- All right, this is gonna sound a little strange
but just go with me on it.
The key to understanding the Huawei P40 Pro+
is looking back on a Nokia phone from nine years ago.
In a time when most phone cameras
topped out at 12 or 16 megapixels,
Nokia's Lumia 1020 was a revolutionary reimagining
of what a camera phone could be.
Its monster 41 megapixel sensor
lets you crop zoom without the quality loss
of those smaller cameras, and it mounted the whole thing
on a bed of ball bearings for optical stabilization.
In 2013, this was incredible stuff,
especially for the, in retrospect, reasonable price of 649.
So why didn't Nokia run away with the market?
Well, mainly because the platform it ran on,
Windows Phone, failed,
largely because it just didn't have the apps
people were looking for.
Over the past few years,
Huawei has kind of stepped into Nokia's old spot
in the photography space
by recruiting some of the imaging pioneers from Nokia
by partnering with famed photography brand Leica
and by applying some good old-fashioned R&D
to produce some stunning phone cameras.
The P40 Pro+ is the latest evolution of that legacy,
so I took it on a road trip from Brooklyn to the boonies,
and along the way, this collection of cameras
captured my heart all over again.
But you knew it was coming.
Unless you're a phone-tweakin' geek like me,
you'll probably find that no optical achievement
is worth the compromises this phone carries.
(upbeat music)
Now let's be clear, those compromises
are not entirely Huawei's fault,
and they're probably not something
Huawei wants reviewers to focus on,
but I don't work for Huawei, I work for you.
So I have to tell you that out of the box,
this phone does not have Google Apps.
It doesn't have the Google Mobile Services framework
that allows those apps to function.
It does not have the Google Play Store.
In its place, the Huawei AppGallery,
which is off to an okay start
but still has only 2% the number of titles
that Google Play Store has,
and an awful lot of those are just junk.
Now Huawei has attracted some big-name developers,
so you do see familiar titles in here
like Telegram, Amazon, Snapchat,
but you know, I've been through this before.
I've held out hope that the Palm App Store
would pick up steam after HP bought Palm.
I've put my faith in the scale of Microsoft
and Windows Phones still lost.
Microsoft, folks.
So to say it's an uphill slog
for Huawei in the west is an understatement.
In markets like China where customers aren't as reliant
on Google's apps and services, the situation is different.
But here in the States, the only people
who should consider this thing
are people who are willing to cobble together
an app collection from Huawei and Amazon
and sideload Google Apps
even though they're not guaranteed to work well.
Still, I wanted to cover this thing in some capacity
because if nothing else, it's important to see
what we're missing out on, right?
Well, on our way to the cameras,
let's stop over and talk about the casing,
and one of the things I like about Huawei
is it's usually not content
to just build aspirational smartphones.
Historically, it's insisted
that they also stand out with a fanciful finish.
Recall the bottomless blues of the Mate 20 Pro,
the iridescent nebula of the P20 Pro.
Well, 2020 seems to be the year when brands go bland.
You can get a black one or you can get a white one.
I asked Huawei about this and the company said,
for this generation, it was interested
in creating something classic and timeless.
(chuckles) Well, I don't see
why that would have prevented it
from also giving buyers a fun option.
I will give the company credit.
The white version that I have is attractive
in a restrained sort of way.
It looks expensive.
It feels expensive, thanks to its weight.
Also, I like that rather than glass, Huawei went
with a microcrystalline zirconium ceramic backplate
that makes it more scratch-resistant
while still allowing for wireless charging,
40-watt wireless charging
if you have the special Huawei charger,
which as of yet, I do not.
In an era when most wireless pads
are limited to 15 watts and under,
it's nice to see Huawei pushing the envelope.
All right, let's get to why we're here.
There are five, separate cameras filling out the face
of the raised mesa-like optical array
on the back of the phone,
which bears the legend Vario-Summilux.
As photographer Ken Rockwell explains on his website,
that's decades old Leica lingo
meant to evoke superior performance in two areas,
low light and zoom.
The sensors themselves are a 50-megapixel primary
backed up by 40-megapixel Ultra Wide; a depth sensor;
and two, separate eight-megapixel cameras for zoom,
one with 3x mag, the other with 10x.
That's optical zoom.
It's not cropping the image and sacrificing quality,
but rather using a series of mirrors and prisms
to bend the incoming light,
achieving a similar effect to a big glass lens
on a conventional camera.
That zoom capability opens up a whole new set
of possibilities for creative framing,
and it comes in handy for more than just distant sailboats.
Example, I wanted to capture the mid-century spirit
of the Silver Sands Motel sign in Greenport,
but not these anachronistic modern-day vehicles out front.
So I punched in to the next lens
and cropped a little further until I got what I wanted.
Could you do this with your Pixel or your iPhone?
Sure, but you wouldn't get this kind of sharpness.
I will say that while I am happy with this photo
and the others I took on this day,
they were captured using an older software version,
which had some issues that made it difficult
to capture these oil tankers off Long Beach
and these Manhattan skyscrapers too.
But Huawei being Huawei, it pushed out an 11th-hour update
shortly before press time that fixed that,
making it much easier for me to frame up a telephoto shot.
These were after the update.
Even though the quality sacrifice
as you zoom past 20 or 30x is noticeable,
with enough patience and a little bit of luck,
you can snag shots that you can't get
with almost any other smartphone.
Okay, that's the Vario.
Now how about that Summilux?
Yeah, night mode is the thing that really put Huawei
on the map back in the days of the P20 Pro,
and you know, it hasn't changed much with this generation.
Of course it brings the light up tremendously
in the dark as designed.
I'll toss a side-by-side up here for comparison,
but as you may remember, it's an awful lot of fun
to play with during the day too.
It's obviously not something you wanna use all the time.
It totally destroys contrast
and its quest for epic, dynamic range.
I kind of wish Huawei would have refined it a little bit
so it didn't do that.
But if you're trying for a heavily stylized look,
no other phone does it with this particular flare.
Ditto the color filters and monochrome modes
and the viewfinder on any other phone,
you know, I'd dismiss them as cheap tricks,
but there's just something
about the color tuning in this Huawei,
like a combo that makes me wanna use 'em more often.
The predictive AI modes,
which I normally turn off, are in the same boat.
It turns out, Huawei's autodetection
really does make this car look better.
Moving over from the 50-megapixel primary,
the 40-megapixel Cine is so named
because of its 16:9 sensor, but you can use it for stills.
And this is a bit of a letdown.
While the images are good
and I'm always happy to have an Ultra Wide,
I wish Huawei hadn't limited its field of view.
Look at this side-by-side with the Galaxy Fold,
a phone with demonstrably inferior optics,
but a proper wide-angle lens
that lends this scene the imposing feel I wanted.
As for video, I'll share the handful of samples
I was able to capture in the few hours
between the latest software update
and my publication deadline.
(upbeat music)
Completing the optical hardware roundup
is the selfie array upfront
with a 32-megapixel camera with autofocus,
a depth sensor, and a maximum video resolution of 4K,
and what looks like some pretty good
video stabilization too.
It also packs the same portrait mode offerings
as the rear camera, a bevy of options
that aren't that great,
particularly not the Apple-aping Studio mode,
but I admit, like a Midwest kid with a soda sweet tooth,
I am partial to pop.
Passerby removal, dual view, ultra slow motion.
Folks, there are enough features
to fill two videos this length,
but fortunately, I've seen enough to know that the P40 Pro+
carries the most versatile mobile camera of its generation.
It's a modern-day Lumia.
Unfortunately, it can't just be a camera,
it also has to be a phone, and just like the Lumia,
it's all about the apps or lack thereof.
It is possible through methods
like Aurora and Phone Clone, et cetera,
to get GMS and Google Play at least mostly working.
And hey, if you can run your life
on the apps you can download from the Amazon Appstore,
more power to you, maybe it will be enough,
maybe the Huawei AppGallery will get more traction,
maybe someday the phone
will actually be worth its asking price
of a little under US$1,600,
but the problem for Huawei, one of them,
is that phones like the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra exist
with similar camera capabilities
and all the apps you could ever want.
I look forward to a day
when I can recommend a Huawei phone again,
but for now, like so many would-be customers out there,
I just have to admire its stunning cameras from afar.
This video was produced
using a P40 Pro+ review sample provided by Huawei,
a pre-production device running pre-release software.
MrMobile does not produce paid reviews.
Huawei received no copy approval
or even an early look at this video,
and the opinions contained within are mine and mine alone.
Please subscribe if that's the kind of video
you'd like to see more of on YouTube.
Special thanks to Android Central
for providing additional footage.
Visit them at the link in the description
for a much more extensive review.
Until next time, thanks for watching.
And as the world slowly spins back up to a place
where it might be possible to do so,
I encourage you to please keep wearing those masks
and stay safe while you also stay mobile, my friends.