The Huawei P40 Pro is a pretty expensive flagship. And because if its expensiveness, it should
have high quality components. Today we're going to scope it out from the inside and
also figure out why it doesn't have an earpiece up here at the top. Gotta see what that's
all about. Should be an interesting video. Let's get started.
[Intro]
The Huawei P40 Pro is ip68 water and dust resistant, and there is a surprising amount
of strong adhesive under the back glass panel – more than usual. I can take my sharp razor
blade and start the penetration between the glass layer and the metal frame. I'll just
slice around under the edge of the glass while lifting up with my suction cup. Glass is glass,
and glass can break of course, so I'm being very gentle and being very careful with the
glass. I mean, I'm also being careful with my fingers as well...but sliced fingers can
heal, and broken glass can't. Actually that was probably a terrible analogy and my mom's
going to be mad I said that.
Anyway, after the adhesive is sliced, I can twist off the back glass panel. Luckily there
are no ribbon cables attaching it to the phone. Remember when fingerprint scanners were all
on the back panel instead of under the screen? The weirdest thing so far though is this little
protruding niblet on the back of the camera lens. It's a little channel that lines up
directly with the rear facing microphone. Kind of interesting.
There are 11 Phillips head screws holding down the top protective plastics. The internal
engineering of this thing is actually pretty intricate, with very little tolerance between
parts. Everything is incredible well put together. The NFC contacts are up here at the top of
the plastics and the wireless charging coil contacts are down here at the bottom. I'll
unplug the battery connection just like a little Lego, and then make my way across the
bottom of the board unplugging the rest of the ribbons.
The motherboard itself has two more screws holding it in place. And after peeling up
the black stickers holding down the front facing camera connections, I can gently lift
the whole motherboard out of the frame. It's a dual stacked motherboard like we've seen
inside of the iPhones and recent Samsung phones, so that's flagship material at least. It's
also got multiple massive cameras, which is also flagship material.
The top 40 megapixel ultra wide camera does not have OIS. The large 50 megapixel regular
camera in the center though does have OIS. The smaller 3D depth camera off to the side
does not have that optical image stabilizing, but it's more of an accessory to the other
cameras anyway. Huawei does say that this 12 megapixel periscope telephoto camera does
have the optical image stabilizing, but there are no physical moving parts that we can see
from the exterior. This was also the case with the S20 Ultra periscope camera that did
have optical image stabilizing hidden on the inside. So it is normal.
Moving to the back of the motherboard, we can see that there is a thermal paste between
the board and the frame of the phone. And it looks like Huawei is using the same underscreen
vapor chamber that we've seen utilized in other devices lately as well. It is easier
to get rid of heat through the screen than it is just using the frame alone. Pulling
off the front facing camera we can see the 32 megapixel selfie unit alongside the infrared
3D camera for that face unlocking stuff. The selfie camera does move around a bit, but
there is no OIS, just auto focusing.
Remember how the P40 Pro has no earpiece? That's because it's using an underscreen speaker
which allows you to hear through the screen by vibrating the screen from underneath. We've
seen this technology in a few phones before, like the LG G8 and last year's Huawei P30
Pro. And it actually works pretty well. If you didn't already know it was different,
you wouldn't be able to tell it was different. Even a lot of TVs are now using this technology.
It's one of the perks of really thin displays.
The magnets inside of the speaker are really strong. Now let's pull out the battery. Now
apparently, the Chinese writing on the battery pull tabs means that tabs 1 and 2 need to
be pulled back all the way before the center tab can be pulled up. I kind of figured this
out after the fact. Or maybe it was all just a ploy to get my pry tool to pop up magically
in the center of the screen to remind you to subscribe. Let's just pretend I'm really
good at planning things.
The P40 Pro battery is a 4200 milliamp hour capacity that can fast charge at 40 watts.
The last section we have to uncover is the charging port, with the loudspeaker and vibrator,
with 7 more screws holding everything in place...two of which are covered by sneaky little black
stickers. Once the protective plastic plate is off, I can unplug the fingerprint reader
and the loudspeaker connector just like little Legos. And I can remove the one screw holding
down the bottom board. The whole thing can pull away exposing one of the smallest vibrating
motors we've ever seen. It's weird how inside of some phones vibrators are getting smaller
instead of bigger. Haptic feedback is rather important to some people...I mean, Apple has
a vibrator that's bigger than a camera module, but vibrating is definitely not a priority
for Huawei inside this P40 Pro. The loudspeaker as well does not have little foam balls inside
like we've come to expect from other flagships. The charging port is super simple on it's
own little ribbon and very easy to replace. It has an orange rubber ring around the tip.
The fingerprint reader is the rectangular object we see in the center of the phone and
does not have a lens like we've seen inside of other devices. Instead it's just the flat
sensor glued to the underside of the screen – a style of fingerprint scanner that we
haven't seen in a while. Maybe it's lack of focal point allows more real estate to sense
fingerprints. And then, you know, we have the screen glued to the other side. Lately
I've been starting to get the vibe that a lot of flagships are kind of doing the same
thing over and over again. And yeah, we do get to see most of the cool inventions from
the inside...you know, the internal hardware and stuff...but I want to get my hands on
some of the more budget and mid-range phones since it's more and more apparent lately that
flagship phones and flagship pricing are not needed to get the job done. Especially since
this year's P40 Pro is eerily similar to last year's P30 Pro. Not much has changed. So let
me know what budget and mid-range phones you want to see tested and torn down in the comments
and I'll start making videos about those.
I'll finish getting the cameras plugged back in. Then I can tuck the motherboard down into
place, along with the dual front camera. And finally, the back plastic protection and wireless
charging coil can get screwed in holding everything together. I'll test the phone before putting
on the back glass panel, and it looks like everything is turning on. Not too shabby.
If you're interested in the P40 Pro, I'd probably check out the P30 Pro first – it does pretty
much the exact same thing and costs a whole lot less. Come hang out with me on Instagram
and Twitter. And thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.