The Huawei Mate 40 and its siblings the Huawei Mate 40 Pro and Huawei Mate 40 Pro Plus – along with the super-premium Porsche Design Huawei Mate 40 RS – are likely to be the last major flagship phone launches of 2020, as they were announced in late October, and there’s nothing else significant on the horizon until 2021.
Of course, how significant they are is up for debate, with no US launch planned and no access to Google Mobile Services, but they certainly have high-end hardware, so if you can get past those issues they’re well worth learning more about.
Below you’ll find details of everything you need to know about the Huawei Mate 40 range, including specs, features, and price and release date information.
Cut to the chase
- What are they? The latest high-end Huawei phones
- When are they out? Unknown but probably soon
- What will they cost? Start at €899 (around £810 / $1,065 / AU$1,500)
Huawei Mate 40 release date and price
The Huawei Mate 40 range was announced on October 22, but that’s not when you’ll be able to buy the phones. In fact, if you’re in the US you won’t be able to buy them at all – like all recent Huawei phones they’re not launching in the country.
At the time of writing in fact we don’t know exact availability for any of the models – though we’re expecting the Huawei Mate 40 Pro at the very least to land in the UK at some point.
Pricing so far is only in euros, which puts the standard Mate 40 at €899 (around £810 / $1,065 / AU$1,500), the Mate 40 Pro at €1,199 (roughly £1,080 / $1,420 / AU$2,000), the Mate 40 Pro Plus at €1,399 (around £1,260 / $1,655 / AU$2,330), and the Porsche Design Huawei Mate 40 RS at €2,295 (approximately £2,070 / $2,715 / AU$3,820).
Huawei Mate 40 design and display
The three main Huawei Mate 40 models look similar, with a curved screen, a camera cut-out in the top left corner, and a big circular camera block on the back.
This camera design is called ‘Space Ring Design’ and it’s certainly eye-catching, with the lenses in a ring around a central circle.
There are some differences though, with the Huawei Mate 40 and Huawei Mate 40 Pro coming in a choice of black, white or mystic silver glass finishes, or vegan leather in yellow or green, while the Huawei Mate 40 Pro Plus is offered in a ceramic white or ceramic black finish.
The water resistance also varies, with the Pro and Pro Plus being IP68 rated (which is the standard for flagship phones), while the Huawei Mate 40 has just an IP53 rating – so you should try not to get it wet.
Other design details include both physical and virtual volume controls (the latter letting you use the curved edge of the screen to adjust the volume), and dual-stereo speakers, designed to offer strong bass.
There’s also a Porsche Design Huawei Mate 40 RS, which has an octagonal camera housing, and lines down the middle of the back, and this comes in ceramic white and ceramic black, just like the Mate 40 Pro Plus.
As for the screen, the Huawei Mate 40 has a 6.5-inch 1080 x 2376 screen with a 90Hz refresh rate and 68-degree curved edges.
The Huawei Mate 40 Pro and Mate 40 Pro Plus on the other hand have a 6.76-inch 1344 x 2772 screen with steeply curved edges of 88 degrees and a 90Hz refresh rate. The Mate 40 RS presumably has the same screen, but that hasn’t been confirmed at the time of writing. All the models also have an in-screen fingerprint scanner.
Huawei Mate 40 camera and battery life
The Huawei Mate 40 range all have a 50MP f/1.9 main camera, but the other lenses differ. On the standard Mate 40 you get a 16MP f/2.2 ultra-wide one and an 8MP f/2.4 telephoto one, offering 3x optical zoom and optical image stabilization (OIS).
The Huawei Mate 40 Pro takes things up a notch with a 20MP f/1.8 ultra-wide camera, and a 12MP f/3.4 periscope one, with OIS and 5x optical zoom. There’s also a dual-lens camera on the front, consisting of both a 13MP snapper and a 3D depth sensor.
And the Huawei Mate 40 Pro Plus adds OIS to the 50MP main lens, and then has a 20MP f/2.4 ultra-wide camera, an 8MP f/4.4 periscope one (with 10x optical zoom and OIS), a 12MP f/2.4 telephoto one (with 3x optical zoom and OIS), and a time-of-flight (ToF) camera for depth sensing.
Finally, the Porsche Design Huawei Mate 40 RS has a 50MP f/1.9 main camera with OIS, a 20MP f/1.8 ultra-wide one, an 8MP f/4.4 periscope one with 10x zoom and OIS, a 12MP f/2.4 telephoto one with 3x optical zoom and OIS, a ToF sensor, and a color temperature sensor.
As for battery life, the Huawei Mate 40 has a 4,200mAh one with a currently unconfirmed charging speed, while the Huawei Mate 40 Pro and Pro Plus have a 4,400mAh battery with 66W wired charging and 50W wireless – both of which should be very fast. We’d again assume the Mate 40 RS matches the Pro models here.
Huawei Mate 40 specs and features
All of the Huawei Mate 40 models have a Kirin 9000 chipset. This is a 5nm chipset, much like the A14 Bionic found in the iPhone 12 range, and Huawei has made some big claims about it.
The company says that its CPU is 10% faster than the one in the Snapdragon 865 Plus (which is the current top Android chipset), with the GPU apparently being 52% faster, and the NPU (neural processing unit) being 2.4 times faster. It’s supposedly also more power efficient than the Snapdragon 865 Plus.
The phones also all support 5G and run Android overlaid with Huawei’s EMUI 11 interface – but as with all recent Huawei phones there’s no access to the Google Play Store or Google apps.
As for RAM and storage, in the Huawei Mate 40 there’s 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, in the Mate 40 Pro you get 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, in the Mate 40 Pro Plus there’s 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and in the Porsche Design Huawei Mate 40 RS there’s 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
The phones also support Huawei’s new M-Pen 2 stylus, making them alternatives to the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 range.