Huawei will now unveil the P40 series at an online-only event on March 26

What you need to know

• Huawei today confirmed that the P40 series phones will be announced at an online-only event on March 26, due to the Coronavirus outbreak.
• The two phones were previously slated to debut at a global launch event in Paris on the same day.
• Huawei P40 series phones are expected to come with upgraded cameras and 5G connectivity.

Huawei had announced late last month that it would take the wraps off the P40 and P40 Pro phones at a global launch event in Paris. Due to Coronavirus fears, however, the company has now announced that the P40 series will debut at an online-only event (opens in new tab) instead.

The announcement certainly doesn't come as a surprise, since several major tech events have recently been canceled due to the Coronavirus outbreak. The Mobile World Congress was canceled last month after several companies decided not to attend the expo citing Coronavirus fears. More recently, the city of Austin canceled SXSW March events.

Huawei compatriot OPPO too had to launch its flagship Find X2 series phones at an online-only event last week, due to the same reason. The Game Developers Conference (GDC), which was scheduled to kick off next week, has been postponed to a later date. Several other tech events, including Google I/O will only be held online this year.

The Huawei P40 and P40 Pro are both expected to be 5G-enabled and come with improved optics over their predecessors. Under the hood, the two phones will be powered by the Kirin 990 5G chipset. Leaked renders of the phones suggest the vanilla P40 will have a triple-camera array at the back, while the P40 Pro will feature a more impressive penta-lens camera system.