Huawei Mate 40 Pro, Pro+ and RS unveiled with 5nm chipsets, amazing camera setups

The Mate 40 Pro models are finally official and they were well worth the wait. They will try to muscle their way to top of “best camera” charts with their revised hardware co-developed with Leica. But other elements of the phones have received arguably even bigger upgrades.

Still, we want to start with the camera on the Huawei Mate 40 Pro 5G. Huawei has a new 1/1.28” main sensor, which along with the P40 models is the largest on the market. However, resolution has been increased to 50MP (up from 40MP) while maintaining the omnidirectional autofocus and f/1.9 lens with optical image stabilization (OIS). The pixel size is 1.22µ, which doubles when binning is enabled.

The main camera is capable of shooting 4K video at 60 fps as well as slow motion clips at 1080p resolution and 480 fps. And you can practically stop time with 3,840 fps mode, which records at 720p resolution. The selfie camera is quite adept at video capture too, it can do 4K/60 videos and 1080p/240 slow-mo clips, but we’ll get back to it in a minute.

The second generation Cine camera is equipped with a 20MP sensor and an f/1.8 ultrawide-angle lens. It's the first mobile cam in the world to feature a free form lens, which reduces the distortions characteristic of ultra wide lenses.

Huawei is bringing back the 125mm periscope lens in front of a 12MP sensor. It offers 5x magnification over the main cam and is a significant upgrade over the 8MP camera with 3x zoom found on the Mate 30 Pro. It has an f/3.4 aperture and OIS, just like on the P40 Pro.

We’ll take a slight detour to the Huawei Mate 40 Pro+ 5G as zooming capabilities are the major difference between the two Pros. The periscope lens goes up to 10x optical zoom, this module features an 8MP sensor and an f/4.4 aperture, similar to the P40 Pro+. And just like it, it’s not alone – there’s a 12MP camera for mid-range zoom, which offers 3x magnification. A Laser autofocus system enables fast and accurate focus locks.

Both versions of the Pro feature a 13MP front-facing camera joined by a depth sensor. This sensor detects hand gestures to control the EMUI 11 interface, in addition to serving face unlock duties. There’s also a fingerprint reader built into the display.

The 6.76” OLED display that is, quite a jump from the 6.53” panel of the 2019 phones. Resolution is increased to 1,344 x 2,772 px, making for a sharper image. The sides of the display are strongly curved, they meet the side wall of the phone at an angle of 88°. Despite the extreme curve, there are still hardware controls (power, volume) on the side (but virtual buttons are available as well).

The refresh rate is set to 90 Hz, but improves on the P-series with 240 Hz touch sampling rate. The multimedia experience is further improved thanks to stereo speakers - the combination of 3D audio and vibration from the linear motor make for a more immersive experience.

The battery department also got a major upgrade. Not in terms of capacity, at 4,400 mAh it’s about the same size as last year, but it now charges much faster. If you use a USB-C cable, it can go up to 66W. Wirelessly, it can do 50W, faster than the Mate 30 Pro and P40 Pro charged on a cable. Naturally, reverse wireless charging is supported as well.

The Huawei Mate 40 Pro flagships are powered by the latest Kirin 9000 chipset. It’s fabbed on a 5nm process and features four Cortex-A77 cores, one of which is clocked at the record-breaking 3.13 GHz, and four A55 cores. The GPU is a Mali-G78 with 24 cores, which is the maximum configuration possible.

There’s also the integrated 5G modem, of course. Local connectivity is blazing fast too, Wi-Fi 6+ can soak up 160 MHz of bandwidth - that translates to a whopping 2.4 Gbps transfer speed. You'll need the right router (and Huawei has one to sell you), but those are practically 5G speeds.

The Mate 40 series supports the new Huawei M Pen 2 stylus. We mentioned gestures too, an alternative way to control the UI - move your hands left/right to look through photos in your gallery, up/down to flip through pages of an ebook, hover your hand to answer a call or control the music player.

The upgraded Multi-screen Collaboration feature allows you to teleport an app from your phone to your PC. Unlike Microsoft's Your Phone application (which supports almost exclusively Samsung phones), you can bring multiple apps to your laptop screen.

The Huawei Mate 40 Pro is coming to Europe in only one configuration – with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB storage (expandable via NM cards). It will cost €1,200 and is available in a variety of colors. If you are interested you can check out our detailed review to know all about the phone.

The Pro+ uses ceramic materials, available in White and Black. This one upgrades to 12 GB of RAM while keeping the storage at 256 GB. Both versions are available as dual-SIM or single-SIM phones (the Pro has an eSIM as well).

The Huawei Mate 40 Pro+ will set you back €1,400.

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