Huawei P40 Pro long-term review

Low-light photos

Moving on to night time shots, the main camera produces images that are so good in its Auto mode, that we're wondering whether Night Mode even serves a purpose anymore. Okay, so that's a bit of an exaggeration, but seriously - the Auto mode images from the main sensor at night are simply stunning for a smartphone camera. They do take a bit to capture, though, because while Huawei doesn't outright say it, there seems to be some sort of long exposure going on here even if it's not as long as in Night Mode. Anyway, for a few seconds of stillness you get great detail levels, a good exposure overall, nice colors, low noise, and once again the tiniest hint of oversharpening.

Nighttime samples from the main camera

If you do go with Night Mode, capture will take a few seconds longer, and this will result in some more detail being revealed in the shadows, although there isn't a lot going on with highlight restoration. The benefits versus the normal Auto mode are there, but not huge, so you won't be missing a lot by not going with this dedicated shooting mode at night, aside from situations with extremely dark shadows. That's not a knock on Night Mode itself, it's just a testament of how good the Auto mode is at night.

Night Mode samples from the main camera

The night time pictures coming out of the ultrawide camera are good, while not on par with the main one. They're usually sharp, detailed, and with decent amounts of noise, yet sometimes they just have a dull look to them. This ultrawide is better than most at night time photography, but unless you really need to fit more in your frame, we wouldn't recommend using it a lot.

Nighttime samples from the ultrawide camera

Night Mode on the ultrawide is an entirely different story, though. It requires waiting for 7-8 seconds for each capture, and holding very steady while you're at it because this camera has no OIS. The resulting images aren't very detailed and if you can't keep steady enough they will understandably become soft to the point of blurriness, and so this Night Mode isn't very worth using, but for an entirely different reason.

Night Mode samples from the ultrawide camera

If you go with the 5x setting on the zoom slider in low light, you should know that the phone will automagically decide whether to use the dedicated zoom shooter or simply crop from the main sensor - the latter happens if it's decided it's too dark. There's a reason for that, which is that when the dedicated 5x camera is used, the shots are all underexposed, although some end up being usable, with decent levels of detail towards the center. Color rendition isn't great, and edge sharpness is way off in a lot of the shots. In our samples below you can figure out which sensor was used based on whether details are splotchy or not.

Nighttime samples with 5x zoom

The colors do get fixed by Night Mode, although it takes around 8 seconds to do its thing. It also improves detail levels and brightens up the scenes, so for zoomed shots it might actually turn out that Night Mode is preferable to Auto. That said, this snapper is best used when there's still some lighting around, going very dark will yield bad results.

Night Mode samples with 5x zoom

Selfies

Selfies come out rather detailed, with good contrast, dynamic range, and colors, in broad daylight. For Portrait Mode shots, the ToF camera next to the selfie snapper should help with separation, except there seems to either be a bug with Portrait Mode during the daytime that makes it not work, or it's the subtlest Portrait Mode we've ever come across. See for yourself below, each pair of shots is supposed to be with Portrait Mode off then on.

Selfie samples

At night, things get duller, unsurprisingly, but thanks to the automatic use of the screen as a fill light of sorts, you can still get shots that light up your face decently. There's also Night Mode for selfies, here' a quick comparison between that, Auto mode, and Portrait Mode.

Night selfies: Auto, Portrait, Night Mode

Overall, the P40 Pro has one of the best camera setups of any smartphone ever. It also provides a lot of flexibility in use, with regard to framing. One of the best main shooters is aided by one of the best ultrawides we've ever seen on a phone, as well as a refined periscope zoom camera that is also outstanding. On the other side, selfies come out great too, and portrait mode effects are helped by the ToF sensor, that also aids with face unlock. It's a package that seems pretty complete by our standards.