Huawei brings P40 and P40 Pro to Australia

P40 and P40 Pro

Huawei will bring its P40 and P40 Pro smartphones to Australia soon after the global launch in April.

The Huawei P and Mate series are known for camera innovation and offering the ‘best it can make’. The P40 and P40 Pro are no different.

But as readers will know they do not run Google Android, do not have access to Google Mobile Services or the Play Store and lack essential local Australian apps. See our article here on the impact of this.

For that reason, we will not review or recommend Huawei smartphones for Australian use, so this article is more a statement of its intent.

P40 and P40 Pro base specs (as provided)

P40 and P40 Pro
Model P40 P40 Pro
Colour Silver Frost and Deep Sea Blue same
Size/Weight 148.9 x 71.06 x 8.5mm x 175g 158.2 x 72.6 x 8.95mm x 203g
Display 6.1” OLED 2340 x 1080 422 ppi 6.58” OLED 2640 x 1200 441 ppi
Rear Camera 50MP Ultra Vision Camera (Wide Angle, f/1.9)
16MP Ultra-Wide-Angle Camera (f/2.2) No SuperSensing
8MP Telephoto Camera (f/2.4, OIS)
No 3D Depth sensing
50MP Ultra Vision Camera (Wide Angle, f/1.9, OIS)
40MP Cine Camera (Ultra-Wide Angle, f/1.8)
12MP SuperSensing Zoom Telephoto Camera (f/3.4, OIS)
3D Depth Sensing Camera
Zoom 30x Digital Zoom 50X SuperSensing Zoom
AI Scene detection Yes Yes
Front Camera 32MP (f/2.0) 32MP (f/2.2, Auto Focus)
Depth sensor
IP rating IP53 Rated IP68 Rated
Battery 3800mAh 4200mAh
Talk Time (3G) Up to 21.6hrs Up to 23.5hrs
Standby Time Up to 441.7hrs Up to 460hrs
Internet Use Up to 16.8hrs Up to 17.3hrs
Video Playback Up to 22.8hrs Up to 24hrs
Music Playback Up to 81.8hrs Up to 84hrs
Supercharge Huawei Supercharge Huawei 40W SuperCharge
Charge Time 1.5hrs (using supplied charger) 27w Quick Wireless Charge
(sold separately)   Reverse wireless charge supported
Fingerprint Front In-screen Fingerprint sensor same
RAM 8GB same
ROM 128GB 256GB
Expansion NM card up to 256GB same
Processor HUAWEI Kirin 990 5G Octa-core, 2×2.86GHz 2x 2.36GHz 4x 1.95GHz same
NFC capacity Yes same
Wi-Fi bands Wi-Fi 6 AX,2×2 MIMO, HE160,1024 QAM, MU-MIMO same
Bluetooth BT5.1, Support BLE, SBC, AAC, LDAC same
USB Type-C same
Operating system Huawei EMUI10.1 (Based on Android 10) same
Price $1099 Complimentary VIP service to help consumers set up the device. $1599 – same
Bonus: Pre-orders to 15/04/20 include FreeBuds 3
From From 16 April at Harvey Norman Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi and Officeworks
Website https://consumer.huawei.com/au/phones/ .

DxOMark has just reviewed the P40 PRO camera and rates it at 128.

GadgetGuy’s take – the P40 and P40 Pro may be amazing but…

Australia is either a Google Android or an Apple iPhone country. If the P40 and P40 Pro used Google Android, we would be all over them as we were last year with the P30 and P30 PRO awarding both 5/5.

But having tried to live without Google Android on its Mate 30 devices we conclude, it is not possible.

We are not prepared in effect to break the law by ‘getting around the ban’ (a.k.a. its complimentary VIP sideloading and phone cloning service). As such Australia can only ever be an insignificant market for a few camera enthusiasts who don’t want Google.

You can read more at The Verge on this and why it concludes, “If Huawei can’t convince people outside China that it’s been able to improve the software situation [legal access to Google Mobile Services and Play Store apps], the P40 phones might as well not exist”.

To be fair, there are periscope zoom equipped Google Android flagship phones like the excellent Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G and the original OPPO 10x lossless Zoom that really work well. The enhanced perisdcope zoom is part of its new 2020 offerings like the Find X2 5G as well.

We do not want to comment further on the US Trade Entities issue that prevents Huawei’s access to Google products or services.

The Global launch is below

https://youtu.be/x4nFTqmuQxY