The high-spec smartphone “HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro 5G” equipped with ASCII.jp Kirin 9000 has almost no complaints

Review of the Chinese version of "HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro 5G" not yet released in Japan

Huawei's fall/winter 2020 flagship model "Mate 40" series October 22, 2020 , and is currently sold in several countries overseas as a flagship model for autumn and winter. The core product of the series is the “HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro 5G”. Kirin 9000 is used for the chipset, and a 50x telephoto periscope camera is installed. In addition, pen input is also supported as an option, making it a high-spec product that meets all needs from private to business. This time, I got a model sold in mainland China, so let's review it.

Huawei "HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro 5G" equipped with Kirin 9000

HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro is equipped with a 6.76-inch (2772 x 1344 dots) display. The display size of the high-end model "HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro+" is the same, and there is almost no difference between the two other than the rear camera. By the way, the display of "HUAWEI P40", which will be the spring 2020 model, is 6.58 type (2640 x 1200 dots). The HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro 5G has a larger display size and resolution than the P series. The front camera is dual and has 13 million pixels and 2 million pixels for depth measurement.

The display is 6.76 type. Equipped with dual front cameras

The rear camera consists of 3 cameras: 50 million pixels + 20 million pixels super wide angle + 12 million pixels 5x optical and 50x digital telephoto. The design with the camera placed in a circular shape at the top center of the back is reminiscent of last year's "HUAWEI Mate 30" series, but the HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro 5G has the camera placed further outside.

Three cameras on the back, including a 50-megapixel camera

The body size is about 75.5 x 162.9 x 9.1 mm, and the weight is about 212 g. It adopts a "horizon display" that drops the corners on the side of the display. The right side of the device has a power button and a volume button. The red power button is a design common to Huawei's flagship models. Also, the HUAWEI Mate 30 series has abolished the volume button, but the HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro 5G has a physical button.

Right side with power button and volume button

The left side has no buttons and has a clean finish.

Left side without buttons

The upper part of the main unit also has holes for speakers and so on.

Upper body

The bottom of the main unit has a USB Type-C terminal and a nanoSIM slot. The SIM tray is a combination of either two nanoSIMs or nanoSIM + NM card on the top and bottom.

Lower body

When you hold the main body, the corners are cut off, making it easy to hold, and it doesn't feel as heavy as you might think. The fingerprint authentication sensor is embedded at the bottom of the display, but it's easy to use because it's placed where your thumb hits just right while holding the main unit. Combined with the 6.76-inch size of the Horizon display, whose edges are almost invisible, you can get a high sense of presence when watching videos.

Since the left and right sides of the display are curved, it is easy to hold.

However, it can't be helped that the fingertips can't reach the four corners of the display when held in one hand. A double tap on the side of the display reveals a software volume button, making it easy for left-handed people to adjust the volume. Even if you hold the edge part and your palm touches it, it will not be erroneously operated (touch judgment), so you can hold the main body firmly and use it.

You can also operate the volume by double tapping on the side

There are five body colors: Mystic Silver, White, Black, Olive Green, and Sunflower Yellow. Green and yellow are finished in vegan leather. In addition, due to the recent situation, the sales countries are limited, and it seems that the colors that will be introduced depending on the country are also limited. In Hong Kong where I live, only Mystic Silver and Black are sold.

Three glossy colors and two vegan leather colors are available. This model is black

There is also a special case with a ring light that pops out

The HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro 5G has a slightly different case on sale. It is a "Ring Light Case" with a circular LED light built into the back. The HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro 5G has wireless power sharing, a function that wirelessly charges other terminals, and the Ring Light Case can also be powered by the HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro 5G to turn on the light.

Ring Light Case sold separately

There is a button on the back, and when you press it downward, the ring light pops out, and when you press the button, the light turns on.

Light pops out with one touch

Some smartphones can use the display as an LED light, but this ring light can be left on all the time while shooting video. It will be useful for video shooting and live distribution at night or in a dark room. In China, where live commerce is popular, it seems that there are many cases of live streaming from outdoors, and it can be said that this is an idea product that was born from there. I wish other manufacturers would offer similar products.

Convenient not only for taking photos at night, but also for video and live streaming

Now, the OS is equipped with Huawei's original UI "EMUI 11" on Android 10. As usual, Huawei service (HMS) is installed instead of Google service (GMS). By the way, Huawei terminals can display the network status from the setting screen, and you can also see the connection status to 4G LTE and 5G NR to some extent. Even if the antenna pictogram is 5G, it is actually only connected to the anchor 4G, so the speed is not high in that case. You can check whether the HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro 5G is actually connected to NR.

Equipped with EMUI 11. Easy to understand 5G connection status

In addition to the high refresh rate, it also supports a stylus pen

The refresh rate of the display supports 90Hz. Fixed or automatic switching can be selected from the settings. Although it is not as fast as the 144Hz of gaming smartphones, scrolling the browser and SNS timelines is comfortable. It also has a gesture function using the front camera, and you can perform air scroll operations such as moving your palm left and right in front of the main unit to send the gallery photo display.

Refresh rate is 90Hz, with air scroll function

In addition, a hand gesture function called "start by holding the palm over" has been added. Even when the screen is off, you can turn the screen on by holding your palm over the display at a distance of 20 to 40 cm without touching the HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro 5G. This is a convenient function when you cannot touch the main unit with your hands, such as when you are cooking. After the screen is turned on, you can unlock it by performing face authentication as it is.

You can even unlock by holding your palm and face authentication

There is also a "stylus pen" item on the settings screen. You can use the newly released stylus pen "M-Pen 2" for the HUAWEI Mate 40 series. Like the original Apple Pencil, the M-Pen 2 has a cap on the head of the pen, and it has a USB Type-C terminal inside it, and when it is inserted into the HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro 5G, charging and pairing are performed. It can be used for 2 hours after charging for 5 minutes, and can be used for 10 hours when fully charged.

There are stylus pen settings. M-Pen 2 (sold separately) can be used

M-Pen 2 is lightweight at 17g and can be used as if you were holding a normal pen. Supports 4096 levels of pen pressure. There is a button on the main unit, and it also supports shortcut operations such as opening a notepad by tapping the screen while pressing the button.

M-Pen 2 measures approximately 144 x 8.9mm and weighs approximately 17g

In addition to the pre-installed Huawei notepad app, you can write to apps that support handwriting. It will be useful for red in PDF etc.

You can write memos with M-Pen2

Let's take a look at the performance of the main unit. When AnTuTu was measured in performance mode that maximizes the power of the main unit, the score exceeded 650,000. Geekbench 5 also has a single core of 1012 and a multicore of 3540. It can be seen that Kirin 9000's performance is top class in the industry. Also, the speed test of 5G NR is about 400 Mbps downstream in the 5G environment in Hong Kong. This speed is the fastest in the area where I measured it, so you can see that the modem performance is sufficient.

AnTuTu is over 600,000. 5G NR marks 400Mbps

By the way, although the camera performance is slightly inferior to the configuration of the P series, it boasts high specifications among the 2020 autumn / winter models. Looking at the DXOMARK score, the first place is 139 for HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro+ 5G, and the second place is 136 for HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro 5G. For front cameras, HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro 5G ranks first with 104 (as of December 25, 2020). The overall performance of the HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro 5G camera is the best in the industry.

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