ISSUE 73 • ANDROID ADVISOR 51The phone itself doubles down on the hardware
that made the P30 Pro so great, namely with an
enhanced camera that retains its predecessor’s 5x
optical zoom, a decently capacious 4,200mAh battery
with even faster charging and the company’s latest
Kirin 990 chipset, with 5G as standard.
The ongoing saga with the US trade ban means
that the P40 line is the first set of P-Series flagships
to launch without GMS (Google Mobile Services)
onboard. As such, many users in Western markets will
find it tough to adjust to an Android phone that lacks
the Google Play Store, along with access to first-party
apps like Gmail and third-party applications such as
Uber (which rely on GMS for mapping on Android).
Despite such limitations, time with the phone has
shown that Huawei is using all of its powers to move
past these limitations and focus on ways to deliver as
full a user-experience as possible.
More megapixels, 5x zoom, four sensors
UX aside, the headline attribute of the P40 Pro (and
all three new P40 devices, for that matter) has to be
its camera set-up.
Huawei’s camera prowess looks to endure with
the Pro, which retains the 5x periscopic optical
zoom sensor, this time upped from an 8Mp to a
12Mp resolution, complete with OIS (optical image
stabilisation). The camera’s main sensor jumps from
a 40Mp to a 50Mp unit, again with the RYYB pixel
arrangement that’s designed to help with low light
performance, while the ultra-wide lens doubles in
resolution, to 40Mp, and gains ‘CineLens’ branding,