Huawei came out at a bad time: on the one hand, the company is supported by sanctions from the United States, on the other, the consequences of the coronavirus. And yet, the smartphone came out and again made a lot of noise.

And again the highest rating for the camera

If you are interested in camera phones or are a fan of the Huawei brand, then you can already guess what will be discussed next. Yes, yes, this is again a camera with the Leica logo, which the specialists from DxOMark put in first place in their rating. Zoom (10x hybrid or 5x optical) and night shooting are especially good for her. If we talk about daytime photos, then everything is fine, but without any wow effect. Still, the current camera phones have spoiled us. Yes, and tubes for $ 200 – 300 are now very well filmed during the day. The only pity is that the camera unit itself was squeezed into a boring black square like the latest iPhones. The massive ring, like in the Mate 30 Pro, looked much more interesting and original. But we liked the colour variations: they are more restrained and calm, and the gradient coloring no longer shimmers in the sun and does not dazzle like dragon scales.

Everything you need from a $1000 smartphone

Given the price and status of the device, the rest of the characteristics are also impressive: the curved OLED display with a diagonal of 6.58 shows an excellent picture, and the refresh rate increased to 90 Hz noticeably enhances the impression. Visually, the display occupies virtually the entire front panel. The smartphone also received a proprietary Kirin 990 5G hardware platform (an active 5G modem, Wi-Fi 6, a brand new FinFET Plus EUV process technology), support for fast wireless charging (27 W, reverse mode), a piezoelectric element for transmitting sound through the screen (the speaker is actually No). In addition to the face recognition system, which, thanks to the IR sensor, works quietly in any light, without screen backlighting, there is also a fingerprint scanner built into the display, with an optical sensor that works quite well. The case is protected from moisture according to the IP68 standard.

No Google services

Now for the fun part, part 2. After US sanctions, Huawei was stripped of its license to use Google services. The smartphone uses a fresh proprietary shell EMUI 10, it is based on Android 10.0 (AOSP + HMS). That is, there are no Google services. The AppGallery branded store helps in part, and in part you can use third-party programs to install apk files not from the store. The vast majority of applications work on a smartphone without restrictions. Perhaps the main problem is with the transfer of data from a Google account, it works through a stump deck and many data have to be entered manually. The same trouble with NFC and Google Maps. But there is good news: for contactless payments, their own application will soon be released with a large database of east european banks. But with an alternative to maps, it’s more difficult, except for Google, so far no one has been able to make normal maps.