Huawei P40 Pro + is going on-sale in Australia this week for $2,099

After launching the P40 and P40 Pro in Australia in April, the P40 Pro + with an updated Ultra Vision Leica Penta Camera is going on-sale this week.

The phone will be priced at $2,099 and will be going on-sale in Ceramic White at the Huawei Authorised Experience Store in Chatswood, Sydney as well as Mobileciti.

Huawei is offering a bonus HUAWEI Watch GT 2e (RRP $349) as a gift with purchase for those who purchase the P40 Pro+. The Watch GT2e colour option will be sent out according to availability so you may not get a choice – but then they do all look pretty good.

The P40 Pro + has the same design as the P40 Pro with the same 6.58-inch Quad-Curve Overflow Display with 90Hz refresh rate which flows over all four sides of the phone. The curved display flows into the ceramic rear giving the screen a near borderless look, which also feels comfortable to hold.

The screen has a front dual punch-hole notch which contains a 32MP camera with auto-focus and an IR depth camera for facial recognition. If you don’t want facial recognition they’ve improved the embedded in-display fingerprint reader which is 30% faster and 30% larger to make it easier to hit.

The P40 Pro + uses the same Kirin 990 5G enabled processor as the P40 Pro, but gets an update to 8GB RAM and 512GB of on-board storage.

The biggest update for the P40 Pro+ is the camera update which goes from a Quad camera on the P40 Pro to a Penta camera array on the P40 Pro +. The sensor has also been updated to a 1/1.28-inch sensor, which supports pixel binning to achieve a pixel size of 2.44μm which basically means it can capture more light for awesome shots even in low light. The P40 Pro + also gets a 10x optical zoom, with a digital 100x zoom available as well.

The CineCamera on the P40 Pro+ features options including 4K time-lapse videos, as well as slow motion up to 7680fps and Directional
Audio Zoom which lets you zoom in on a source of audio.

The P40 Pro + comes with Android 10 running Huawei’s EMUI 10.1 skin, but the biggest rider of course is that the phone does not come with Google Play Services. This means no Google Apps are installed, nor can they be side-loaded, you also can’t get apps through Google Play.

To combat the lack of Google services on the phone, Huawei has implemented their own Huawei Mobile Services framework, as well as launching their own app store, called Huawei App Gallery which houses a decent array of apps, though far from the selection available on Google Play. Together with a phone clone app you can use to move data from your old phone to a Huawei phone there’s also a new search widget called Petal Search for your home screen to help make finding and downloading apps easier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyXdu-bEBvg

At $2,099 the Huawei P40 Pro + is priced at the premium end of the market, with some stiff competition including offerings from Samsung, OPPO, Motorola, all of whose phones include Google apps and services. It’s a big ask, but we’ll see how the camera goes and whether that’s enough to warrant venturing into the territory of a Google-less smartphone.

If you want to check it out it’s live on the Huawei website now.