Huawei will be unveiling its first 2020 flagship smartphone on 26 March next month. Of course, it’s the Huawei P40 series, and the lineup is expected to be made up of not two, but (possibly) three different smartphones. These include the standard P40, P40 Pro, and the range-topping P40 Pro Premium Edition.

This launch date was revealed by Richard Yu himself, the CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group. He mentioned the release date of the P40 series during yesterday’s product announcements, which also included the new and improved Huawei Mate Xs foldable smartphone.

While the P40 smartphones are still shrouded in mystery, there are a couple of noteworthy rumours. The standard P40, for one, is expected to sport a triple camera system with the usual focal lengths: regular wide-angle sensor, an ultra-wide angle shooter, and a telephoto lens.

As for the P40 Pro, it’s said to come with a more sophisticated quad camera configuration that can do up to 5x optical zoom; it could sport a time-of-flight (ToF) sensor as well to capture depth information. Last but definitely not least is the P40 Pro Premium Edition, which may pack up to five different camera sensors that can do 10x optical zoom.

If these information are accurate, Huawei is clearly aiming to compete with the Samsung Galaxy S20 series’ camera performance, especially when it comes to the level of zoom. On top of that, the P40’s square camera module looks very similar to the S20’s design as well. In extension, they’re also not too different from the aesthetic of the iPhone 11’s camera module.

Anyway, besides the camera system, other rumoured specifications of the P40 series include a 120Hz OLED dual curved screen with an oblong-shaped hole-punch cutout – not unlike the Infinity-O Display of the Samsung Galaxy S10+ – a Kirin 990 chipset, and unfortunately enough, no 3.5mm jack. It remains to be seen if the absence of the headphone jack will also affect the standard P40, given that its direct predecessor, the Huawei P30, had one.

While this hasn’t been confirmed yet, it’s very likely the upcoming P40 smartphones won’t come with Google Mobile Services either. Yes, it is still expected to run on the open-source version of Android 10, but all devices in the series will not be pre-loaded with popular Google apps like the Play Store, Gmail, YouTube, Maps, and so on.

Instead, like other recently released Huawei and Honor smartphones, it’ll possibly come with Huawei Mobile Services, which include the Chinese company’s replacement of the Play Store dubbed AppGallery.

Of course, these are just educated guesses at this point in time. We’ll just have to wait until 26 March to see exactly what the Huawei P40 smartphones will offer. It’ll be quite an exciting announcement, since Richard Yu claims that the P40 Pro will be the “world’s most powerful 5G flagship.”