The Huawei Mate series has long been one of the firm’s most important lineups, often debuting new chipsets and impressive camera credentials. The Huawei Mate 40 Pro is expected to be the next flagship edition in the Mate family, with a likely release date sometime this fall.
Picking up where the excellent Mate 30 Pro and the equally impressive P40 Pro range left off, there’s plenty we want to see from the next Mate phone.
It goes without saying that Google Play Services support would be our number one wish, but that’s out of Huawei’s hands right now. Here’s hoping that situation changes by the time the Mate 40 Pro is released.
Can’t wait? These are the best Huawei phones you can buy right now
Ditch the waterfall display
The Mate 30 Pro was one of a couple of phones that launched with a waterfall display last year. This trend sees the screen spill over the edges at a far more drastic angle than a normal curved display.
Our own Bogdan Petrovan hated the feature, owing to the fact that they simply weren’t practical. This trend meant no volume buttons on the older Mate, a higher chance of glass breaking when dropped, and content that spills over the edge due to a lack of optimization.
Huawei has opted for a more traditional curved screen on the P40 Pro series, but we still had misgivings about those rounded corners. Nevertheless, here’s hoping the firm opts for something closer to the latest P series phones at the very least.
A massively upgraded processor
Huawei usually debuts a new Kirin flagship processor in the Mate series each year, with that chipset then being used in the following year’s P series. We’re expecting the same procedure this year, but we’re got our fingers crossed for a major upgrade on the Mate 40 Pro specs sheet.
Read more: Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 vs Kirin 990 vs Exynos 990: How do they compare?
The Kirin 990 wasn’t a massive upgrade over the Kirin 980 in theory, retaining the same CPU and GPU cores, for example. We did see improved machine learning silicon and camera capabilities (i.e. 4K/60fps), but hopefully Huawei adopts Arm’s latest Cortex-X1 and Cortex-A78 CPUs for a massive step forward. Arm’s Mali-G78 would also be a welcome upgrade over the Kirin 990’s Mali-G76 GPU.
One big question surrounding an upgrade like this is whether Huawei’s chip partners are actually able to produce it, owing to the US trade ban. Chipmaker TSMC reportedly halted most work for Huawei last month in response to a new amendment by the US. We’ll need to wait and see.
8K recording and video snap
Samsung’s Galaxy S20 series offers 8K recording, making for a big leap over 4K video recording in theory. We’d like to see the Huawei Mate 40 Pro camera support this option too, but not just for the sake of having a higher resolution format.
Read: Maybe don’t buy into the 8K video recording hype yet
Samsung’s flagships allow you to extract 33MP frames from 8K clips too, essentially giving you a burst mode of sorts. We’d love to see the Huawei Mate 40 Pro offer a similar feature, bringing more flexibility to the table. This could be handy for situations where you can’t decide between photo and video.
A fix for the app situation… somehow
It’s no secret that recent Huawei phones have a bit of an app problem. The ideal scenario for the Mate 40 would be the Google Play Store and the millions of apps within making a return, but it’s highly unlikely given the intensifying US ban. In any event, this is also an opportunity for Huawei to add some big hitters to its own App Gallery that don’t require Google services.
There’s also the issue of third-party apps that require Google services of some kind, such as Instagram, Uber, Netflix, and many more. Huawei will need to work with these developers and offer incentives to ensure these apps land on the App Gallery.
It’s easier said than done though. Much like Microsoft, Huawei is finding out that throwing money at app developers won’t necessarily solve the app situation. But the firm will need to step up its efforts regardless. It also wouldn’t hurt if the firm offered measures like preinstalled microG or bootloader unlocking to facilitate custom ROMs.
Faster charging
The Mate 20 series debuted 40W charging back in October 2018, and it still holds up incredibly well today. This tech means your 4,200mAh+ battery can be topped up in roughly an hour.
Related: The best wireless chargers — What are your choices?
However, the likes of Oppo and other rivals have stepped up to offer 65W charging in the past 12 months. This means you can fill up a 4,000mAh battery in just 35 minutes, as the Oppo Reno Ace shows. We’d be fine with 40W charging, but wouldn’t it be cool to see charging times of 45 minutes or less?
Bring back microSD support
Huawei introduced Nano Memory (NM) cards back in late 2018 with the Mate 20 series launch, and it’s essentially a proprietary memory card format. For what it’s worth, the NM cards fit into a nano-SIM tray and are apparently 45% smaller than microSD cards.
But who cares when NM cards aren’t easy to find and they’re so darn expensive? For example, Amazon UK lists a 128GB card for just over £40 (~$51). Meanwhile, your typical 128GB microSD card can be had for £15 to £20 (~$19 to ~$25). What’s the point of expandable storage if you have to jump through hoops to get it? Hopefully the Huawei Mate 40 Pro returns to a standard card format, as unlikely as that might be.
More Golden Snap magic
The Huawei P40 series introduced a so-called Golden Snap suite of camera-related features, and it certainly makes for crowd-pleasing tech. Some of these features include the ability to remove reflections in windows and the ability to remove people in the background. The latter isn’t new, but today’s powerful chipsets are theoretically able to do it better than ever before.
Read: 108MP sensor vs computational photography — Which one wins?
We’d love to see these features come to the Mate 40 Pro, but hopefully Huawei brings similarly innovative computational photography tricks to the table. We wouldn’t say no to a Samsung-style Single Take mode, Lumia-style Action Shots, or Pixel-inspired Dual Exposure Controls either.
That’s it for our look at what we want to see from the Huawei Mate 40 Pro. Are there any items on your wishlist? Then let us know in the comments! Otherwise, you can check out more features below.
