Huawei Just Fixed The Camera’s Biggest Flaw On The Huawei P40 Pro
by David Phelan
The latest Huawei phone, the P40 Pro, is today being updated to fix one of its few flaws. The phone is beautiful, powerful and highly capable, though the absence of Google Mobile Services remains an issue for some. You can read my review here. Though Huawei is going through turbulent times just now, as brilliantly chronicled by Forbes contributor Zak Doffman, it is working to improve the performance of its latest phone in several ways.
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It comes with some of the best cameras ever seen on a smartphone – in fact, if you check with DXOMark you’ll see it thinks it’s the best cameraphone ever.
The cameras are tremendous and yield brilliant results. The four sensors are versatile and the combination of optical and digital zoom goes as high as 50x.
At that zoom, the level of detail isn’t as crisp, of course, though it’s arguably much better and creates more usable images than that other super-zoom camera, the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra.
But the Galaxy had a feature which was very helpful in higher zooms, specifically the presence of a picture-in-picture frame so you could see just where you were focusing. At 50x magnification that can be hard to see without such a feature.
Now, the Huawei P40 Pro has it, too.
That’s courtesy of a software update which arrived last month in China and is now being rolled out worldwide, as spotted by Huawei Central. To find it, simply go to Settings then System and Updates and then Software Update. Although it’s on its way, it may take a few days to reach every phone in every country. The update is version 10.1.0.131 and is 1.46GB big.
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This is just the newest update that has improved the already excellent camera. The most recent global update (10.1.0.121 (C432E8R4P1) is only days old and introduced several photographic benefits.
For instance, it improved the quality of high-resolution photos, Huawei says. It also optimized the camera’s anti-jitter function, and improved video recording.
But it’s the later update that will have the biggest effect on taking photos. The picture-in-picture frame pops up when the zoom goes above 15x.
The other big development with the very latest update is the arrival of Petal Search. It’s a cute name but it’s not instantly clear what it might be for unless you know. Is it a plant identifier? A florist locator?
In fact, when you know that it’s what used to be called Huawei Search, its purpose becomes clearer.
Although it has been on Chinese Huawei phones for some time, under its old name, it’s a completely new feature for the rest of the world.
The searching that it does is pretty expansive. First of all, it looks for apps.
As mentioned above, Huawei’s version of Android does not have Google Mobile Services as it’s an open-source edition. So, that means no Google Play Store and in turn, an absence of apps unless they appear in the Huawei App Gallery. This is growing daily but still misses many household favorites. So, for instance, Facebook is not in the Huawei App Gallery. Open Petal Search, though, and type in Facebook and the app will guide you to the official download page on the Facebook site.
With other apps, such as Spotify, for instance, it will guide you to APKPure where you can download the app. Petal Search is also for checking the weather, sports questions, news feeds and more.
It’s still not quite as smooth as having Play Store on the phone, but it takes a lot of the pain points out of the equation and is another way that Huawei phone users can manage without Google.
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