Preview of Huawei's P40 flagship, which doesn't include any Google services: the hardware is really terrific but is not enough to overcome Google's absence
A preview of what you can expect with the new P40 flagship — Tomorrow Huawei will launch its latest flagship phones, the P40 series, at an event to be streamed online.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Mate 30 Pro review already established the pattern last November: flagship-grade hardware and cameras undermined by the missing Google services at a €1,099 price. The P40 preview shows Huawei shipping a second consecutive global flagship under the same constraint rather than waiting it out, with the Leica-branded five-lens camera bump positioned as the differentiator.
What makes this preview more than a repeat is where the coverage arc goes next: the P40 Pro Plus hands-on confirms the same verdict months later, and by mid-2021 Huawei responds with the [[a:P50 series running its own HarmonyOS|P50 and P50 Pro on HarmonyOS]]. The P40 is the pivot point where hardware excellence stops being enough and the software stack itself becomes the project.
First-order effects
- International P40 buyers get best-in-class camera hardware but no Play Store or Google apps out of the box, repeating the deal-breaker that sank the Mate 30 Pro's value case for non-Chinese customers.
Second-order effects
- With Google services off the table indefinitely, Huawei accelerates substitution on both fronts — its own HarmonyOS replacing Android on the P50 generation, and a domesticating supply chain, consistent with later teardowns showing a rising share of China-made components in its flagships.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the smartphone market splits into ecosystems rather than devices: Google's services layer proves a stronger lock-in than any single OEM's hardware advantage, pushing sanctioned vendors toward fully self-built OS-and-component stacks.
The trend: US sanctions are converting Huawei from Google-dependent Android flagships into a vertically self-sufficient hardware-plus-OS ecosystem, one generation at a time.