On October 22, Huawei took out all its heavy artillery by unveiling what is  its best smartphone to date and its last great bet for this 2020. I am talking about the  Huawei Mate 40 Pro , a terminal that has already passed through my hands and that I have I was able to try for a week to tell you the best and the worst, what has made me fall in love and what has left me somewhat cold. If you are thinking of buying or if you simply want to browse about the fashionable device that everyone will want and not everyone will have, I invite you to read this  review in Spanish of the Huawei Mate 40 Pro .

Unboxing and design: well loaded with accessories and pretty as he alone: Huawei Mate 40 Pro: Love at first sight – Review in Spanish

I am not going to stop long in this section since a few days ago I offered you my  first impressions of the Huawei Mate 40 Pro , where I spoke at length about the design. I just linked you to this article so you can read it in depth.

As a general review, one of the advantages of this device is that it  brings all the necessary accessories  to enjoy the terminal (a theme that the competition has made very fashionable): wired headphones, USB C to USB cable, a transparent silicone case , spike to extract the SIM, manuals and 66W wall adapter.

In terms of design, it  is possibly the most beautiful smartphone I have ever seen . Its Space Ring (the ring in which the rear cameras are wrapped) will not leave you indifferent and its Mystic Silver color is a true work of art. I have tried to capture in these photos the range of reflections that it produces with its movement but I invite you, if you have doubts, to stop by the Espacio Huawei store in Madrid or any other physical store  where they have it available so that you can admire it yourself. It is worth living that WOW Effect that comes with having a Huawei Mate 40 Pro in your hands for the first time.

Huawei Mate 40 Pro screen

This seems to me to be one of the most important points of a terminal since it is useless for a device to be very beautiful and very powerful if it does not offer a good visual experience later. In this case, there are lights and shadows in this terminal.

The fact that it “only” has a screen refresh rate of 90 Hz has been widely criticized  and the truth is that at this point it lags behind other competing models with similar aspirations. It is not essential that it reaches 120 Hz, of course, but it would have been desirable. In any case, the transition between menus is smooth and without “jams”, just as I have not experienced any problems when testing it in games.

We can’t let the refresh rate make us point it out as a bad screen, because it isn’t at all. It has  6.76 inches, OLED technology  (a marvel), a resolution of  2,772 x 1,344 px and a curvature of 88º . The curved screens seem like a success to me since they give a quite interesting feeling of immersion. There are no ghost keystrokes normally, although I do have to say that on occasion I have had problems uploading a Stories to Instagram and wanting to change the size of the letters (the scroll bar that appears on the left stays right on the edge) . The solution is to exit, leave the app in the background, and enter again.

The colors are vivid, the level of brightness more than sufficient, you can put a blue light filter so that it does not damage our eyes and the image quality is very good both indoors and outdoors.

The possibility of customizing the Always On Screen Mode deserves special mention  , something that I find super useful. As against, in the curvature you can see a slight greenish tone, something that you get used to quickly but that without a doubt can be improved.

Huawei Mate 40 Pro performance

The technical data tells us about a Kirin 9000 processor  , with a Mali-G78 MP24 GPU  ,  8 GB RAM  and 256 GB internal storage  ,  which can be expanded via NMCard for another 256 GB.

The theory looks great, but what about practice? After my tests, the performance has been totally satisfactory and without any problem, beyond the one mentioned above when uploading a Storie to Instagram. I’ve played action and racing games, manipulated documents, surfed the web, and watched videos without any hang, slowdown, or warm-up.

All this is thanks, for the most part “fault”, to the Kirin 9000, Huawei’s new processor with  5 nanometers , which improves the efficiency of the terminal and reaches a clock frequency of 3.13 GHz to give power to the terminal.

I have not been able to perform any benchmark since it gave me an error when installing continuously, I do not know if it is a function that is capped by default in these first terminals or if it is a specific incident that will be solved in the future, anyway, I apologize for not to be able to offer this information that I know you like to see.

Mate 40 Pro battery

And if the performance leaves us with an excellent taste in the mouth, the battery of the Huawei Mate 40 Pro, as the brand is accustomed to us, is outstanding. It has a capacity of  4,400 mAh and reaches  66W for cable charging and  50W for wireless charging . This, folks, is outrageous. In addition, it also has  reversible charging , that is, you can use the battery of the Mate 40 Pro to charge other devices that work with wireless charging, such as the  Huawei Freebuds Pro , for example.

The autonomy has been giving me an average of  8 hours of screen  with a fairly intensive use of the phone. Regarding cable charging times, these are the results of the tests I have done from 0% to 100% . As you can see, it is spectacular that with only 15 minutes of charging it is already at 50% , although it is true that, as you can see in the graph from 30 minutes (which reaches 86%) the upload is much slower and enough time is wasted to reach 100%. The tests have been carried out with active battery optimization.

• 5 minutes: 19%
• 10 minutes: 37%
• 15 minutes: 49%
• 20 minutes: 62%
• 25 minutes: 74%
• 30 minutes: 86%
• 35 minutes: 93%
• 40 minutes: 96%
• 45 minutes: 98%
• 49 minutes: 100%

Connectivity, software, security, resistance, sound and others

But, in the end, what makes the experience with the terminal complete is that rest of “extras” that can make you fall in love or throw you back. In my case, I have to say that the Huawei Mate 40 Pro  is one of those smartphones that, the more you use them, the more you like them. 

We already find  5G connectivity , and although this network is not yet available in all cities or with all operators, its final deployment is expected to be in 2021 or 2022, so if you want your Mate 40 Pro to last as long as maximum possible, it is a plus to take into account.

In terms of security,  both the face unlock and the on-screen fingerprint sensor work perfectly . The fingerprint has been revalued in recent months thanks to the use of masks that prevent us from using Face ID on the street and Huawei has done an excellent job to make it fast and reliable.

Regarding the resistance, it has an  IP68 certificate , which promises that it can be submerged up to one meter for half an hour without damaging the terminal. Be careful, because this only applies to fresh water, so be careful if you want to swim with it on the beach, it is not a good idea.

The sound has been one of the sections that, historically, have been slightly below expectations. In this case, I see good progress in this field and the Mate 40 Pro has very good clarity and volume, so much so that, in a normal room, you will not need a bluetooth speaker to enjoy your favorite music at full volume. This is achieved thanks to the  double loudspeaker , located at the bottom and top of the terminal.

A small criticism comes in the software section and it is no longer due to the fact that it works only with  Huawei Mobile Services (HMS)  and not with Google Services, but that  EMUI 11 is based on  Android 10 , so we are a generation behind the current calendar. I know that software is one of the things that users care most about, but we have to acknowledge a great advance by Huawei in this field . If you have questions about whether Instagram, WhatsApp, Uber Eats will work for you, etc., the answer is yes. Huawei is investing great efforts in its AppGallery application store but, if you cannot find the app you want there, you can open its Petal Search search engine and it will look for the best apk compatible with your device. As another alternative, I recommend Aurora Store. There may still be a specific one that is not supported, but generally I have had no problem using it with my reference apps.

Finally, highlight as “extras” certain functionalities that it has very interesting and worth praising, such as the automatic screen rotation according to the angle from which it detects that we are looking at it or the possibility of not showing notifications if it finds “eyes outsiders ”looking at the screen.

And the cameras, are they still up to the task?: Huawei Mate 40 Pro: Love at first sight – Review in Spanish

Huawei has always been characterized by having the best photographic section on a smartphone and this time it  revalidates its title with a configuration of very powerful cameras and with improvements in both photography and video.

It is precisely in video where I see more progress and it includes a very leading stabilization and a super interesting option, which is to follow people. All you have to do is leave your phone still and the camera will move the scene to always keep the person who is moving in the center of the shot. In addition, video also includes slow motion recording or the possibility of recording in 4K.

In photography, I appreciate a good advance in portrait modeCompared to previous generations, the beauty mode is much more subtle, it no longer leaves that whitish effect that we did have before and, this is super interesting, in the post-processing we can choose the degree of blur we want in an image that we have made in portrait mode. In addition, I really liked an option that, automatically, enlarges the scene when we have the front camera active and we put the mobile in landscape mode. Huawei tries to sell it as it detects that we want to take more landscape or put more people in the scene, but in reality what I see is that it automatically activates the wide angle when turning the mobile. In any case, it is a very positive point and I am already getting a lot out of it, since it allows better selfies and not all mobiles have GA in the front camera.

The interpretation of colors is also very interesting  , it is still somewhat artificial in some moments, but with much less saturation than before (something that, precisely, could become a problem in some scenes). The  zoom is once again the protagonist, this time reaching 50x magnification and allowing us to take an anecdotal photograph of the moon again, but, beyond that, it offers us very good results up to 10x.

In what has left me somewhat colder has been in the  night mode. I am used to Huawei taking giant steps with each new device and, this time, not only do I not appreciate progress in practice, but I would say that it is a step behind the P40 Pro. Night photography is still spectacular, no Get me wrong, but I don’t appreciate that “plus point” that I’ve always had from one generation to the next. The lights of the city are still great and it even saves the dimly lit scenes with a Fourth Millennium quality, but it continues to show very artificial skies on some occasions, in which it is practically impossible to capture a dark night and “in a magical way “In the sky it is daylight when we shoot with this device. Huawei, we don’t want that. What’s more,

Another detail that I love about Huawei phones is that it has  an aperture mode , which allows you to play with the blur before shooting and that, on certain occasions, I recommend you over portrait mode.

The general balance of the photography of the Huawei Mate 40 Pro both with the front and the back is  spectacular and although it does not obtain the honor plate for these small failures that I have mentioned, do not be afraid of having one of the best in your hands. smartphone cameras on the market.

As an image is worth a thousand words, here is a  small gallery with photographs taken in different circumstances . In the caption of each photo I tell you how it was shot

Huawei Mate 40 Pro Feature Summary: Huawei Mate 40 Pro: Love at first sight – Review in Spanish

Availability and price of the Huawei Mate 40 Pro: Huawei Mate 40 Pro: Love at first sight – Review in Spanish

If the Huawei Mate 40 Pro is the new protagonist of your wet dreams, you will like to know that  it can be reserved from November 5 , in silver or black. Its official price is  1,199 euros .

I recommend it to you? Undoubtedly, if you are looking for a premium range smartphone, with an outstanding design, performance to match and a photographic section that will allow you to do some real magic.

I do not recommend it if your budget is tighter, since we must not forget that with the Mate 40 Pro we exceed the barrier of 1,000 euros and not everyone can afford this outlay. In this case, you can look at options like the  Huawei P30 Pro which, despite being a year and a half old, is still a safe bet.