It looks like Huawei may be dropping a premium feature for the Huawei P40 Pro smartphone when it eventually comes out, as a new rumor suggests the upcoming handset won't have a curved screen like the P30 Pro and Mate 30 Pro.
This idea comes from leaked renders of a case for the P40 Pro, shared on Chinese social media service Weibo (which is where we've been seeing many of our Huawei leaks recently).
These renders show the phone as much as its case. It's not clear where the Weibo user got the information that lead to these renders, whether it came from inside Huawei or elsewhere, so take the leak with a pinch of salt.
- These are the best Huawei phones
- What did we think of the Huawei Mate 30?
- What we want to see in the Huawei Mate 40
The case renders show the rumored five-lens rear camera array, which results in there being quite a large camera block on the back of the phone. But the main takeaway here is that the Huawei P40 Pro doesn't seem to have a screen that curves around the edges, like we were expecting.
A curved screen is a feature of numerous top-end phones, including the aforementioned Huawei P30 Pro as well as the Samsung Galaxy S10, Xiaomi Mi Note 10, and a few other devices, and we expected the Huawei P40 Pro to have one too. So why would Huawei have chosen to drop this feature?
Why would the Huawei P40 Pro have a flat screen?
Curved screens on smartphones may be a 'premium' feature, but they can be a little divisive (and fiddly to use). It's often very easy to accidentally knock the side of the screen with parts of the hand, sometimes pressing things you didn't mean to.
It's totally possible Huawei received feedback on its previous phones, suggesting people weren't big fans of the design feature, and therefore decided to drop it.
Alternatively, the reason could be down to price, as curved screens likely cost a little more on a phone than flat displays. If Huawei wanted to keep the costs down for the P40 Pro, a good place to start would be having a flat screen.
There's a good reason Huawei would want a relatively cheap phone too. We already know the Huawei P40 is set to launch without Google apps, thanks to the Huawei ban, so the company is going to need to do all it can to get people on board with the handset. One such strategy could be to launch the P40 and P40 Pro as incredibly affordable devices.
Finally, it's totally possible that the Huawei P40 Pro will end up having a curved screen, and either the case renders are wrong, or the phone depicted in the pictures isn't indicative of a finished product; rather it's just a stand-in designed to show off the case.
Either way, we'll find out for sure in around March 2020, when we're expecting the Huawei P40 to be shown off. The P40 phones are likely to leak heavily ahead of then though, so stay tuned to TechRadar for all the latest news, leaks and rumors.
Via GSMArena
