Huawei shrugged off concerns about a slump in smartphone shipments, pushing ahead with the global unveiling of a trio of flagship models in its P40 range, touting improved camera and AI capabilities.

Holding a virtual event in place of its traditional physical launch in light of the global Covid-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, Huawei took the wraps off the P40, P40 Pro and P40 Pro+. The vendor pushed their “camera-like design”, with each featuring an overflow full edge-to-edge display.

Hosting the event, Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group began his presentation by pointing to previous P-series photography feats, including introducing the first dual camera on a flagship smartphone with its P9, and its triple camera system on the P20.

With the P40, he said Huawei had taken “mobile photography to new heights”, with a large proportion of the presentation reserved to highlight how the series trumped rival flagship devices from Apple and Samsung in terms of sensor quality, zoom range and pixel quality.

Getting down to specs, the lower-end P40 features a screen spanning 6.1-inches, a triple rear camera system, five different colour schemes, and 8GB of memory paired with 128GB storage.

The larger P40 Pro, also available in five colours, and P40 Pro+ (two colour options) have 6.58-inch screens, with quad and penta camera systems, respectively. Both have 8GB memory, with P4 Pro offering 256GB storage and the P40 Pro+ 512GB.

As part of its camera push, Huawei also introduced AI-powered features to deliver an improved photography experience.

The standout was what it dubbed as “golden snap”, a system capable of detecting and generating what it considers the best moment of a moving image.

Its AI system can also remove passers-by from pictures and remove reflections.

The P40 and P40 Pro will be on sale from 7 April for €799 and €999 respectively. The P40 Pro+ is set for availablity in June, for €1,399.

5G power
Huawei ramped-up video on the three devices, with 4K quality. Yu also touted an in-screen fingerprint sensor across the devices, which he said increased unlock speed by 30 per cent.

The devices are powered by the vendor’s Kirin 990 5G chip, with improved power efficiency and mobile AI capabilities versus prior models. They also feature dual SIM and eSim slots, Wi-Fi 6, faster wireless charging and reverse charge capability.

Running on its EMUI10 software with the Huawei Mobile Services platform, new features include 3D-capable always-on display, multi-window to enable multitasking, an upgraded AI voice recognition system and a MeTime video calling function.

In addition to the P Series, the vendor unveiled two new smartwatches: the Huawei Watch GT 2 and GT 2e.