Huawei Mate 40 Pro – New Design, Same Great Phone (TECH REVIEW)

As I said a few weeks ago, at the official launch of the Mate 40 Pro, I had the opportunity to test the phone about 10 days before launch, and I kept it for almost another 20 days after. In total, I spent nearly 30 days on the Huawei Mate 40 Pro, enough time to go through almost everything this phone can do.

So let’s start with the package: the package isn’t much different from the Mate 30 Pro – Huawei has a specific design for its flagship series (white for Pro, black for Mate) and it’s respected here too. Inside we find a transparent cover, excellent for protecting your phone until you want to buy another, more chic or more useful, together with the 66W charger and its cable (these in addition to the phone, of course).

Spectacular design

The look of the Mate 40 Pro is spectacular – it’s a great phone with a new but familiar design. We find the same circle on the back, where the camera group is located, but this time its center is “occupied” by the Leica symbol, the four sensors are positioned on the outer circle and form a sort of square. The protuberance of the camera is not very large, as it happens on other flagships, and with the addition of a cover it becomes almost imperceptible.

Let’s take a look at the sides before talking about the back of the phone and find that the Mate 40 Pro has returned to the physical volume buttons that the Mate 30 Pro was missing. However, this does not mean that the virtual ones have disappeared, Huawei allowing the user to choose your preferred control method and use them or not, as you wish. I like it, even though I wasn’t a huge fan of virtual buttons, I know they had some supporters, who said that once you get used to them they become easy to use. That’s right, I tried it too, but I still prefer to have physical volume control.

We also reach the back. It’s made of glass, of course, just as it would fit on a flagship phone (or, in the more expensive versions, vegan leather), with an aluminum chassis and matte finish that’s excellent to the touch. The color variant I tried is Mystic Silver and is somewhat reminiscent of that very popular color that the P30 Pro had at launch, Breathing Crystal. It is definitely a phone that will attract attention, shining in different colors, depending on the light under which it is placed.

The screen remains ultra curved

The display is 6.76 inches, being a big phone, of course, although at first glance it seems wider than it is long. It is covered with glass, the Mate 40 Pro also has IP68 resistance to dust and water.

We are dealing with an OLED with a resolution of 1344 x 2772 pixels, with an 18.5: 9 aspect ratio and a refresh rate of 90Hz, which looks absolutely gorgeous. It is a pleasure to look at this screen, the colors are vibrant and clean and the added speed is easily perceived as you “walk” through the menu or through various applications.

The extra curved edges (at 88 degrees, I hope I’m not wrong) can cause accidental touches, but it’s too rare to cause you real discomfort. I like it, and I sincerely hope that at least Huawei stays in this trend, if Samsung joins Apple’s choice already made, to go back to those straight, smooth edges.

Kirin 9000, superlative performance and what I don’t like about software

In terms of performance we have a Kirin 9000 5G, the first microprocessor produced at 5nm by a Huawei phone, a real monster in anything you want to do with your phone. It is extraordinarily powerful and at the moment there is no game or application that brings its 8 cores and Mali-G78 graphics processor to its knees, or at least I have not found them.

We come to RAM + storage and here are two options, both with 8GB of RAM and either 256GB or 512GB available for storage (which is ultra fast, type 3.1), which is enough for most users of this phone. If you don’t consistently shoot 4K quality video, you shouldn’t have any problems.

Before moving on to cameras and autonomy, let’s take a short break to talk about software. Of course, Google’s services are missing from the Mate 40 Pro, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. I’ve also mentioned in previous materials that I like the fact that Huawei is trying to build an app store that competes with Apple and Google, and AppGallery is developing well and has many solutions. Huawei recently added PetalMaps, a good alternative to Google Maps, and has modes of transportation like Bolt or delivery like Foodpanda. But what bothers me are the ads that appear before entering the app store. Sure, they’re very short, around 3 seconds, but I think it gives the whole software a feel cheap, cheap, which reminds me of smaller brands, not a premium experience.

camera

The cameras are similar to those of the Huawei P40 Pro, of which you can read the review Here. The main module has 50 MP and the 12 MP telephoto lens, both of which are identical to those of the P40 Pro (f / 1.9 and f / 3.4). The differences are with the ultrawide, which has 20MP on the Mate 40 Pro, compared to 40MP on the P40 Pro (f / 1.8 on both) and the selfie camera, which comes with 13MP and f / 2.4 on the Mate, compared to 32MP and f / 2.2. on the P40 Pro.

All of the above figures translate quite simply – solid, competent, and comparable camera performance to any other flagship on the market. However, I must admit that I prefer the one in the P40 Pro. The color representation on the Mate 40 Pro is accurate, the optical zoom bezels come out very well and capture a significant amount of detail, but the night mode is “out of the box” (no changes in camera application or pro settings) looks weaker than the P40 Pro, which is odd considering they use the same algorithm. It seems the P40 Pro retains more detail and captures photos better in the dark – something to expect, after all, considering we’re talking about the P series.

More photos taken with the Mate 40 Pro can be found here.

But don’t get me wrong, the Mate 40 Pro is a great phone on the photo side and adds to the video side. We have footage up to 4K at 60fps, HDR, and great stabilization. The image adjusts quickly when faced with lights of varying intensity and details are not lost, and colors look as good on video as they do on photo. We also have a sample video below.

Finally, the last thing I would like to emphasize is autonomy. We have a 4400mAh battery, with 66W fast charging (Huawei seems to have actually wanted to do a “one-up” compared to other manufacturers on the market, which amused me a bit) and, very importantly, fast wireless charging from 50W. The phone charges very fast, in less than an hour, and the battery can safely last two days, especially if you work from home, like most today, and the phone isn’t used constantly, like it used to.

Ah, there is one more thing: the sound. Last year I complained about the Mate 30 Pro’s sound, which sounded very weak to me, but I mentioned in the review that it is entirely possible that it is a problem with my test unit. It was quickly confirmed to me that my suspicion was correct when I met a Mate 30 Pro owner who sounded much better than mine. This year, fortunately, the unit I received went perfectly, including the sound, which is loud, clear and does not “break” at higher volume, which is very good.

Conclusion

In terms of hardware, the Huawei Mate 40 Pro is a near-perfect phone, with minor flaws, but it doesn’t spoil the amazing user experience this phone offers you. At the software level, the dilemmas are already known and it is up to everyone whether or not they want to give up on Google’s ecosystem of services. Given the sales results of the P40 Pro, P40 lite or P smart 2021, I’d say Huawei has no problem finding customers right now, and its phones certainly can’t be ignored. Plus, a little competition doesn’t hurt anyone, in my opinion.