Huawei Mate 40 Pro full review By GSMArena Official

Hey, what's up guys will here for GSM arena, Huawei's latest flagship phone, the mate 40 pro has just been announced. So what cool new features does it have in store? Let's find out in our full review the mate 40 pro is a sleek looking device built from curved glass and aluminum, as you might expect, from a modern flagship. Ours is in the mystic silver finish. The phone is quite comfy in the hand, and I, like the ring-shaped camera bump on the back. This finish, though, is quite breathtaking. It's more than just silver, depending on how it catches light, it bursts into an array of different colors.

Another thing, you'll notice, is that the physical volume keys are back the previous model, the mate 30 pro utilized a software slider instead and, of course, as a top tier flagship, the mate 40 pro brings full ip68 water and dust resistance on the front is a 6.7 inch curve doled display with a somewhat odd 1344 by 2772 pixel resolution. This works out to a pixel density of 460 PPI. The mate 40 pros screen is slightly more curved than what we saw last year at 88 degrees around the edges. The difference is really quite subtle, though, as is the popular trend. The mate 40 pro has a fast 90 hertz screen refresh rate and 240hz touch sampling rate.

This means that swiping on this display is quite smooth and responsive. This OLED display is top class and content on screen looks crisp and bright. Maximum brightness is great up to nits with the slider, and it boosts up to over 800 nits in auto mode when in bright conditions. As far as color reproduction goes, there are plenty of options in settings with multiple color modes and a color wheel for customization. By using it, we were able to get some really accurate colors here.

One design element that might not be for everyone, though, is the pill shape cutout for the dual selfie cam. At least it includes an upgraded TOF camera which is behind some cool features. These include some hands-free gesture controls. You can scroll and even swipe by moving your hand inside the camera, and it's handy for taking screenshots too. You have to be very deliberate with your gestures for them to be registered, though it doesn't seem super practical for everyday use on the go just like the mate 30 pro another feature using the TOF camera is smart screen, rotate the UI will detect, which orientation to use based on where your face is and auto rotate to face you.

This can be super convenient if you're using the phone while lying in bed, where the UI would otherwise auto rotate the wrong way based on the accelerometer. This camera also can detect if there are other faces watching the screen and the phone can hide sensitive notifications. Based on that, of course, the TOF camera also enables an extra secure face, unlock which even works in the dark. Otherwise, you can unlock the phone with the under display optical fingerprint reader. We had a very pleasant experience with this reader in terms of speed and reliability.

It's up there with the best available, unlike the many recent Huawei phones, that vibrate their displays to produce sound for voice calls the mate 40 pro has a conventional earpiece. It isn't used toward a stereo speaker setup, though even better you get a dedicated second speaker for stereo sound. These speakers aren't front facing, but are located on the top and bottom of the phone. The mate 40 pro earned a very good rating in our loudness test, and the audio quality here is great. A nice improvement over the single speaker of last year's model.

You get nice vocals, lively highs and even some bays' storage is expandable on the mate 40 pro on top of the 256 or 512 gigs built in, but you'll need to use a proprietary nm card to do so, not a micro, SD. The mate 40 pros interface is Huawei's latest emu version 11 based on android 10. It offers plenty of unique software features, partly due to the fact that Huawei is still operating independently of Google services, for example, instead of a Google feed, you get Huawei's alternative. The today panel Huawei is proud of their pedal search engine. It's a viable alternative to google search and gets its own widget on the home screen.

It can even help you find where you can download a particular app there's. Also, an edge panel, and it holds shortcuts that launch your apps in floating windows. Great for multitasking and quick toggles have been spiced up with small animations when you press them. There are a bunch of proprietary apps like video health, the gallery and the music app you'll be getting your apps from Huawei's app gallery, which does still show ads when you open it, but they are doing a great job in expanding the app library which is growing every day. You can also get apps from alternative sources like Amazon's, app store or side loading, but keep in mind that regardless some still won't work without Google Play Services.

One of the most exciting things about the mate 40 pro is that it's the first device we've seen with a next generation, five nanometer chipsets. It's called the era 9000 and in benchmarks it easily has the upper hand over all current android devices. It sits at the top of the charts and CPU tests and compared to devices with a similar resolution. Its GPU scores come out on top too and of course, like the last generation. It provides support for 5g network speeds as well as far as sustained performance goes.

The mate 40 pro does an alright job for a time, but we did encounter thermal throttling after prolonged use. The phone tends to give you a few minutes of near-top performance, alternating with a minute or so of about 50 maximum. This may or may not be noticeable, depending on what you're doing powering the mate 40 pro and all of its features is a 4 400 William hour battery about average size for the class, but you should also take into account the power efficiency coming from the 5 nanometer chipset, the mate 40 pro did a great job in our battery life tests scoring an endurance rating of 97 hours with a screen refresh rate set to 90 hertz bumping this down to 60 hertz resulted in an even better score of 101 hours. As far as charging goes, the mate 40 pro comes well-equipped. With this huge 66 watt supercharger with it, we were able to charge the battery from zero to 87 percent in just half an hour, and we achieved a full charge in 45 minutes.

The mate 40 pro also supports up to 50 watt fast wireless charging, and you can use the mates reverse wireless charging to charge other devices. The mate 40 pro has three cameras on the back: a 50 megapixel main cam, a 12 megapixel, periscope, telephoto camera with five times zoom and a 20 megapixel ultra-wide cine camera. Let's start off with 12 megapixels still photos from the main camera. These are excellent. With natural, looking fine detail, rich colors, very little noise and wide dynamic range.

You can also shoot at the nominal 50 megapixel resolution. You don't get much extra detail and may even see some extra noise 12 megapixel five times. Zoom shots from the periscope camera are excellent. They are detailed and noise free with likable colors and wide dynamic range. The ultra-wide angle, camera's 20 megapixel photos, don't have the widest field of view we've seen, but as far as image quality goes, they are among the best there's great detail.

Next to no noise and nice sharpness throughout the frame, except for the very corners dynamic range, is quite wide too, and since the ultra-wide has autofocus, you can use it to highlight a nearby subject with an exaggerated perspective. It won't focus close enough for a macro style shot though after dark photos taken with the main camera are great, as expected. There's plenty of detail, nicely saturated colors and very low noise. Nighttime shots have excellent dynamic range too, with well-developed shadows and lower mid-tones. In fact, the performance is so good that if you switch into night mode, you don't gain too much.

Perhaps the one benefit is the minor improvement in highlights, but it comes with a trade-off of increased sharpening and the longer time it takes to shoot each photo. The telephoto camera fares quite well in low light too. It does need a bit of light to be able to kick in if it's pitch black you'd get a crop from the main cam. Instead, the telephoto delivers sharp and detailed shots with low noise, great colors and wide dynamic range. Turning on night mode guarantees that the maid will use the periscope module, these shots look good, though the advantage over the already great regular photo mode shots is negligible.

The ultra-wide angle, cam doesn't disappoint either it's capable of exposing brighter than most competitors. You get pleasing colors and wide dynamic range with well-developed shadows, night mode, shots from the ultra-wide come out cropped at 12 megapixels, so you miss out on the wider framing and get a drop in fine detail. These are rather unimpressive overall. The ultra-wide cine camera is better put to use for recording video, hence cine camera. It's the second generation of this type of cam, and unlike previous Huawei phones here, is tasked with doing most of the video recording.

It can record in up to 4k resolution, and the quality is good with rich colors and wide dynamic range. The detail level isn't spectacular, but is decent. Switching to the main camera will result in 4k video, with slightly improved dynamic range over the cine cam, as well as better fine detail. Among the best we've seen in fact, 4k footage taken with the telephoto cam looks good with great colors and dynamic range, though we've seen better as far as fine detail goes, electronic stabilization is available on all three cameras and up to 4k at 60fps and is excellent. The mate completely irons out the walking induced shake and pans are smooth and the handheld footage from the five times.

Telephoto is the most stable we've seen yet. The mid-records high quality videos in low light as well. It uses a new always on HDR video processing to combine three separate exposures in real time, and the results look great now onto selfies, taken with the 13 megapixel front facing cam. These have excellent detail with very pleasing colors and warm skin tones dynamic range is properly wide too. This selfie cam is actually an ultra-wide angle unit, which provides three framing modes.

Besides the default setting there's also an ultra-wide and a zoomed in one. This adds some great versatility, though you do lose a bit of detail from the crop and upscale selfie videos can be captured in up to 4k resolution. You get spot-on, colors and excellent dynamic range, as well as the same options for framing that you get for stills. Stabilization also works quite well. So that's the mate 40 pro you get a beautiful glass design with waterproofing an awesome curve doled with a fast refresh rate, a powerful next-gen chipset, dedicated stereo speakers, excellent battery life with superfast charging and some of the best cameras in the business.

All in all is the sort of premium quality you'd expect when paying top dollar for a smartphone. Now the biggest downside of the mate 40 pro is like the other Huawei phones, the lack of google support. They have done a great job in making up for that, and the Huawei app ecosystem is constantly growing, but people like to stick to what they know and for a lot of them that is android with Google and the apps that depend on it, but still at the end of the day, if you don't mind the software side of things, the mate 40 pro is one of the best android phones. You can buy right now and deserves our recommendation. Thanks for watching guys, stay safe and see you on the next one, you.

Source : GSMArena Official