Huawei P40 Pro long-term review

Camera

Camera-wise, the P40 Pro improves on the already very good formula of its predecessor, the P30 Pro from last year. There's a larger and higher-res main shooter on the back, with even larger pixels, OIS and the added benefit of omnidirectional phase detection autofocus, aided by a larger and higher-res ultrawide, and a higher-res periscope zoom camera, that is still capable of 5x optical magnification.

The trend is clear, then - make everything bigger. That's usually better in camera optics, but the main snapper does have a darker aperture than last year, while the ultrawide is a tiny bit less ultra. The specs of the selfie snapper seem to be identical between generations, and the unsightly pill-shaped cutout in the screen also houses the tech required for secure face unlocking but misses out on a wider-angle selfie-taker that some people seem to like a lot.

The camera app is a breeze to use, and it's quite similar to every other camera app out there, really, so we don't feel the need to go into a lot of detail here. Everything is arranged the way you expect it to be, although the zoom slider moves around when in landscape, to the bottom side, which means that for all intents and purposes you're going to need two hands to operate it, using your left hand to control zoom.

The shortcut to quickly open up the camera app even when the phone is locked is double tapping on the volume down button, which works well every time, we just wish manufacturers would settle on one specific button for this, like they did with their camera apps' UI. Right now it's either the power button or the volume down button, with the former being a tad more prevalent in terms of options to quickly jump into the camera and snap a quick pic.

Speaking of, let's get right into samples. As usual note that we've shot everything on Auto settings, because that's how we feel most people would use a phone. There's a Pro mode if you want it, of course, and you can shoot in "high-res" mode too but the main sensor is meant to be used in the default Auto way of doing things, allowing it to bin four pixels into one and present a 12.5 MP image out of the 50 MP it has to work with. Going high-res means you will lose a lot of detail because multi-stacking is a no go in this mode.

We turned the Master AI off, because it has the tendency to create incredibly unrealistic renditions of whatever you may be shooting. This is especially bad for skies or greenery. Here are a couple of comparison shots from both the main camera and the ultrawide, with Master AI on and off. We hope you can see what led us to the decision to turn it off after this short experiment.

Master AI on/off

It's not like the P40 Pro's image processing doesn't make colors pop even with Master AI off. It does, and sometimes we felt that it went overboard even so. Then again, we were comparing the result on the screen to what our eyes were seeing of the scene that was just captured. If you weren't there, so to speak, you'd probably think the output is pleasant looking. Which it is, but there's a lot of sharpening going on all the time. Sure, the sharp look will go over very well on social media sites, but it does lose the P40 Pro points for sheer accuracy of capture compared to the real, unsharpened world.

All this said, photos from the main camera come out very good during the day. There is a ton of detail, the dynamic range is good, and noise levels are very low. Colors on the whole do skew towards warm, though, aside from greenery and sky blues which while not overly warm, do seem to be overly 'pumped'. Maybe that's what people want?

Daytime samples from the main camera

The ultrawide camera isn't as ultrawide as others, coming in at 18mm, but it still widens the field of view somewhat, compared to the main shooter. It is a very good shooter, though, in terms of quality, easily one of the best ultrawides we've ever handled. In daylight, it produces shots with great dynamic range, good detail levels, and accurate-ish colors. Oversharpening is present, but that seems to be the theme of this phone's image processing so far.

Daytime samples from the ultrawide camera

The zoom camera has 5x optical magnification, and if you shoot in this way you will get excellent pictures during daytime too, with very good detail levels and dynamic range, practically no noise, and sharpness that is slightly toned down compared to the other two cameras, but still visible. Colors are a bit on the warm side too.

Daytime samples with 5x zoom

Hybrid zoom will take you all the way up to 50x, although if you go there, you'll get pictures that, for the most part, are just barely usable. We took a few samples just to show you that this extreme zoom level is probably best avoided most of the time.

50x zoom samples

On the other hand, going to 'just' 10x does produce much better results, although obviously not even close to on par with the 5x ones that only use optical zoom. The 10x shots definitely look better on the phone's screen than when you view them on anything bigger, and while they are all usable, they're not impressive really.

Daytime samples with 10x zoom

Since the ultrawide camera has autofocus, you can use it to snap macro shots, and we couldn't help trying this out. The results are quite good as you can see, and the colors are accurate.

Macro samples