Huawei P40 Pro PLUS Review - Worth £400 Extra? | The Tech Chap By The Tech Chap

Hey guys I'm tom the tech chat and for the past week, or so I've been using this guy, it's the new Huawei p40 pro plus and well it's a lot like the p40 pro, but with double the storage 512 gigs, this fancy new ceramic white or black design, and it supports faster, 40 watt wireless charging. But the headline feature is this pent camera setup? That's five lenses, including two optical telephoto lenses, three times and a ten times, which you can then pinch in all the way up to a hundred times. So this is directly taking on the s20 ultra with its so-called space zoom. So the camera sets up on this is pretty exciting, but before we get into all that, let's talk about the price, because the pro plus will cost you about 400 more than the p40 pro in Europe. This will cost you 1400 euros, which I expect to be about 1300 pounds here in the UK, which is an awful lot of money, although to be fair, it's still 100 less than the galaxy s20 ultra and 200 less than the iPhone 11 Pro max when you spec them with 512 gigs of storage anyway, putting price to one side for a moment. Let's talk about the real selling point of this guy, the camera.

Now originally, my plan was to make a p40 pro plus versus s20 ultra camera comparison. I actually took a bunch of photos side by side this week going through the different lenses all the way up to 100 times, but I was then told a couple of days ago that two more updates were coming, and it could improve the camera, although I don't know to what extent I'll hold off on my full long term review as well as my camera comparison video until they're available. So by the time you guys actually can buy this at the end of June. It should all be fine, so let's break down what we actually get, because, while we're calling this, let me check my notes: the ultravision Lacey pent camera system, a bit of a mouthful here were the specs, including a main ultra-wide three times, optical and ten times, optical lens and a time-of-flight sensor. So it's largely the same setup as the standard p40 pro, but now the five times telephoto has been dropped down to three times, and then we get the new ten times lens.

So what you can now do in the camera app is go from zero point, seven times with the ultra-wide lens to one times using the main lens, then up to three times optical ten times, optical all the way up to a hundred times. Importantly, though, unlike Samsung, who just whacked this huge space, zoom logo on the camera, module made it one of the key selling points of the phone Huawei aren't making such a big song and dance about it. Yes, you can zoom in up to 100 times, but it's the quality of the three times and 10 times optical lenses. That really makes this stand out, and actually they've kind of solved. One of the problems that a lot of brands are facing in terms of what level of Zoom do people actually want.

So, for example, the iPhone gives you two times: uh the one plus eight is three times uh. This s20 ultra gives you a four times optical, but with this we get the best of both worlds. We get a mid-range three times and then a long range ten times. So it covers all the bases, of course, at the expense of well costing an awful lot of money and then around the front we have the same 32, megapixel, selfie, camera and depth sensor, nothing new here, but it's still one of my favorite front-facing cameras, particularly once you turn off the beauty mode, but all together, there's no denying the versatility of this camera setup. Yes, the ultra-wide isn't particularly wide compared to other phones.

I still find the UI in the process of zooming a bit finicky, and it's very, very expensive, but at the same time, the fast focusing great low light shots, impressive HDR and the crazy zoom options. This is one of, if not the best phones for photography right now. Of course, the camera is only one aspect of the phone and, like the p40 pro, I think it's a beautifully designed phone, and actually it's kind of like the Goldilocks in terms of size at 6.58 inches. I think it feels just right in the hand, not too big, not too small. Now not everyone will be a fan of the four-sided curved screen.

I think a lot of people do prefer flat screens now and also the hole punch. Cutout is one of the biggest I've ever seen, although to be fair, I do appreciate we're getting an IR sensor, which makes face unlocking in low light much faster. Also, it's still disappointing that even on a flagship phone like this, we only get a single speaker at the bottom. As for the ceramic material. Well, it does look good, and it's certainly eye-catching in this white color, but I'm not sure if I actually don't prefer the sort of matte glass this silvery color on the original p40 pro, which one do you think, looks better.

I mean they're both stunning but kind of like the matte finish pretty much. Everything else, though, is exactly the same as the p40 pro, with the same full HD plus 90 hertz screen android 10 and emu 10.1 software, the Karin 995 g chip, 8 gigs of ram and a 4200 William hour battery. It genuinely is very nice to use, and emu has come a long way in the last few years to make it more responsive and also give you more customization options. Now you could argue that you know a full HD plus screen 90 hertz, refresh rate, aren't exactly flagship specs in 2020, but then again you know the iPhone is still at 60 hertz, although when the iPhone 12 comes out later in the year, that'll probably fix that, but actually given the size of this thing, quad HD wouldn't really make sense. Although maybe 120 hertz would have been nice, but I think Huawei's done a good job at balancing performance with battery life.

By the end of a normal day, I still have about 35 of the battery left so far, so good then, but I think for a lot of people, despite having an amazing camera and a really nice design, all that good stuff may fall by the wayside, because we still don't have Google Play Services and there's no play store. Honestly, it is frustrating I mean Huawei's investing a lot in their app gallery, so it is improving. But right now it's still missing a lot of the important apps that I use. Now you can still get most of the apps you use through phone clone, which brings them over from your old phone, and then you can use something like APK pure to fill in the gaps with nearly everything else, but it is frustrating- and I do worry about the security of the apps that you may need to download through third parties, particularly for banking and shopping and as good as this phone is. I just don't know how many people in the UK, in Europe at least, would be willing to pay 1400 euros and deal with the app situation just so they can get this camera.

But I also know everyone's a bit different and if you can find the apps that you use on the app gallery, then that's great and if you don't mind just putting a bit of time into either you know downloading APK side loading stuff or going through a fairly lengthy process of actually getting the play store on there. But Huawei doesn't recommend those things because well it's all kind of like unofficial and not really protected. So really it comes down to you and also what apps you use. I mean personally, I've got things like you know: Facebook, Spotify, Instagram, Twitter, uh, BBC news, app Lightroom, so quite a few things, but then again it does miss out on YouTube. I've had to create a browser shortcut on the desktop which just isn't as good and not something you really want to have to do on a 1400 euro phone.

But despite this, it really is a lovely phone to use and the camera, while I'm still holding off for some updates before it officially launches, is a real selling point now, the question of, would I pay 400 more for this over this? Well personally, no, I don't think the upgrades are worth that kind of money. Double the storage faster wireless charging, this new design and the slightly rigid camera setup all nice to haves, but not something I think I would pay 400 extra for, but it is good to see Huawei continuing to innovate with their camera tech. So this has just been my sort of one to two weeks, first review, but make sure you have subscribed. So you don't miss out on my camera comparison and also, let me know what you think of the p40 pro plus are the extras worth the higher price and is the lack of the play store, a dealbreaker for you or just an inconvenience? Thank you so much for watching guys and catch you next time right here on the tech chat.

Source : The Tech Chap