Huawei has been staying strong in the face of adversity and has developed its own mobile operating system and several alternatives to Google's apps. But that's on the software side of things. On the hardware front too, the company never ceases to amaze and Huawei's upcoming flagship, the Huawei P40 Pro is a testament to the company's technological prowess.
The Huawei P40 Pro is nothing but stellar. The yet-to-be-launched phone has been leaking quite a lot lately, but the latest leak that has surfaced online shows the real-life image of the phone, giving us the closest look at the front of the phone. The leaked live photo shows the handset unobstructed by a case and it looks like the phone has practically no bezels surrounding the display with the almost no chin at the bottom.
Huawei P40 Pro live image leaked
The live image shared by a user on Chinese social network Weibo, and it's immediately noticeable that the upcoming flagship has barely visible bezels all around. The sides of the phone look extremely curved (aka the Waterfall) and thus there are no visible bezels on the sides. But what's interesting is that Huawei has managed to make the top and bottom bezels so tiny that it is almost non-existent. In fact, this has to be the smallest chin we've ever seen on a phone.
Thanks to the curved display and barely-there top and bottom bezels, it looks like the Huawei P40 Pro could have one of the highest screen-to-body ratios we've seen on a phone. And the equally thin top and bottom bezels seem to make the phone look more proportional.
That big camera hole
However, the bezel-free effect is slightly spoiled by that pill-shaped camera hole that houses dual selfie cameras at the top left corner of the phone. The hole is big enough to not go unnoticed.
There could be a reason why Huawei opted for two cameras instead of one, but we would have preferred a single lens in the middle like that in the Galaxy Note 10 because that would have been less intrusive. The image also confirms the steep waterfall curve at the sides which were rumoured to be present.
Previous leaks
All in all the latest leaked image corroborates with most if not all leaks so far. But the earlier leaks and renders didn't seem to give us a clear idea about exactly how small the bezels would be, now that part is also taken care of.
Meanwhile, since this is just the first live image leak of the phone and there seem to be no other conflicting leaks, we advise you to take this image with a pinch of salt, although but looks convincingly accurate. And the image certainly lives Jo to Huawei's earlier claim that the P40 Pro will come with a "never seen before" design.
The standard Huawei P40 has been leaked a couple of times before, but only the back of the phone was shown in the leaked photos, revealing only the three rear cameras. But, we don't suspect its chin to be as negligible as that on the P40 Pro.
Huawei P40 series
However, Huawei's flagship P40 series is said to be powered by its in-house HiSilicon Kirin 990 SoC which comes with 5G connectivity. Just like most of the top-of-the-line flagships that will be launching this year, the Huawei P40 Pro is likely to sport 12 gigs of RAM and 256GB and 512GB of internal storage.
The Huawei P40 Pro will be made out of metal and glass. However, there are also rumours that suggest that there will be a special edition of the phone called the Huawei P40 Pro PE (Porsche Design, we guess) which will have a ceramic body.
The phones will also include Leica Lenses just like previous Huawei flagships and will sport some of the P40 Pro and P40 Pro PE will sport some of the best camera hardware ever including a special periscope camera among other sensors.
Launch date
Huawei is expected to announce the Huawei P40 and Huawei P40 Pro at the end of March, so it looks the Samsung Galaxy S20 series isn't going to be the only big smartphone announcement in the first half of the year.
No Google Mobile Services on P40 Pro
Meanwhile, in the wake of the US ban and blacklisting, which denies Google from offering its services to Huawei, all the three Huawei Phones – the P40, P40 Pro and P40 Pro PE – will run Android 10 albeit without Google app suite called GMS which includes popular Google apps such as YouTube, Gmail and Google Maps. However, Huawei will be pre-installing its alternative app suite known as HMS which will have replacements for most of the popular Google apps.
It will be interesting to see what Huawei will be able to do without GMS on its phones. However, the company has been quite determined that it could do without Google but it also acknowledges that it will be difficult for them.
