| Pros | Cons |
| Supports 5G | No Google Play Store |
| Affordable | Weak macro and depth cameras |
| Good main camera | Middling design |
The Huawei P40 Lite 5G lives up to its name as a 'lite', affordable way to get 5G. It also has a strong primary camera, but is held back significantly by the lack of Google Mobile Services.
Getting a 5G phone is generally an expensive proposition, but it’s rapidly becoming less so, as while not long ago you had to buy a flagship to get 5G, there are now some cheaper options available.
The Huawei P40 Lite 5G is one such cheaper option. In fact, it’s one of the very cheapest 5G phones you can buy at the time of writing, though it still has a mid-range price.
Being able to get 5G on a budget is enough in itself to make this an interesting handset, but it also has other things going for it, such as a quad-lens camera. However, it also has some significant faults. So is the Huawei P40 Lite 5G worth buying? Read on to find out.
The Huawei P40 Lite 5G has a 6.5-inch 1080 x 2400 IPS LCD screen, with a pixel density of 405 pixels per inch, an aspect ratio of 20:9, and support for HDR10.
That’s a big screen, and it’s respectably sharp. It also has minimal bezels, other than on the bottom edge where there’s a more noticeable border.
It’s a screen that mostly looks good for the money, though notably the use of LCD rather than OLED is a mark against it, as colours and contrast inevitably aren’t quite as good with LCD.
Still, unless you use it back to back with an OLED display you probably won’t notice too much difference, and the use of LCD is probably part of how the cost was kept so low.
The Huawei P40 Lite 5G has a reasonably premium if fairly ordinary look. Its back has a 3D textured effect adding some interest, but is otherwise fairly devoid of details, and the front is the now fairly standard mix of small bezels and punch-hole camera, though the bottom bezel here actually isn’t tiny.
Still, it’s not a bad look at all, especially for the money, and the overall size and weight are middling at 162.3 x 75 x 8.6mm and 189g.
This isn’t a phone that will turn heads, but nor is it ugly, though note that there’s no water resistance rating here, so you should try not to get it wet.
There’s a Kirin 820 chipset powering the Huawei P40 Lite 5G, which is a mid-range chipset notable mostly for supporting 5G, meaning you get super speedy mobile data if you have the right contract and coverage.
That said, it’s a chipset that can hold its own again most similarly priced phones, and it’s paired here with 6GB of RAM.
So while this won’t rival the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S20 or the Huawei P40 Pro, it holds up well against other mid-rangers like the Samsung Galaxy A71.
But in terms of power it’s definitely mostly the 5G that helps this stand out. If you’re not interested in 5G then there are some equal or better alternatives.
Beyond 5G, it’s the camera that’s the main highlight of the Huawei P40 Lite 5G, as the phone has a quad-lens one. This includes a 64MP f/1.8 main camera, an 8MP f/2.4 ultra-wide one, a 2MP f/2.4 macro one, and a 2M f/2.4 depth one.
The notable omission here is a telephoto lens, but the lenses that you do get are generally impressive, or at least the main and ultra-wide ones are. The macro and depth ones are a bit more questionable, as they tend to be on phones where they’re included. We’d have much rather traded them for a telephoto, but that would have probably pushed the price up.
The 64MP sensor is definitely the one you’ll be using most, it takes great quality snaps in most conditions, but the ultra-wide can just about hold its own when you need to fit more in.
The Huawei P40 Lite 5G also has a 16MP selfie camera and the ability to record 4K video at 30fps, making for a decent setup all in all.
The main feature to note about the Huawei P40 Lite 5G is something that it doesn’t have, namely Google Mobile Services.
This means that you can’t access the Google Play Store for apps, or make use of Google apps like Maps and YouTube.
However, you can still access many other apps (and games) through the Huawei AppGallery, which is an alternate app store offered on the phone. The selection isn’t as good, but the company also offers a service called Petal Search which can hunt other app stores for any apps you might want. Between these features you should be able to find most of the apps you’re interested in.
While it lacks Google Mobile Services though the Huawei P40 Lite 5G does still run a version of Android 10, overlaid with the company’s EMUI. This isn’t our favourite Android interface but it’s not bad either – of course preference here is largely subjective.
The Huawei P40 Lite 5G also has a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, for convenient security, albeit less flashy security than the in-screen scanners we’re increasingly seeing in phones.
The Huawei P40 Lite 5G has a 4,000mAh battery, which is a decent size, good for a day of moderate use and potentially more. It also supports 40W fast charging, which is very speedy and allows it to charge by 70% in just half an hour. There’s no wireless charging but we don’t expect that at this price.
For memory, you get 128GB built in along with the ability to add up to 256GB more with a microSD card. Connectivity meanwhile includes 4G and 5G of course, along with Bluetooth 5.1 and NFC.
The Huawei P40 Lite 5G is a capable mid-ranger with two big highlights: offering 5G and a quad-lens camera on a budget. The latter of those is less impressive than it initially sounds, as only two of the lenses are up to much, but those two are genuinely good, and 5G at this price is impressive.
Elsewhere the Huawei P40 Lite 5G is a fairly ordinary but capable mid-ranger with no major weak links except one, namely its lack of Google Mobile Services.
This omission was unavoidable for the company, as it doesn’t currently have a license to use them on new handsets, but it means you may have to jump through some hoops to get all the apps you want, and it makes the phone harder to recommend. But if you can live with that then it’s a great mid-range 5G handset.
