Announcement
The next installment in Huawei’s P series of smart-phones will be officially announced at the end of March this year in Paris. The P series unveiling has become something of an annual release, with the P20 and P30 both announced around the same time in 2018 and 2019 respectively. The newest P40 will be priced at roughly $950 and the P40 Pro at $1150 (speculative prices, based on previous model prices at launch).
| Model | Price in India | Other countries |
| P40 | ₹64,000 – ₹68,000 | $900 – $950 |
| P40 Pro | ₹78,000 – ₹82,000 | $1100 – $1150 |
Unfortunately though, it is highly likely that the P40 and P40 Pro might skip their release in the United States, following in the footsteps of the P30 series.
Rumors also point to the existence of a P40 Lite model to be released along with the other two. Priced lower than both, the P40 Lite will be on par with the Nova 6 SE in terms of performance and specifications.
Following the ban on Huawei, the newest models won’t be releasing with the Google Play Store or any other Google Services or apps such as Maps, YouTube and Chrome (just like the previous Huawei Mate 30). Since Google revoked their services for the Chinese smart-phone giant, they were forced to develop their own solutions for basic services such as app authentication and signing.
Design
The new P40 series will be very similar to the new Samsung Galaxy S20 and OnePlus 8, in terms of overall design – 3 back cameras for P40 and 5 for P40 Pro, dual front cameras (S10 style) almost bezel-free and slightly curved screen. The screen is rumoured to be different from the P30’s, and not as curved but we can only be sure of this in March.
There will be no 3.5mm jack and both phones will support USB-C charging. The launch lineup features a host of interesting color choice, from classic black, white and blue to mint and even a shade of salmon. This time around though the P series boasts of a gorgeous ceramic finish instead of the standard Gorilla Glass.
Specifications
The camera setup is going to be interesting to say the very least. Leaks suggest that the phone’s main rear camera will be a 52 MP res camera that will be capable of shooting in two different modes – one that allows for true 52 MP quality and another using a combining technique to merge 16 pixels into one, essentially shooting at 3.25 MP but allowing for superb quality low light images. A telephoto lens will facilitate 10x optical zoom, just as with the Samsung Galaxy S20 and S20 Ultra. The other cameras will be one ultra wide lens, a Time of Flight sensor and the last one currently unknown.
The display panel will be a silky smooth 120Hz Full HD+ screen. While the P series is known for it’s photography capabilities, a battery capacity of 5000 mAH, a Kirin 990 chipset and 10-12 GB of RAM will make sure that it won’t be lacking in terms of performance and power. While the P40 will only support 4G LTE+, the Pro model have 5G as standard. A modified HarmonyOS will be at the core of the device, bundled with Huawei App Gallery (the company’s alternative to the Play Store), which will support standard apk files. So anything you can’t find on App Gallery can still be installed on the phone provided you have access to an .apk file.
A reminder that all of the above is not set in stone yet, and should be taken with a pinch of salt. Most of the information in this article is based on speculations and leaks, and no matter how credible, can always turn out to be false.
