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Huawei P40 Pro: All the latest rumours and news on the upcoming flagship

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The Huawei P30 Pro was renowned for its excellent camera, so can its successor manage to improve upon this incredibly high standard?

The quality of the photography on the Huawei P30 Pro was so impressive that we crowned it the best camera phone of 2019, taking the throne from the Google Pixel 3. But can the P40 live up to its predecessor’s hard-earned reputation, or even go one better?

Huawei P40 Pro – Release Date

Huawei CEO Richard Yu has confirmed that the device will see its release by the end of March 2020 at an event in Paris. That would exactly the replicate the schedule of the P30 Pro, which was unveiled in the same city on March 26, 2019. In the same discussion, reported by French website Frandroid, Yu claimed that the new device will boast a “never before seen” design, along with improved photography, boosted performance, and enhanced battery life.

Huawei P40 Pro – Price

According to Twitter tipster RODENT950, Huawei is scheduling a significant price-drop for its next flagship series, set to be released in March 2020. The new pricing could be as follows(viaGSMArena)

Not only is the entry price significantly cheaper than that from the likes of the iPhone 11 or the Samsung Galaxy Note 10, but it also appears that there will be a new “Premium” top-spec version for the first time.

Huawei P40 Pro – Design

Android Headlines released the following render of the P40 Pro on January 16, showing the upcoming device from multiple angles:

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Image Credit: Android Headlines

The design looks somewhat similar to the P30 Pro, with an oblong camera module (though this time there are four lenses packed in).The display slightly curves around the edges, and the camera bump is still fairly prominent. It looks like the brand has also brought back the volume slider, having ditched it in the Huawei Mate 30 Pro.

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Image Credit: @evleaks/Twitter

Another leak (above), this time from Evan Blass, showed off a very similar render, but this time in an unusual alternative mint green colour.

Huawei P40 Pro – Software

It’s been confirmed that the Huawei P40 Pro will run an open-source version of Android that lacks Google apps. This means that customers will not have access the Google Mobile Services (GMS), which includes handy, familiar apps such as the Play Store, YouTube, and Google Maps.

In the meantime, Huawei has invested £20 million to entice developers to create more apps on for its own-brand App Gallery store, and while this offers some popular apps such as TikTok and Snapchat, for now it still lacks fundamental apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook.

Future handsets might run Huawei’s own-brand Harmony OS interface, but it seems that this software isn’t yet ready for a wide release.

Huawei P40 Pro – Specs

The Huawei P40 Pro is likely to boast the Kirin 990 chipset, which was unveiled at IFA 2019. A 5G variant of this chipset is also available, and it’s likely that this will be employed by the Pro and Premium models in the series.

In our review of the Huawei Mate 30 Pro, which also sports this chip, we found that it could deal comfortably with everyday tasks and could also run the most demanding games on high settings; however, the post-processing of images would sometimes cause a noticeable delay.

Huawei P40 Pro – Camera

The key feature of last year’s Huawei P30 Pro was undoubtedly its camera, which we described as being “super versatile”, singling out its low-light performance and 10x hybrid zoom for particular praise. So can the P40 Pro improve on this record?

So far there’s not much information going round regarding the cameras. But one of our first glints of insight comes courtesy of leaker @RODENT950 who claims the device will have a 53-megapixel sensor that will output 13-megapixel images after the pixel-binning process.

On top of that, Chinese source MyDrivers has indicated that the new model will boast an incredible 10x optical zoom which takes advantage of an innovative dual-prism design.

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