Huawei announces P40, P40 Pro and P40 Pro+

Chinese smartphone maker Huawei has announced the P40, P40 Pro and P40 Pro+ smartphones. The three phones all run on the Kirin 990 5G soc and have similarities in design, but the camera setup differs per phone.

The P40 has three cameras on the back, the P40 Pro has four and the P40 Pro+ has five. The P40 is about cameras with different focal lengths for ultra-wide angle, wide angle and telephoto with 3x zoom. With the P40 Pro, this is ultra-wide angle, wide angle and telephoto with 5x zoom, along with a great sensor. The P40 Pro+ has cameras with ultra wide-angle, wide-angle, telephoto lens with 3x zoom and telephoto lens with 10x zoom.

Away from the light in the camera with 10x zoom from P40 Pro+

Huawei has achieved the latter by extending the focal length by deflecting the light. By bending the light a total of five times, the distance between the lens and the sensor has been increased. As a result, the focal point comes out at 240mm in 35mm equivalent; with the P40 it is 125mm and with the P40 it is 80mm.

In addition, more cameras have the ‘ryyb’ Bayer layout. That is a Bayer layout with red, green and blue pixels, but Huawei has exchanged the green pixels for yellow for better light output. The primary camera sensor has a size of 1/1.28″, good for an area of ​​about 72 square millimeters. That is slightly larger than the 69 square millimeter sensors of the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra and Xiaomi Mi Note 10.

At the front, the P40 has a single front camera. The P40 Pro and Pro+ also include an IR transmitter and receiver for facial recognition with infrared. In addition, users can perform gestures in the air, which the sensor can recognize.

The software has also been given some functions. For example, it should be possible to remove passers-by from photos and to remove the reflection of the telephone from photos taken through a window. Huawei uses algorithms for this that run on the npus of the Kirin 990-soc. Those are the chips that Huawei has put in for neural calculations.

The P40 has a flat screen, while the Pro and Pro+ have a screen that is curved on all sides. That should make thin screen edges possible. In addition to two SIM card slots, the P40s also have e-SIM support on board. The P40 and P40 Pro will be released in April; the P40 Pro+ will follow in the summer.

Like the Mate Xs and Mate 30 Pro, these phones do not have Google services on board. Huawei is trying to overcome that with its own download store App Gallery, transferring apps from an old phone via Phone Clone and the Huawei Mobile Services for things like displaying maps in apps.