The Huawei P40 Pro (pictured) sits in the middle of the P40 lineup, which also includes the P40 and P40 Pro Plus.
Huawei has announced a new flagship series of phones in its latest attempt to use top-of-the-line specs and cameras to lure Western customers to its Google-free ecosystem. The Huawei P40, P40 Pro, and P40 Pro Plus are filled with flagship features, including Huawei’s 5G Kirin 990 processors, up to four rear cameras, and up to 90Hz displays. Ahead of today’s announcement, I had the opportunity to use the P40 Pro for a couple of hours to get an early impression of how it performs; that is the model pictured throughout.

In a similar vein to Samsung’s recent S20 lineup, the biggest differentiating feature between the three devices is their cameras. Starting with the base P40, you’ll find a triple rear-camera setup consisting of a primary 50-megapixel f/1.9 camera, a 16-megapixel f/2.2 17mm ultra-wide-angle camera, and an 8-megapixel f/2.4 telephoto camera with a 3x optical zoom. Like last year’s P30 Pro, which takes some of the best low-light photographs around, Huawei is once again using a RYYB sensor, which it says absorbs more light, resulting in better low-light performance. The sensor is also massive at 1/1.28 inches, which is even bigger than the 1/1.33-inch 108-megapixel sensor found in the Galaxy S20 Ultra. That should help even more with low-light performance. It produces 12.5-megapixel photos by default by combining four pixels into one.

Stepping up to the P40 Pro gets you a ToF sensor and increases the resolution of two out of the three cameras. The main camera is still 50 megapixels, but on the P40 Pro, the wide-angle camera has a resolution of 40 megapixels, and the telephoto lens is 12 megapixels. The zoom on the telephoto lens is also increased to 5x rather than 3x. You’ll find some camera samples from the P40 Pro below, but unfortunately, the reality of my current coronavirus-imposed quarantine means that I only had a limited opportunity to test out its optical zoom. Regardless, please enjoy these photographs taken from my apartment.