Huawei P40 Pro is already the second flagship phone of the Chinese company that does not have Google Play services in it. In this case, Huawei has already tried to solve this problem more. But is that enough? In today's review, we will talk not only about using the phone without Google services, but also about the device itself, which has ambitions to become the best camera phone on the market.
Huawei P40 Pro package contents
The phone arrived at our office in a traditional white box. In addition to the device itself, it also contains a fast SuperCharge charger, a USB-C cable and simple headphones also with a USB-C connector. In the reviewed version, we also had a simple plastic cover available, but according to Huawei's website, this is not included in the sales package. The last things in the package are the manuals and a tool for ejecting the SIM slot. The Huawei P40 Pro is sold in three color variants – Ice White, Silver Frost and Black.
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The classic design of 2020 is complemented by a large hole
If you look at the front and the back of the Huawei P40 Pro, you might be surprised by the larger aperture. The rest of the phone already offers a completely standard design that we can recognize from a large number of other phones. The phone's display has a relatively large roundness (larger than the phones of the series Galaxy S20). The minimal frames on the top and bottom will definitely please. The large aperture is so large due to the fact that Huawei has integrated two selfie cameras, one of which is an infrared TOF sensor.
On the back, the most interesting thing is the upper left corner, where there are exactly four cameras, and again you can also notice the Leica brand, which helped with their tuning. The back itself is made of tempered glass and, unfortunately, it is a real catcher for fingerprints and dirt. The frame of the phone is then made of aluminum. The right side of the frame houses the volume rocker as well as the power button. The bottom side offers a USB-C connector, a loudspeaker and a slot for two nanoSIM cards or a nanoSIM and a NM memory card. Unfortunately, Huawei continues to support its own cards. There was no 3,5mm audio connector. Huawei is trying to make up for it at least slightly with an infrared port, which is also increasingly rare on phones. It can be used, for example, to control devices in the home such as a television.
The processing of the phone itself is top notch. After all, we didn't expect anything else. For the past few years, Huawei can easily compete with the best brands such as Samsung or Apple. Nothing bends or bends anywhere. In addition, the Huawei P40 Pro meets the IP68 certification, so it does not mind even a short stay in water, specifically it should last up to 30 minutes at a depth of one and a half meters. With dimensions of 158.2 x 72.6 x 9 mm and a weight of 209 grams, it ranks among the larger phones on the market. However, during testing, we no longer felt that the phone was too massive and large, unlike the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra.
The Huawei P40 Pro offers a 90Hz display
The pride of the phone is certainly the 6,58-inch OLED display with a resolution of 2640 x 1200 pixels, which does not lack HDR support or a 90Hz refresh rate. You might be wondering why Huawei didn't put a 120Hz refresh rate on its top phone like the competition. Huawei director Yu Chengdong recently revealed that the display would be configured to support a 120Hz frequency. However, the company decided to use a smaller value mainly due to less power consumption and instead focused on perfect tuning of 90Hz. We definitely have to agree with that. The higher 90Hz refresh rate works perfectly on the phone, we didn't have any problems even at lower brightness, and we didn't notice too much about the phone's battery life, which was still excellent.
We were also pleased with the phone's display in terms of colors, maximum brightness and viewing angles. The readability of the display in the sun is very good. We compared it directly to the OnePlus 7T and the Huawei fared much better. Of course, this is no surprise, given the different prices of the two phones. We only have two complaints about the display. The larger one leads to a rounded display, due to which we often encountered unwanted touches. It's especially annoying when you're writing a message, when out of the blue your keyboard stops working because you accidentally touch the side edge of the display slightly. Samsung has dealt with this problem in its phones a lot, either by software restrictions, but recently mainly by reducing the roundness. The second problem concerns the hole, where we don't really mind its size, because you still see enough notification icons. It is worse with the fact that it is placed relatively low, for example when watching a video, this creates a large black frame that reduces the overall size of the display.
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The fingerprint reader in this phone is located inside the display and, just like we were used to with earlier Huawei phones with a classic reader, it works without any problems here. The unlocking speed is exemplary, and during testing we did not encounter any problems, such as poor legibility of the finger, slow unlocking, etc.
Top performance is complemented by support for 5G networks
Like the competition, Huawei devices cannot lack support for new generation networks. However, from the point of view of the Czech Republic, this is still an unnecessary function, because any more massive expansion of 5G networks is years away. Anyway, if you only wanted to save for the 4G variant, you're out of luck. Huawei does not sell it.
Performance is in charge of the Kirin 990 5G chipset, which will be enough for you not only for daily work, but also for playing demanding 3D games. We ran the chipset through the Geekbench 5 benchmark, where it scored 753 in Single-Core and 2944 in Multi-Core. As a result, it roughly matches last year's Snapdragon 855+ chipset. Compared to this year's Exynos 990 and Snapdragon 865 chipsets, it is worse off. But this is not surprising. We can observe similar differences in the last few years.
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As for memory versions, the phone is offered on our market in a 256 GB version, in addition, it is a fast UFS 3.0 storage, which is then complemented by 8 GB of RAM memory, which is again a sufficient value that will last for quite a few years. The other equipment of the phone is again exemplary, for example, there is support for Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.1 or the previously mentioned infrared port. The phone also has an NFC chip, but contactless payment is a bit more complicated. Google Pay is not supported due to the lack of Google services.
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The phone's battery has a great capacity of 4 mAh. Huawei's earlier flagship models are reputed to have very good battery life. The same is true of the Huawei P200 Pro, with which the battery regularly lasted up to two days. And even in cases where we had an active 40Hz display. It definitely lasts a whole day with heavy use. The phone is also very good in terms of charging. There is 90W wired charging, with which you can charge the phone from zero to one hundred percent within one hour. There is also fast 40W wireless charging, which is, for example, faster than traditional wired charging for iPhones. Unfortunately, we did not have a special wireless charger with which we could test this fast charging.
Can the Huawei P40 be used without Google services?
If you follow the events regarding Huawei phones at least a little, you know that this Chinese company has been dealing with an embargo from the US since last year. Because of it, Huawei cannot do business with American companies, which, among other things, meant the end of cooperation with Google. The system itself Android is fortunately open software, so Huawei can continue to use it. However, it no longer applies to Google services, which include, for example, the Google Play store, Google applications, Google Assistant, payment via Google Pay, etc. The embargo can be bypassed unofficially, and making Google services available is not a problem for a more technically advanced user. However, for testing, we decided to use the phone without Google services as prepared by Huawei.
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The phone runs on Androidu 10 with the EMUI 10.1 superstructure and at first glance you won't even recognize that the phone lacks Google services. That is, if we do not expect that you will not need to log in with a Google account, but instead you will log in via a Huawei account. We've tried installing Google apps on the phone without any modification and the vast majority won't even start because they require Google services. The only exception to those main apps was Google Photos. However, they only worked in offline mode like a classic photo gallery.
This phone already has Huawei services that aim to replace those from Google. So far, however, it can be seen that the development is at the beginning and there is not much connection with the applications. In addition, pop-up ads that tempt you to install new applications, which are also of poor quality, are very annoying. It's the same with the app store, which is called AppGallery. The number of applications cannot be compared to the Google Play store at all, and you can also forget about the popular applications of American companies. However, Huawei has instructions for installing these applications directly on the website, which normally cannot be in the AppGallery. There are links to various stores such as APKPure, Aptoide or F-Droid.
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However, the experience of using these stores was downright appalling. First of all, you have to put up with slow app downloads, which also doesn't run in the background, so you have to keep the app open all the time, which is great when you have to update a few dozen apps. The second problem was that these stores don't recognize your location and the device you're using. Several times during testing, we had the app update to the latest version, but it downloaded for the wrong device or the wrong region, so it stopped working. If this happens, you have to painstakingly uninstall the apps and manually search for the correct version. Simply put, the experience without Google services was very bad and the dislike for using the phone grew every day.
Liberation came with the Aurora Store client, which connects directly to the Google Play Store. Thanks to Aurora Store, you can access the Google Store without any complicated settings, and you can even log in with your own Google account. However, we do not recommend this as Aurora violates Google's terms and conditions and could result in your original Google Account being terminated. However, the shop can also be used without an account. But the best part is that Aurora works perfectly, including fast downloads in the background, we can find there all the apps that are in the Play Store for our region. Thanks to the Aurora Store, one of the biggest disadvantages of the Huawei P40 Pro has been eliminated and the phone is much more usable thanks to this. We definitely recommend installing it on all Huawei devices without Google services support.
The Huawei P40 Pro camera is among the absolute best
Huawei was the company that started a new era of multi-sensor, large zoom and larger photo cameras two years ago. Since the release of the Huawei P20 Pro, this Chinese company has been able to compare itself with the best camera phones without any problems, and in many respects it has secured first place. The Huawei P40 Pro model continues in a similar vein. The phone has a total of six cameras, four on the back and two on the front.
The main one has 50 MPx, aperture F/1,9 and it also has OIS. There is also a 12MP telephoto sensor, which is designed as a periscope and offers up to 5x optical zoom and 50x digital zoom. It goes without saying that the ultra wide-angle camera has 40 MPx and F/1,8 aperture. The last camera is a TOF sensor that helps with depth of field. On the front, there is a 32 MPx selfie camera, which is complemented by a TOF sensor with infrared light support. The phone can record 4K video at 60 FPS as well as ultra-slow-motion videos in FullHD and 960 FPS.
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The resulting photo quality is at a very high level, but Huawei faces similar problems to Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra. Both phones have great hardware, but they are limited by occasional software problems such as focusing problems, poorer video quality, or night mode, which has not advanced much over the years. Fortunately, Huawei is also gradually releasing updates that focus on the quality of the cameras and the problems are gradually decreasing. If your phone is about photo quality and you don't care too much about video, then the Huawei P40 Pro should definitely be on your shortlist. Overall, it can create very good photos from all three main cameras and rarely leaves you disappointed.
Conclusion of the Huawei P40 Pro review
The US embargo is a big blow to Huawei that will be felt by every Huawei P40 Pro owner. However, if we leave out the problems with Google services, then this is a great flagship model that has a few flies. First of all, users can look forward to a great camera that is constantly being improved with updates, a very good OLED display with a fingerprint reader and top-notch processing. The phone has plenty of performance, and from the point of view of the future, the support of 5G networks is also pleasing.
If we look at the mistakes made by Huawei, we are most bothered by unwanted touches due to the rounded display and the support of its own NM cards instead of classic microSD. The quality of the recorded video also lags behind the best competition. Without a doubt, the biggest minus is the absence of Google services, although Huawei is not directly responsible for this. This is mainly a problem for users who are not very technically savvy. They may have problems installing popular applications that they know from their old phone, or popular applications or games may not work with it. And these are things you don't want to see on a phone with a price of CZK 27.
However, if you know at least a little bit about phones, it is not a problem to install Google services or alternative application stores. In this way, you basically eliminate the main drawback. The Huawei P40 Pro could also be ideal for those who do not like Google products and prefer, for example, solutions from Microsoft or another company.
We would like to thank the MobilPohotovos.cz store for renting the Huawei P40 Pro phone.
I bought a Huawei P40 Lite about a week ago, the Gallery app certainly does not offer the same as the Play Store. For example, only messenger, it is not compatible. So even if you accidentally manage to install it, you still can't run it. But I found an alternative to messenger Lite 🤨.. Another is internet banking, I have air bank. No problems on an older phone, login through the app everything A+.. Now unfortunately the app is not available.. Same as xxx others. So for me, totally 💩💩.. In addition, I had backed up photo albums on my play account that I can't access anymore.. The phone doesn't do what I want, but only because of the transition to the App Gallery 👎👎👎