Just weeks after Honor was sold by Huawei, the now independent brand has unveiled the Honor View 40 5G smartphone in China. It's a high-end flagship that could, though won't definitely, make its way to global markets soon.
This is the latest in Honor's flagship line of smartphones, which have previously launched in China as V-series phones before seeing global launches as devices that are rebranded as the View series.
- Check out our Huawei Mate 40 Pro review
- And here's our Honor Watch ES review
- The Huawei P50 is coming soon
Interestingly, the company’s latest press release calls the new handset the “Honor View 40” and not the “Honor V40”. The product page still uses the shortened version, adding some more confusion to the mix. When TechRadar's Indian Bureau approached Honor for clarification, it asked us to use View 40 for technical correctness.
The Honor View 40 is now available in China and starts at CNY 3,599 (around $550, £400, AU$720, Rs 41,000) for the 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage variant and goes up to CNY 3,999 (about $620, £450, AU$800, Rs 45,000) for the 8GB and 256GB option. Color options include Midnight Black, Titanium Silver and Rose Gold.
A view of the Honor View 40
The Honor View 40 is powered by the flagship MediaTek Dimensity 1000 Plus chipset, with 8GB of RAM and GPU Turbo X optimizations for gaming. This also means it is 5G compatible across the world.
The Honor View 40 has three cameras on the back: a 50MP RYYB main camera with a 1/1.56-inch sensor and 4-in-1 pixel binning, an 8MP ultra-wide shooter and a 2MP macro lens. There’s also a laser module for faster autofocus.
On the front is a dual punch-hole notch, but the second element is just a color temperature sensor.
The OLED screen spans 6.72-inches with a resolution of 2676 x 1236, and boasts a refresh rate of 120Hz. It features 10-bit color support and it is also HDR10+ certified.
Keeping the Honor View 40 running is a 4,000mAh battery and supports 66W fast charging. Honor says it only takes about 35 minutes for a full charge. There's also 50W fast wireless charging, which is impressively quick.
There's one uncertainty for when the Honor View 40 gets a global launch - Google Mobile Services, such as Gmail, Google Chrome and others.
It's thought one of the main reasons Honor was sold by Huawei is because it inherited the effects of the Huawei ban stopping phones from the company using these key services like the Play Store, Maps and Gmail. However, it's not clear if an independent Honor is still impacted by this, and if the View 40 will get Google apps when it launches globally.
Android phones in China don't use Google apps anyway, which is why we don't know yet. If and when the Honor View 40 gets announced in other regions, we'll let you know.
