Huawei P40 Pro+

The Huawei P40 Pro+ is the latest addition to Huawei’s P series of smartphones. Traditionally, most smartphones would come in their base and pro versions, with the latter promising more improvements at a higher price. Huawei was no exception as they released the P40 and P40 Pro together in April, 2020. However, the P40 Pro+ is the only smartphone they have released as a Pro+ shortly after the debut of its predecessor, making it one of its kind for now. Although it has been a year since the release of the P40 smartphones, it has been regarded as one of the best smartphones within the industry with its high specs and camera’s capabilities. It can even take a clear picture of the moon thanks to its advanced AI. So with that out of the way, what does the P40 Pro+ offer compared to its predecessors? 

Physical Appearance

Just like its predecessors, the P40 Pro+ shares a lot of similarities to the Pro when it comes to appearance and size which is 6.58 inches. It has the same metal and glass design, an in-build fingerprint scanner, the same punch-hole front camera, a ceramic finish at the back and no 3.5mm audio jack. A bummer for people who want to jog while listening to music. But, the Pro+ comes with more colors to choose from; black and white. Boring, I know. Wish they could add in more colors for more personalization.

When it comes to display, it performs the same as the Pro as they both share the same specs, which is an OLED “Overflow Display” with a refresh rate of 90Hz and supports 2640×1200 resolution. The “Overflow Display” is just a fancier word for “Waterfall Display” which can be found in some of the latest smartphones like Xiaomi Mi 10, Oneplus 8 series and Motorola Edge series. The display is just a fancy way of giving off the illusion of the screen “falling off” the edge, hence its name. Because both versions of Pros have better display, it allows video to play more smoothly than the base P40, which has a refresh rate of 60Hz.

Camera

And now, the main spotlight. As previously mentioned, the Huawei P40’s camera is strong enough to take a clear picture of the moon. This is because their Master AI helps users to take a clean shot of the camera no matter the condition. As long as they can see the moon, the AI will kick in and assist them to take that Instagram-worthy picture. But, each of these P40 smartphones have different camera specs. For the Pro+, it has a Leica penta camera system which allows the smartphones to take more precise pictures. Aside from that, the Pro+ has camera features that are a mix of both the base P40 and Pro versions. Although most of the specs are the same as the Pro, the Pro+ has a 3x zoom instead of the Pro’s 5x zoom, giving more versatility on taking pictures. If you plan on taking videos with the Pro+, then you can expect high quality videos as it is able to capture 4K videos at 60fps. 

Internal Specs

Despite some additions to the camera functions, the Pro+ still performs the same as its predecessors as it uses the same Kirin 990 processor and 8GB RAM. One of the main differences between the P40 and Pro is that the latter has wireless charging, which could be problematic whenever you forget to charge your phone before you leave for whatever activity. This would also leave the P40 in the dust as most smartphones these days come with wireless charging. In order to resolve these issues, the Pro+ has both wired and wireless charging in addition to reverse wireless charging, which makes the Pro+ smartphones an impromptu power bank for other smartphones, provided that they have reverse wireless charging as a feature. The wireless charging is also considered one of the best wireless charger as it is able to charge at 40W, similar to wired charging. This means that you can fully charge the smartphone within an hour on both wired and wireless charging. It also boasts a high battery life with 4,200 mAh, similar to the Pro but more than P40. 

Disadvantages

During the presidency of everyone’s favorite American president, Donald Trump, he has cut off trading with China, which significantly impacts future Huawei smartphones. Because of that, the P40 Pro+ still suffers from not having Google Apps just like its predecessors as the app store provides access to plenty of free apps, including Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp. Despite all the praises by reviewers around the world, the P40 series might turn off most Android fans as it severely limits the availability of most apps that the Google App store provides. Additionally, it comes in a significantly higher price than their predecessors, sitting at a whopping USD 1,688 at launch. For comparison, the P40 and P40 Pro were USD 964 and USD 1,205 respectively. So, it might be better to buy either the P40 or P40 Pro instead unless you want that high spec that the Pro+ provides.

Conclusion

With the Huawei P50 coming out soon, it is exciting to see what kind of new features and improvements it will bring to the world. Knowing Huawei, we will be seeing the release of the Pro versions of this smartphone along with the base version. With the release of the P40 Pro+, it could indicate that Huawei may have plans to release more smartphones from the plus series along with the debut of their newer devices. Despite its high reviews, there are plenty of alternatives that could perform better than the P40 series like Samsung’s S21 and S20 Ultra 5G, Xiaomi M11 Ultra and even older Huawei models like the P20 and P30 Pro. If you can deal without having access to the Google App store, then the Huawei P40 Pro+ will be one of the best smartphone you can ever have.