The Huawei P40 series is scheduled to launch on the 26th March 2020 but it appears that they have cancelled its physical launch event in Paris. Due to the current COVID-19 outbreak, Huawei has decided to have an online-only event for its “most powerful 5G flagship smartphone”. The move to switch to a live-stream event is not surprising considering Huawei’s Consumer Business Group head, Richard Yu had presented the Huawei Mate Xs “virtually” through a video feed during the Barcelona event.
According to the Huawei P40 microsite, the live stream event is taking place on the 26th of March at 13:00 GMT, which is at 9pm Malaysian time. From the teaser below, we can see a rather wide camera bump which is expected for a photography centric device.
This year, Huawei is expected to release at least three models, a standard P40 model and two P40 Pro options. From the leaks we’ve seen so far, there will be a P40 Pro that comes with a quad-camera setup and a P40 Pro “Premium Edition” that gets a penta-camera setup.
As shown above, the P40 Pro “PE” on the right appears to offer a wide focal length range between 18mm to 240mm. This seems to imply that the higher P40 Pro variant can go head-on with the Galaxy S20 Ultra as it could possibly offer 10x optical zoom and digital zoom up to 100X.
In terms of specs, the new P40 series is expected to run on a Kirin 990 5G that offers 5G connectivity supporting both SA and NSA networks. Instead of a notch, the new devices are likely to feature a dual-punch-hole selfie-camera.
Probably the biggest hurdle is that the new devices will run on Huawei Mobile Services. This means you won’t find your typical Google apps and services as well as the Google Play Store. To discover apps, you’ll need to rely on Huawei’s AppGallery which they have been pushing hard to entice more developers to jump on board.
It was recently reported that Google has requested a special exemption from the US government which will allow them to supply Google software and certification for Huawei devices. If the request is granted, it opens up the possibility for Huawei to run Google Mobile Services on its newer models but so far there are no new updates on the matter.
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