7 Days With Huawei Mate 40 Pro - Like A Marriage! By ASBYT

Hi guys it's asset, and this is the Huawei Mate 40 pro. It may just be the best smartphone available for some of you, but equally for some. It might be one to skip. The way I see is this phone is kind of like a marriage. It's not for everyone. It's not all going to be plain sailing and there will be testing times, but if you're willing to put the work in, you could come out the other side with something truly amazing and unparalleled.

I will also be looking at Huawei's brand-new headphones, the free bud studios and the ecosystem as a whole. Let's dive quick disclaimer, while we actually reached out to sponsor this in-depth look at the mate 40 pro, but all views, as always, are my own, both good and bad. So before we talk about anything else, we have to address the elephant in the room you probably already know by now, but currently in this situation. Huawei can't work with Google like they once did so, while the mate 40 pro is running on android 10, it's not operating using google services, so no Google Play Store for your apps. Now this straight away might put some of you off, but I've managed to do a couple of neat workarounds to get basically all the apps that I personally need on this phone, but before we get to that, let's see whether those workarounds are actually going to be worth it for you, let's see how good the actual hardware is, starting with the display subjectively.

This can go one of two ways, depending on whether you actually appreciate the perhaps more practical, precise flat options of some competitors or the beautifully immersive curves of this here handset personally, I do find flat displays sometimes easier to use for reasons you'll see, but I do love the aesthetics of the curved design here, as the panel rips over the sides and blends seamlessly into the rear. It just looks incredible. In fact, it goes back so dramatically. The volume, rocker and power button are actually pretty much on the rear panel. Yes, there has been occasional palm rejection issues and typing is slightly hindered when using the letters right on the edges, but it does look awesome.

It's lovely and bright with a 6.7 inch. Basically, HD OLED display with 90 hertz refresh and 240 hertz touch sampling rates, so no 120 or crazy 144hz refresh, but I still feel that 90 is really nice and smooth. Even in 2020, you have a shiny, aluminum frame which can pick up the occasional fingerprints and dirt, although nothing on the level of the iPhone 12 Pro stainless steel, which, after two minutes of coming fresh out the box, looked like, I buried it with snails for a week, no issues keeping the back panel clean with this frosted glow, finish: Huawei pretty much started this sort of multi-colored trend a couple of years ago and many have since jumped on the bandwagon, but Huawei still creates some best. I'm a massive fan of this finish, this matte colored finish is called mystic silver, but it also comes in a glossy black as well. If that's more your cup of tea, I have both as you can see here, but I definitely would go with the silver if, given the option, the same can't be said for the camera module.

From a personal point of view, however, as the crop circle ring, design is a bit too garish for my own subtle tastes, but try and find a good-looking camera module on a smartphone in 2020. I'm waiting, this design isn't without thought, as Huawei have always looked to kind of design. Smartphone cameras with a sort of professional camera, inspiration in mind and they've also gone with a space vibe as well on the mate 40 pro. The ring apparently signifies a photo taken of the black hole in 2019, but enough of that outer world experience stuff, what's actually going on deep within the actual camera lenses, because, as you well know, Huawei do tend to push the boundaries when it comes to the camera department, boundaries, space atmosphere forget it. So we have a primary 50 megapixel YYY sensor, a 20 megapixel ultra-wide and a 20 megapixel periscope telephoto lens with five times optical zoom and 50 times.

Digital zoom, the big optical zoom number means you can zoom in really far and still get great details in your photos, and the stabilization is perfect. When zooming results over the sort of 30 times. Zoom are not great in terms of quality, as expected, really, but still really cool that you can zoom in that far and lengths of around 5 to 10 and 20 times are perfect. Primary and ultra-wide shots are quite distinguishable, being Huawei smartphone pictures there's a kind of AI feel to them, so they do stand out and look really. Nice, sharp and vibrant, but not necessarily the most natural HDR is good, with a nice balance between raising the shadows and not completely blowing out the bright spots, although sometimes skies can be slightly on the bright side.

Details and edge detection are really nice on the front camera, with the 13 megapixel shooter being aided by the timer flight sensor in that dual punch hole cutout personally, if given the choice between having that timer flight sensor there or not, and having just the one punch hole cut out lens and therefore a bigger display, screen-to-body ratio anyway, I would probably go with that. I don't think the advantages of having that time-of-flight sensor there for camera purposes outweigh how I feel about having a better looking display, but this is of course, subjective. You may not, and this setup also helps with 3d face unlock for added security. Now Huawei have always been kind of one of the kings of low-light photography on their smartphones and again no real difference here with the mate 40 pro. Yes again, it doesn't sometimes necessarily look the most natural, but the details you can sometimes get in near pitch.

Black conditions are insane. On the contrary, I've never been necessarily a huge fan of some features of Huawei smartphone video such as audio and the frame rate options as examples, but these have largely been addressed from the mate 30 series onwards and again for most people with its 4k 60 frames, a second both front and back, and the ability to use the ultra-wide lens and good stabilization on the mate 40 pro. It's another, pretty great video tool. Yes, there are no crazy features like 8k video, and I still think the audio could be improved a little as can exposure, because when it's really bright, outside skies can sometimes still overexpose in video, but as an overall photo and video package. It takes pretty much every box to a very high standard and another thing: that's of a very high standard is the sheer brute of the internals that are powering this little slab.

The mate 40 pro is rocking the brand-new five nanometer Kieran 9000 chips, which is more powerful than the snapdragon 865 plus, although of course, Qualcomm's new chips won't be here until the new year and right up there with the Apple A14 bionic in the iPhone 12 series, it's an absolute beast. It scores around 690 000 on an tutu benchmark and has real improvements in especially GPU performance, which will of course mean it will completely crush, amongst other things, gaming tasks with eight gigabytes of ram stereo speakers. This display and chipset. It's a gaming and medium monster. If you are going to be gaming and watching TV shows and movies etc.

Quite a lot because I mean we've headed back into lockdown in the UK, and you might be where you are in the world you're going to, of course need a big battery as well or at least good battery life, because there is a difference. Huawei's phones are notorious for their battery optimization and generally making the very most out of the cell size and again the mate 40 pro is no different. All day use has not been a problem whatsoever and if you do need to charge, not only does it have fast wireless and reverse wireless charging, but the wire charging goes from naught to 100 in around 45 minutes, thanks to its 66 watt charger, that's included in the box. Again, I'm blown away by the speed that these things can now charge again just ticking the boxes but- and there is a big- but here the one big box that of course, Huawei need to uh tick is software. I ran a poll on Twitter, would you prefer great hardware and poor software or great software and poor hardware or average of both, and it was somewhat mixed.

So how good is the software with the mate 40 pro, and can it live up to the brilliant hardware and the truth of the answer here is yes, and now, and before you get confused I'll, try and elaborate first off Huawei's emu skin over the top of android has got a lot better. In recent times, this iteration over android 10 feels much more like stock with the settings swipe down quick toggles, app, drawer icons and animations much more to my liking and once you've got the apps that you need. It feels fast fluid and user-friendly once you've got the apps, you need- and you can see where I'm going with this, because this has always been the problem ever since Huawei and google kind of had that split, and while we were no longer able to use the Google Play Store for all the apps now. Yes, there are ways of getting the Google Play Store onto your new Huawei Mate 40 pro, but Huawei, don't necessarily recommend it, and it may void any warranties, etc. that you may have, so you may be sat there, thinking, okay! Well, how have you got all the traditional apps that most people would use well with a few caveats, as you will see they're, basically all on here from two main sources? First, you have the Huawei app gallery which has loads of popular apps on their like sky, go office, suite Deezer, all four UK TV play and tick-tock, don't judge just go and watch my tech videos on TikTok, don't worry, I'm not dancing or singing or lip-syncing.

The app gallery is growing all the time, but it's currently not all there, and if this was the only way to get apps, I would say I can't really recommend this phone, but luckily it's not a few months ago, Huawei introduced petal search, find apps, which is a search, app, slash widget, which comes pre-loaded on the home screen. Here, of course, you can remove that widget. If you don't want it, but basically when you go into it, you can search for whatever app you want to try and download, and it will scour the internet to find those apps or APKs to download from different locations and offers you web browser versions of those apps. If it can't find one, you can also simply search for APKs yourself using an internet browser which may seem alien to some of you, but after a little of research, it's really not that difficult, and even the greatest technophobe can do it with a little of guidance if the phone is worth it for you. So this combination of petal search and the app gallery I've been able to get like.

I said, pretty much, every single app that I personally need, we're. Talking: WhatsApp Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, tie, TOK, Google Maps, chrome sky sports, YouTube, music, YouTube Vance, which is basically the same as YouTube just a slightly different layout. But everything is basically all there, and you can sign in, and you can have your own account. You can have your subscriptions, and it works pretty much like the standard YouTube app. Would now the two main things I'm missing is Gmail and YouTube studio, which is for creators on the platform which on both say they are not supported if it was only the Gmail app.

That was a problem for you. I would personally just use another mail app. I use the Huawei mail app here, and you can actually link up your Gmail account anyway, so it's pretty much a similar thing, or you can use the mobile browser version of Gmail if that's more up your street, the lack of the YouTube studio app as a creator on the platform is a little of. It is a little of a problem for me, but that won't really affect probably 99 of people that would buy this phone, but if you are a YouTube creator and need YouTube studio, then using the web browser dashboard version is not great. So that's something to consider.

I'm not a massive fan of the ads that run for a few seconds when you launch the app gallery store, but it's not too intrusive. Now there is, of course, big talk of a whole new software completely from Huawei separate from android. That's gonna, run potentially across loads of different devices in one massive ecosystem, harmony OS, so the future of present and future Huawei phones is something of a little of an unknown, potentially risky, but also potentially brilliant and, in my opinion, really exciting. Huawei are apparently looking to start from the ground up reshaping their own products around this new software. Creating this one giant ecosystem of completely interchangeable devices, which I, for one, am incredibly intrigued to see because, in my opinion, more competition is always good.

None of this, of course, will affect the mate 40 pro as of right now it is still running with android 10. No word from Huawei as yet to see whether this will upgrade to harmony OS or whatever they are going to call it when it comes out, but if they do then, hopefully it'll make this an even better phone and speaking of devices and ecosystem. Before we hit that final huge talking point about the mate 40 pro, let's have a little dabble on the free buds' studio headphones that have come as part of a brand-new wave of devices from Huawei, including their free buds pro their watch gt2 pro and, of course, the AMD powered Matebook 14, which I will have a review on as well very soon for you, without going into too much detail as they probably weren't their own video all on themselves. That doesn't even make sense. You know what I mean if you are looking to buy a brand new premium set of headphones, then uh from my use.

So far. These are definitely ones to consider. I've got a couple of main things that I can share in my early brief use: they're really comfortable to wear with the leather material and really flexible, ear, cups and headband, meaning you can wear these for a really long time without any problems. The active and passive noise cancellation is perfect, so great for planes, trains etc. , if you're not in lockdown.

But you also, thanks to the new six mic system, have awareness and voice modes which, when selected, allow you to hear not only what you're listening to, but also things going on around you like traffic people, talking, etc. You have smart connectivity, so you can seamlessly move between devices like your mate 40 pro Matebook 14 or your mate pad pro as examples. This connectivity is also aided by an industry. First, dual Bluetooth, antenna system providing 360 degree signal coverage, and you can connect two devices to them at once for even easier movement between laptop phone etc. The right ear cup has all the controls you need with clicks and swipes that can adjust volume, play, pause, answer and end calls change, tracks and activating your voice, assistant and music also pauses and restarts when you take the headphones off and on which is really useful, full charge in around 60 minutes and that lasts for around 24 hours of music playtime, again ticking those boxes.

What is this? What am I doing? And when it comes to sound, we have a hi-fi level acoustic system offering a huge range between 4, hertz and 48 kilohertz. So you can get a huge amount of detail if you're listening to high-resolution music in layman's terms and clues in the studio name, the sound is really, really nice and balanced. You've got perfect punchy bass without being too over the top. It doesn't get distorted right at the top volumes and vocals and the highs' etcetera are really nice and crisp. It's a really great all-round sound, and yes, it's not the cheapest most budget pair of headphones, but you're not going to get this sort of level of quality audio from a 50 40 30 pound set of headphones.

But I think, if you're looking at a really premium set up there with the likes of Bose and son yet cetera, then for 299. These should definitely be on your list to check out they're in that sort of ballpark, and I love the matte finish as well, beautiful, so just to jump back to my original point about the mate 40 pro and the statement that I made about it being kind of like a marriage. Hopefully that statement makes a little more sense now, if you want a completely easy, no frills. Just turn it on and it kind of works software situation, then I wouldn't necessarily go with the mate 40 pro as good as the hardware is because the app situation isn't straightforward straight out of the box. However, and it's a pretty big, however, if you're willing to put in the work- and you like a bit of a challenge like to customize your phone to your own specific tastes and needs, then uh the mate 40 pro is definitely one of the greatest phones of 2020.

I absolutely love it. If you're willing to put in a little of graft like a marriage, then uh, the results can be. Oh, so beautiful, because this phone ticks all the major boxes. It really is top draw. Should you buy it? Well, that's down to you.

Let me know in the comment section below what you think about the mate 40 pro. Are you willing to put in a little of graft to customize it in the way you want to take advantage of the amazing world-class hardware, or are you someone that prefers something a little easier, just turn it on and it kind of just works up to you? Let me know in the comment section below, as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts like and share. If you enjoyed the video and found it helpful subscribe, if you love everything, tech, weekly tech, videos, breaking tech, news, unboxing reviews, I love you, maybe I'll see you next time.

Source : ASBYT