Huawei's P40 and P40 Pro will be launching on March 26 in Paris

What you need to know

• Huawei will announce the P40 and P40 Pro on the 26th of March in Paris.
• These devices will be the first of Huawei's P-series to launch without access to the Google Play Store.
• The devices are expected to launch with up to five rear cameras on the pro models and 120Hz displays on all.

Huawei is launching the successors to its well-received P30 and P30 Pro — the P40 and P40 Pro — in March. The firm will be doing so in lieu of an MWC launch partly due to the event's cancellation in early February and mostly because it made the same decision in 2019. Instead, it will hold a dedicated event in Paris where it will showcase its 2020 flagship.

Renders of the Huawei P40 and P40 Pro already leaked in the course of the year, and we know a lot about what to expect. Both devices will ship with Android 10 and Huawei's own EMUI 10, both will have OLED displays at 120Hz, and both will have multiple cameras.

The P40 will reportedly have 3 cameras, while the P40 Pro will have anything from four to five rear cameras with a 64MP primary camera, a 20MP ultra-wide camera, a 12MP telephoto lens, and a ToF sensor confirmed.

Huawei's P40 and P40 Pro may very well be technically excellent and pleasing to the eye, and that's to be expected from the firm. Huawei has over the past few years, put out well-built devices with powerful hardware, decent software support, and compelling cameras at a variety of price points. It would not be surprising in the least. What would be intriguing is how the reception to the device would be. Google apps and services, a big draw in Europe and most of the world, aren't going to be pre-installed or officially supported on Huawei's devices. This means no Google Play Store, no Google Pay, no YouTube app, etc.

As much as Huawei wants customers to ignore this, it's something the firm will have to grapple with sooner rather than later.