Huawei’s phone is a stunning handset stymied by sanctions

HUAWEI phone reviews are now like two-act tragedies. Your heart soars at the jaw-dropping hardware and camera features. And then it sinks as you remind yourself that you’ll have no YouTube, Google, Gmail, Maps or Docs.

This is a first-look preview of the new top-end P40 Pro+, as I only got my hands on the device a short time before going to press. But Huawei’s answer to the iPhone 11 Pro Max and Samsung’s Galaxy 20 Ultra is clearly a stunning handset. The design and aesthetics, including a gorgeous ceramic shell at the back, are top notch. It’s lightning fast. There’s oodles (512GB) of storage. Best of all, its camera system — as farasIcantellsofar—isan absolute beast.

A 10x optical zoom that works properly on a smartphone is unheard of and this has the biggest camera sensor on the market, meaning much better performance at longer zooms and in low light as well as the ability for higher megapixels.

So I want this phone to be a potential replacement for others an awful lot.

And yet I know it’s likely I’ll have my heart broken again. This may well turn out to be another jaw-droppingly excellent camera phone with cutting edge features and power that can only be used if you give up about a quarter of your daily essential smartphone apps.

To see whether I could sneak any of my Google apps on, I used Huawei’s ‘Phone Clone’ app to copy content (including apps) from a previous, pre-ban Huawei phone.

I had a brief glimmer of hope when I spotted Google Maps successfully transferred onto the P40 Pro+. It opened, too. But it wouldn’t work without Google Play Services which, the phone confirmed, was incompatible with the device. I’ll have a full review in the next week.