The Honor 10 is still a fantastic mid-range phone and is presented in all its brilliant blue. See why in our detailed review.
Even though the battery life could be better, the phone is still incredibly fantastic for the price, thus it’s only a small complaint. The performance is the greatest we’ve seen on an Honor phone, and the display, cameras, and build quality are on par with that of a phone costing twice as much. The software is the greatest EMUI has ever provided, and when everything is said and done, the notch is not a big problem. A huge benefit is the 128GB storage that comes included, and dual SIM is highly appreciated. The Honor 10 is still a solid option even if it was released in 2018, even with the addition of a headphone port.
With the help of the dazzlingly bright blue that it covers its phones in, Honor has been doing a fine job of emerging from Huawei’s shadow. Despite having the name of its parent company printed on the back, the Honor 10 feels just like an Honor smartphone and isn’t any different from that.
The device has top-tier specs, all the 2018 bells and whistles (Android Oreo, notch, face unlock), and a price that would make OnePlus blush. Given that it is now the greatest mid-range phone on the market, the Honor 10 may end up being the best smartphone deal of the year.
Honor 10 price and availability
The price of the 4GB RAM/128GB storage variant of the Honor 10 in the UK is a staggering £399. It now costs exactly £50 less than the high-end Nokia 8 and OnePlus 5T (RIP), and £100 less than the Huawei P20 Pro.
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Honor 10 design and build
In spite of its resemblance to Huawei smartphones, the Honor 10 has a very distinctive appearance. Our review device is appealing Phantom Blue, a gradient of blue and purple that is actually quite distinct from the Twilight Huawei P20 Pro with the same shifting tones. It is also available in a grey form. Even so, we might choose the Honor.
Due to the vertical lines’ ability to reflect light at all angles, the multi-layered glass actually does shimmer. If you like the colors, it’s great since people will ask you what phone you have. Honor has always had distinctive blue phones, but this is on another level.
Around the front, a 19:9 display with a notch at the top features a well-known 2018 tale. Though Honor follows Huawei and LG in providing the choice, we don’t think it’s the end of the world, and you can black out the status bar and “hide” it if you wish. On the front, the phone resembles the Huawei P20 Lite more than the standard P20 or P20 Pro.
All of this translates to a display that is higher than the Honor 9’s and a fingerprint scanner hidden within the phone’s black chin on the front. Instead of being directly in the display like on the Huawei Mate RS, the region where a button sensor might typically be is gently denoted with a dotted line on the chin. The location where the button sensor might typically be is not really in the display like it is on the Huawei Mate RS, but rather is softly denoted with a dotted line on the chin.
It’s a neat touch and the first time we’ve seen it, but because you have to press down more firmly than with an actual button, the functionality is less responsive. It also makes it more difficult to find than a button would be.
There are front and rear dual cameras, USB-C, a headphone connector, a bottom firing speaker, and an IR blaster that is less obvious. As compared to most phones that cost twice as much, this is not a bad list.
The power key and volume rocker are located on the right in a sleek, small form. The keyboard may need to be shrunk to do this, but we discovered that most of the time it can be operated with just one hand. Moreover, Honor includes a cheap silicone case in the box to aid with grip and deter inevitable fingerprints.
Honor 10 features and specifications
Screen
The resolution of the 5.84-inch, 19:9 IPS LCD screen is 2280x1080p. This has an excellent visual resolution of 432 pixels per inch. It struggles in direct sunshine because it is an LCD rather than an OLED, but it looks excellent in all other lighting conditions.
Although you won’t be blessed with the rich blacks of an OLED display, the viewing angles are clearly fantastic, and it’s one of the nicest LCDs you’ll find (though it won’t get quite as wonderfully brilliant as the LG G7’s).
Because to the additional space the notch provides, the display is 19:9. We don’t really care about the notch, but we do find it unpleasant how frequently you lose information and notification icons compared to a conventional screen.
Moreover, you can see scaling problems where the notch unintentionally hides an icon or piece of data. Yet, the software is clever enough to conceal the notch and display the movie without cropping any parts off if you spin the phone to watch videos in landscape mode.
Yet, the notch does lead to certain problems. If you have too many notifications, the operator name will vanish, and the right border of the notch may occasionally hide icons. Even though it’s a minor flaw, it still annoys me.
The fingerprint sensor, which is under the glass but is displayed with a dotted outline, is likewise located on the chin. Although it’s a neat addition, it really makes the feature more challenging to use. Without a button to feel for, it’s tougher to find, and pressing harder makes it less responsive than we’d want.
Although it works poorly, it has a cool appearance. Thankfully, face unlock is incredibly quick and simple to set up, and we preferred this approach.
Processor, memory and storage
The Honor 10 has a passing similarity to the less expensive Huawei P20 Lite, but it has very similar high-end specifications to the P20’s flagship model. actually very similar.
As a result, the Honor 10 is equipped with the same premium Huawei Kirin 970 CPU as the P20 Pro and Mate 10 Pro. In the UK, the P20 range also features the same Mali-G72 GPU, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage (other regions will get other configurations with more of both).
It’s noteworthy that this storage, while ample, cannot be expanded. The Honor 9 was, but switching to a very high 128GB is a decent trade-off because you won’t run out of space for a very long time unless you take all of your songs around with you.
It follows that the Honor 10 screams along without any problems. The following are the findings of our comparison of its performance to phones with comparable pricing and specifications:
Connectivity and audio
Drop outs were common when using wireless headphones and Bluetooth compatibility is still only at version 4.2, which is unfortunate because the aptX codec used here means the quality is actually rather nice when it works. There is a headphone jack here, however there are no headphones included.
This smartphone has two SIM slots by default, and the software enables fine-grained management of the settings if, for instance, you want to have calls and texts on one SIM and data on the other.
Cameras
The Honor 10’s twin cameras are excellent for a mid-range phone, but as we’ve already established, this is a flagship that’s just less expensive than others. The 24Mp monochrome sensor is paired with the 16Mp f/1.8 primary colour sensor to improve the dynamic range and depth sensing for portrait mode and 2x zoom.
Even though this isn’t the best smartphone camera, Honor has made some good advancements. Stills look fantastic. The AI feature in the primary camera is even more ridiculous, and it’s embarrassing that the word “AI camera” is printed on the phone’s rear.
However, when on, the feature reads your scene or subject and boosts colour and detail where it thinks the sensors were lacking, using post processing algorithms. For the most part, it truly helps a lot, and will particularly pleasure individuals who wish to post immediately to social media.
The photographs are less realistic than they were, but you can switch between the two to see which one you like best. Just remember to shoot in AI mode in the first place. It is toggleable in the upgraded and significantly simplified camera app (compared to previous versions of EMUI).
These capabilities are close, but not identical, to those AI smarts featured on the Huawei P20. Even though the Honor 10 offers the same night mode option, it doesn’t perform as well as on the Huawei, so maybe spending an extra £200 will bring you what we do consider an outstanding feature. The P20 combines it better (the P20 has a better aperture and OIS where it counts).
Despite the upgrades, the phone’s camera still occasionally falls short, which seems strange given the good specs it offers.
Here, portrait mode is only merely adequate; Honor continues to include a grating beauty mode and a selfie version, and even when these features are disabled, we still notice an unfavorable smoothing and whitening of the faces. Even if everyone’s preferences for bokeh effects vary, we can tell with certainty that this is not as good as on the Google Pixel 2 or iPhone X.
Although while the app’s “portrait” mode allows for bokeh, the selfie camera’s 24Mp f/2.0 sensor is adequate but not exceptional, and all you can do is play around with the beauty settings, which never provide attractive results.
All cameras have portrait lighting capabilities, which were shamelessly lifted from Apple. The filters are more enjoyable — it’s quite horrible.
The Honor 10’s video capabilities are better; it can record in 1080p at 60 frames per second or 4K at 30 frames per second. Although this is becoming the norm, it’s still encouraging to see it on a mid-range handset. At the default resolution setting, electronic stabilization aids in reducing jitters.
Battery life
One drawback of the Honor 10 is its short battery life. Since there aren’t many high-end phones in 2018 that make us concerned we might run out of battery before the end of the day, we had higher expectations for the Honor 10.
It has a 3400mAh battery, the same as the Huawei P20, which is the phone we were avoiding earlier in the day than we’d have wanted because of 20% left warnings. While the Honor 10 didn’t catch us off guard, it once again demonstrates that while its specs are superior to what its price would imply and as a result, demand a lot of the device, it doesn’t offer the same level of battery life as other, less expensive phones.
With the phone’s brightness adjusted to 120cd/m2, it scored 2340 on the Geekbench 4 battery test but barely lasted for 3 hours and 54 minutes. The P20 lasted 5 hours 17 minutes with the same 3400mAh battery, so something is amiss with the Honor 10’s battery stamina, and that’s a genuine bummer.
The Honor 10 uses Huawei’s Super Charge, which is incredibly quick and is, hands down, the fastest charger we’ve ever seen for a phone. It charged the Honor 10 from zero to 65% while it was off, which is insane. That barely compensates for the poor battery life.
Conclude
Ching Tôi believes that if a person has a notch in their head, they can press the button, and that this will cause a number of different kinds of ionizing radiation to be produced in their body. Nhng khiu ni duy nht ca chng tôi nm nhng thay I mà EMUI thc hin khi không cn thit, which is to say with Oreo.
