The month of October has seen impressive smartphone launches, and now it gets more interesting with the launch of the Huawei Mate 40 series. The Mate series, this time gets three models, Mate 40, Mate 40 Pro, and Mate 40 Pro Plus. That’s a lot of ‘Pro’ and ‘Plus’ but how exactly does it translate to specs?
The Huawei Mate 40 Pro is the company’s center of attention here, and it gets Huawei’s Kirin 9000 processor, which is among the early chipsets to be built in 5nm tech, alongside Apple’s A14 Bionic. But this year could be the last time we see a Huawei flagship with Kirin chipset (at least for a while), all thanks to the US trade sanctions.
Regardless, it’s an octa-core chipset with four Cortex-A77 cores and four Cortex-A55 cores. There’s Mali-G78 GPU handling the graphics-intensive tasks, with 24 cores in offer. Of course, the Cortex-A78 and Cortex-X1 are in line to be the most powerful ARM CPU, but still, the Cortex-A77 in this one should offer great power.
The Kirin 9000 chipset gets 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and there’s Huawei’s proprietary Nano Memory cards for expansion if in case you need it.
Huawei’s Mate series has always been known to bring the best of camera tech, and the Mate 40 Pro is no exception. Huawei says the camera housing at the back is inspired by the recently captured image of “Black Hole” which is kind of interesting. Anyway, there’s a massive 50MP RYYB (1/1.28-inch) main camera alike the P40 Pro series, while alongside it is a 12MP 5x periscope lens and a 20MP ultra-wide sensor with 120-degree FoV. For selfies, the front of the phone has a 13MP camera in a pill-shaped cutout alongside a 3D ToF sensor for face unlock and gestures.
The front is no surprising this year, as it still comes with a waterfall display that has an insane curve (88-degree) to the side, just like the Mate 30 series. The display sits at 6.76-inch with QHD+ resolution and OLED panel. Thankfully the phone still has the physical power and volume buttons on the side, unlike its predecessor. The display comes with a 90Hz refresh rate and an in-display fingerprint scanner.
All these bells and whistles are powered by a decent 4,400mAh battery, which should last for a while, if not, the phone has 66W wired and 50W wireless charging. The wired charging should top up the phone from 0-100 in just 47 minutes.
Huawei Mate 40 and Mate 40 Pro Plus: What do both phones offer?
The Huawei Mate 40 Pro Plus shares a lot in common with the Pro model, including the same screen, wired/wireless charging speeds, and even battery. The only difference here is that the Plus variant has two zoom cameras instead of one. You’re getting a 3x 12MP optical zoom sensor and a 10x 8MP periscope camera for short-range and long-range zoom, plus a 3D ToF camera. Also, the ‘Plus’ model has 12GB of RAM in comparison to 8GB on the Pro model.
Meanwhile, the vanilla Mate 40 brings few changes from the Mate 40 Pro series, such as a 4,200mAh battery with 40W wire charging. The standard Mate 40 also has the Kirin 9000E processor, which has two lesser GPU cores in Mali-G78 MP22 and a downgraded NPU. There’s no wireless charging as well but at least the phone has a 3.5mm headphone jack, which both phones lack.
Barring that, the Mate 40 has the same set of 50MP RYYB main camera without the Pro models’ 20MP ultra-side shooter and a 12MP 5x periscope camera, instead it has a 16MP ultra-wide snapper and 8MP 3x telephoto lens.
Price and Availability
Huawei has said that the Mate 40 and Mate 40 Pro will have five color options: Mystic Yellow, Silver, Green, Black, and White. The Pro Plus model will come in Ceramic Black and Ceramic White color options only.
As for the pricing, the Huawei Mate 40 Pro will cost €1,199, while for the Pro Plus model you’ll have to shell €1,399. For the standard Mate 40, it’s priced at €899.
