Huawei Mate 40 Pro Review By Fortress of Solitude

Towards the end of 2020 Huawei announced its latest flagship with a continuation of its major series. The Huawei Mate 40 pro has arrived at the shores of South Africa this past week for fans of the brand and the series it's a welcome launch. So does it deliver on all the promises made? The box of the Huawei Mate 40 pro is very similar to that of its previous flagship smartphones. The matte black box is a minimalist approach on the outside to what lies within upon unboxing you'll find a standard set of contents. This includes the mate 40 pro itself, charger, USB cable and type c USB earphones. This is an addition to the other standard inclusions, such as the warranty card.

How to guard and sim slot pin. It may seem very conventional on the surface, but with many other leading manufacturers having moved away from the inclusion of a charger within the contents of its flagship smartphones. It's a welcome sight in 2020 to see it included. The mate 40 pro has a larger frame than last year's p40 pro it measures in at 162.9 times by 75.5 times, 9.1 millimeters. This is about five millimeters taller, three millimeters wider and 0.1 millimeters thicker. The extra dimensions allow for larger screen, which measures 6.76 inches compared to the 6.58 inches. In addition, it also has a higher screen to body ratio, 94.1 percent in better pixel density at 456 PPI, with its 1 344 x, 2 72 pixel resolution. Whilst Huawei has produced many curved screen smartphones in the past, the mate 40 pro is one of the most rounded I've reviewed from its predecessors.

The edges, don't just feel rounded. It's almost circular on paper, it's said to be 88 degrees, which is very plausible. This means that the glass screen does quite a bit of flexing extending the screen off those edges somewhat. It does, however, make the screen gestures a lot easier to use compared to a more squared approach. The screen is huge and only interrupted by the pillow shaped cutout.

On the top left-hand side. This is a huge change over some previous single lanes front facing cameras of the past. The double lens selfie camera takes a bit more real estate, but after a few days worth of usage, you won't realize it's. There switching to the rear, the first thing: you'll notice is Huawei's new space ring design for the rear camera. It's slightly different to the one first found on the mate 30, two years back, which didn't have the donut hole in the center and the cameras were positioned closer together.

What's interesting is that the space ring has four holes for the lenses, with only three being filled by the rear facing camera. The ring also protrudes 1.75 millimeters from the surface of the rear, which may give pedantic users nightmares thinking about scratching the camera. But that's not the case. Furthermore, whilst it may protrude quite significantly, it doesn't wobble around on the table. If you lay it flat, both the front and rear are crafted in a glass finish, making it quite sleek looking.

It also means that it's heavy on the fingerprints on the unit we received. However, the mystic silver color makes it harder to spot these pesky little fingerprints. The glass sandwich is split by the metal frame running through the center, which keeps the phone intact. It's quite skinny running on the edges, but it feels sturdy enough not to have issues with flex or any other design force. As a result, interestingly, Huawei has added a dash of red on the power button, making it stand out quite significantly than the rest of the zone.

It's quite a weird inclusion and seems a miss from anything that has gone before it. It has been used before on the mate 30 as well. So it's becoming something of a trademark. Now, if you've used any Android-based smartphone, then the process should be well known to banner, it's relatively straightforward. With a few click-throughs, you could be set up within five minutes.

That's if you're not going to be reading the teas in season detail. There are options during setups, such as switching from another phone or downloading your settings from the older Huawei smartphone, provided you backed up to the cloud when it comes to review units. However, I'd prefer clean start going through the process to mimic what other users may experience. One of the key aspects of the Huawei ecosystem for all its smartphones since 2019 has been in software. To be more specific, that's wow as emu firmware its integration with the variant of android, as well as the app gallery as a replacement to play store.

Earlier this year, Huawei announced that its new platform has reached 530 million active monthly users with an 83 yearly increase in app distribution whilst reaching 384 billion installations in 2020. Those are some pretty solid numbers, cementing its position as a top three app ecosystem, moving closer towards the app store and play store. Having experienced the fully integrated app gallery on the Huawei p40 large just shy of a year ago and again on the Huawei p40 pro a month later, I was impressed by the level of growth from its global release at the end of 2019 and again in the span of just a month between the two smartphones in 2021. The integration is much more engraved to the Huawei ecosystem. For starters, there's Huawei's pedal search.

Much like google search. The engine collects information from various local international services and collates them into a set of comprehensive results from the search bar on the main screen. Users can type in the search request, pedal search. Will then provide a breakdown of information from various categories, including apps? What I liked about the categorization is that it links to various other services, for example, if it has found an app as part of the results and if it is available in the app gallery, it can be installed directly if it has found an app, but it doesn't exist in the app gallery but can be found also on the web. It takes you to their page for an APK download, simple enough.

It's worth noting that pedal search will branch out to other android smartphones in the coming months. Having had positive results using it on the mate 40 pro. It's a welcome app across a broader range of smartphones. It also does malware checks for any software installed, whether it be through the app gallery or other third party websites. The rest of the emu 11 experience is built upon Google's android 10 oses, so the experience isn't completely foreign to android users.

The experience can still be customized as well, whether you want the native Huawei setup or the Google approach you have the option. Huawei's Lacey enabled cameras have been a great asset, since the collaboration was announced. Some years back, the manufacturer has been in the top three list of smartphone cameras ever since battling alongside apple and Samsung and even coming out on top occasionally, the mate 40 pro sports a triple lens camera compared to the p40 pro it's very closely linked with the mission of the TOF 3d for depth, which has been directly integrated this time around when it comes to image quality. The results are impressive. The Huawei Mate 40 pro can take a wide variety of shots from normal to wide zoom to macro and everything between, in conjunction with the built-in HDR algorithms, the lighting effects and contract are great when it comes to normal scenery, indoor photography and the likes the Apple iPhone 12 may have the slight advantage here.

However, when it comes to everything else, such as scars low light environment day and night skies and more the mate 40 pro is far superior other areas, the camera excels over other smartphones is the five times optical zoom. This is more than on the iPhone 12, but less than on the Samsung Galaxy s12 ultra, it may be half of the s21 ultras 10 times optical zoom, but it looks a lot more crisp and features much better contrast. One of the features on the Huawei phones dating back to the first time I reviewed the p6 almost a decade ago, is its ability to do selfie shots really well on the mate 40 pro it's no different, I'm not a fan of taking selfies, but hey. It gets the job done and pretty well. Huawei has done a lot behind the scenes when it comes to this camera software.

Not only has it fixed a few of the over exposure glitches, but the processing seems more efficient. The experience is more rounded overall, and it doesn't feel as clunky. Further to this Huawei's AI lens also has been integrated into the camera software. Here users can search products simply by using the feature on the app and pointing it at the item. You need information on whether you wanted to be directed to store to purchase similar products or finding the calories within your meal.

It can also be done via the AI lens when Huawei first switched its in-house Karen soc. My thoughts were that it was simply aiming to get by with what it had at its disposal when it went global. The manufacturer, however, has invested heavily in its processor during this time, developing one of the leading socs available today, the company managed to manufacture sufficient chips during 2020, as others faltered, thanks to some strategic partnerships towards the end of the year. Whilst it may not be able to compete like for, like in terms of processing power against the Qualcomm equivalent, it boasts much better efficiency AR support and GPU performances. Putting it right up there.

Huawei has also included expandable storage, unlike some other flagships. It has, however, opted for the NATO SD card option, which is still a little tricky to get your hands on at the moment, especially in South Africa. When it comes to battery life, it's a bit of a mixed bag and a conventional load. Its battery is expected to last anywhere between 16 and 20 hours during the load testing. The mate 40 pro lasted just over 20 hours, on idle 10 hours, on continuous browsing on Wi-Fi and 16 hours of video playback and the maximum lows using maximum brightness, such as during gaming, the battery life dropped to about 7 hours.

This can all be adjusted over with some AR features such as switching between 60hz and 90hz screen usage, as well as some other behind behind-the-scenes trickery, such as reducing the CPU output. This will all give it a steady boost allowing for an extra two to three hours of usage. On top of the previously mentioned results. The Huawei Mate 40 pro is a powerful smartphone with a great camera stacked onto the rear. In addition, the growing Huawei ecosystem continues to make using any of its smartphones, just as native as any of the other platforms by incorporating the app gallery and pedal search into emu makes it much easier transition between all services.

From a single point, at a retail price of 19 199, ran it's much more affordable than other leading flagships on the market. Today. This is an perfect proposition for all prospective buyers in the market for a new smartphone.

Source : Fortress of Solitude