Huawei CEO of consumer Richard Yu has revealed the company’s P40 and P40 Pro flagship smartphones will be launched at the end of March. The executive made the comments to French press including Frandroid at Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen, China.
As you’d expect, Yu bigged up the P40 series, saying it will bring a “never seen” improvement in the camera quality. But given the leaps the P30 Pro made in what was a very good year for smartphone cameras, we’re inclined to believe him.
He also said the phones would run Android 10 with EMUI – not Huawei’s own operating system Harmony OS.
But the P40 faces the same fate that has befallen the Mate 30 – it will not ship with Google services if the US trade ban on the company is not lifted. Since the ban was put in place in May 2019, no new Huawei device is able to be certified to run Google services or be installed with the Google app store.
Despite this, Huawei can still use the Google-owned Android operating system – just without Google services integrated. It’s a hard sell.
It all meant that despite being launched in Munich in September, the Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro are still not officially on sale in the UK or Europe.
If Huawei decides to continue its tradition of launching the P series in Paris, the phones could suffer a similar fate. It’d be a real shame, as Huawei was on course to truly challenge Samsung to being the biggest selling smartphone manufacturer in the world.
Author: Henry Burrell, Phones Editor
Henry is Tech Advisor’s Phones Editor, ensuring he and the team covers and reviews every smartphone worth knowing about for readers and viewers all over the world. He spends a lot of time moving between different handsets and shouting at WhatsApp to support multiple devices at once.