The station building was demolished in April 2008, and work began on the construction of a new passenger hub that was completed by the end of October 2012.

Separate east-west platforms will serve trains on the Xiamen-Shenzhen High-Speed Railway (u/c).

Shenzhen railway station will be the main hub for intercity trains in Guangdong Province, for example, and its current long-distance trains to Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Guilin and Fuzhou will be relocated to Shenzhen East in the future.

[citation needed] This station was initially designed for stopping by Guangzhou–Shenzhen Railway intercity trains but the plan was abandoned after construction was nearly completed, [citation needed] and Pinghu has become the additional station for intercity trains afterwards.

Shenzhen East station is now mainly used for non-high-speed services, while starting 10 January 2024, a pair of regularly operating "D-suffix" train, namely D146/7、D148/5, heading to Zhengzhou station is added where CR200J1-C trains[4] are in use as at January 2024.