New gadgets: Mate 40 Pro

I have a new phone. I've had my Huawei Mate 20 Pro for 2.5 years, and it's still an amazing phone - fast, reliable, great camera. There was not any phone good enough for me to upgrade to, until the Mate 40 Pro came along. The Huawei Mate 40 Pro was released overseas in November, but as usual, we get stuff months later, and then someone one a forum posted a pre-release special. I had been eligible to get a phone on contract with my service provider (MTN) for a year or so, but had been hanging in there. The Huawei offer was not with my provider, so I'd have to pay up front, but I was good with that. I put my deposit down, and paid the balance on the bundle just after midnight on 1 April (because only the first 200 customers got the bundle).

The bundle cost was R20000 ($1400), but it came with a R1500 discount, smart scale, the Freebuds 4i earphones, GT2e smart watch, and a VIP service which apparently includes extended warranty, 24x7 support, etc. Nice - I was so pleased to get it! By comparison, the Samsung S21 Plus is R20000 and the similar-in-spec S21 Ultra is R25000, significantly more expensive.

It arrived by courier a week later. I used Phone Clone to clone my Mate 20 Pro, and that was really quick; it copied over all my data, and most of my apps. So, the big thing about the recent Huawei phones is that because of the anti-competitive US government sanctions, the Huawei phones can't include Google Mobile Services. So although the Mate 40 Pro runs Android 10, Google apps and apps that are dependent on those Google services will not run (or might not run properly).

The main differences from my old Mate 20 Pro are:

• Faster
• The cameras - the main reason for me getting the Mate 40 Pro) are better (in fact, rated as the best phone camera available). There's a 10x optical zoom, which is awesome, and the 5x and 10x zoom modes don't wash out the colours like on the 20. The "normal" mode takes amazing photos in the dark; I can take pictures of the stars even without night mode. The colours seem excellent too. There isn't a macro mode, per se, but the 5x zoom is so amazing you can take close-up pictures from 20cm away.
• The phone is just about the same size (nominally 5mm wider and 3mm taller), but the screen is larger - 171.7mm vs 162.mm (6.76" vs 6.39"); the slightly wider screen is nicer to read on.
• The stereo speakers are really loud, better than any phone I've ever had.
• The battery is a bit bigger (not that I've had battery issues), and the included fast charger can charge the phone fully in about 45 min.
• The facial recognition is superfast. The under-screen fingerprint reader (handy when wearing a mask!) is instant, where the Mate 20 Pro was a bit slow.

The hardware might well be the best in the world, or very close.

Software-wise, it's been interesting. I have a couple of hundred apps. Of those, the vast majority work fine without Google; I was actually surprised at how many. The exceptions and good ones:

 

 

 

• Outlook and Teams needed a reinstall for me to register on the corporate portal, they work mostly fine now, though Teams doesn't always stay connected.
• The rest of the Microsoft apps work just perfectly.
• My model paint inventory/conversion tool Hobby Color Converter, doesn't recognise my premium subscription, and the data is stored on Google, so I lose premium features and need to re-enter my paints.
• Uber doesn't work, but the mobile website does, and the Bolt app works. Huawei can auto-encapsulate mobile websites as apps, so I click an Uber icon, and it's like the app.
• The Strava app does not run at all. However, there's a virtual Android/Google environment called Gspace that set up a virtual machine for apps, and Strava runs perfectly like that - and just as quickly as a native app.
• My Discovery app was problematic till I reinstalled it from the Huawei AppGallery.
• Banking apps work just fine.
• My favourite twitter app, Fenix, can' connect to Twitter. :( And old one I used to use, Talon, does work, however.
• Flightradar24 works if you use Gspace.
• Most other apps like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Sync for Reddit, etc. all work just fine. Twitter can't do notifications though; it uses the GMS notification framework. I can still go in and see them though.
• Waze works fine for navigation, as does Huawei's Petal Maps, and Here Wego.
• The BlackBerry Hub+ for email/calendar/contacts works, but I think it can't see my subscription, so I may get ads in it.
• The Suunto app works fine.
• Spotify and most non-Google media apps work fine. I use YouTube Vanced, an ad-free replacement for YouTube.
• Google Photos doesn't work, but the mobile website is fine. I now back up my camera pictures to OneDrive.
• For a browser, I use Vivaldi, which is way better than Chrome anyway.

Huawei is throwing lots of money at their mobile phone environment, and it shows; top quality stuff. With luck, they will break the Google monopoly a bit too.

I'll talk a bit about the earphone, scale, and watch in another post.

It's interesting that my phone now has better specs than my work laptop: same amount of RAM (8GB), same high-speed storage (256GB), 8 ARM cores vs the laptop's 4 Intel cores, and a high-resolution, albeit smaller screen.

 

 

 

New gadgets: Freebuds, Smart Scale, Gt 2e

The other gadgets I got with my new phone are:

Smart Scale:
This scale measures weight as well as body fat contact, and links it to the Huawei Health app with Bluetooth. Neat.

Freebuds 4i
The Freebuds wireless earphones seem to be like the Apple Airpods. The sound quality is excellent, and they're pretty smart; music stops if I take one out, and it's easy to switch from noise-cancelling to awareness modes and back. They do fit my ears really well - earphones tend to fall out easily - but I wouldn't run with them. I did buy an elastic strap to attach to them for if I do go out walking. For running, I'll carry on with my normal over-the-ear Volkano earphones; they're not as good, but won't fall out.

Huawei GT 2e watch

 

The GT 2e watch is a really, really nice smart watch. It looks really smart - unlike most smart watches - and has an unbelievably clear, sharp screen; in fact, it's got the easiest-to-read face of any watch I have. Battery life seems amazing - apparently a week or two even with display on all the time. The faces are customisable, and the watch has heaps of functions built in:

• Notifications from phone
• Control of the phone music
• Control of the phone camera shutter
• Heart rate - constant and during exercise
• Sleep monitoring
• Stress monitoring
• Weather
• Torch
• Alarm, timer, stopwatch
• Compass
• Barometer
• Music playing (from the watch itself)
• Breathing exercises
• Blood-oxygen sensor (SpO2 - handy in Covid-times)
• Find phone (it makes the phone call out "I'm heeeere")

The watch links to Huawei Health, which has some nice graphs and displays, as well as all the various activity and other tracking info. Huawei Health till recently was like an island, but FitnessSyncer now has a profile for Huawei to sync data with other services, like Strava.

As a fitness watch, the GT 2e falls short. I've been running with it for the last week, with my Suunto on the other wrist. Heart seems the same, or maybe slightly more accurate than Suunto, but it's no big deal either way. GPS falls a little short - maybe 1% shorter than it should be. The screen display only shows when you tilt your wrist - saves power - and the screen is really sharp and the colours vibrant. Much, much easier to read than the Suunto. There are fewer activity modes than the Suunto, but not a big issue, since I'm not a golfer or alpine skier. The biggest failing is a showstopper for serious runners (or other athletes): the activity screen is not customisable. It shows distance, duration, time, etc. just fine, but shows current pace and current heart rate only. You cannot show average pace and average heart rate, and for someone with targets to hit, that makes it no use.

Still, as a watch, I now wear it every day; it's comfortable enough and smart enough to do so.