Honor View 10 review: an affordable flagship to stand alongside the OnePlus 5T

Honor has developed a reputation for delivering decent handsets at a fine looking fee. Launched on the identical time because the mid-ranging Honor 7x, the brand new flagship Honor View 10 boasts facets like a dual-lens camera an 18:9, 6-inch 1,080-via-2,160 display and 128GB of storage. These are topped off with the newest ought to-have feature — synthetic intelligence, primarily based around Huawei’s latest Kirin 970 processor.

The View 10 is a transparent competitor for the OnePlus 5T and also has sufficient punch to be a competent rival to the Huawei Mate 10 professional — at a significantly lessen fee than Honor’s father or mother-brand flagship handset.

the honour View 10 has a deep blue chassis which looks multiple (the shade is an Honor commonplace) and the matte conclude to its backplate is reasonably grippy. The antenna bands are neatly disguised as black strips at the very precise and bottom of the again. there’s not plenty to differentiate this cell from every other handset with an 18:9, 6-inch display this present day, but there are a couple of points to observe.

the respect View 10 has a 5.ninety nine-inch reveal and is powered by way of Huawei’s newest AI-augmented Kirin 970 chipset.

pictures: Honor

the first is the presence of a fingerprint sensor below the reveal, in distinction to each the Huawei Mate 10 and the OnePlus 5T, which both put their sensors on the lower back of the handset. The rear-installed alternative is a good deal extra ergonomic for one-passed use, and is my favored region.

however the sensor is on the front of the chassis this is rarely a very tall handset. Measuring 157mm tall through 74.98mm extensive via 6.97mm thick, and weighing 172g, there may be not an awful lot between this and both the Huawei Mate 10 professional or the OnePlus 5T (see desk beneath).

The different outstanding design aspect is that both digital camera lenses protrude greatly from the lower back of the chassis. To be fair, the honor View 10 is barely 6.97mm thick, and a raised digicam lens enviornment can even be discovered on the a little thicker OnePlus 5T, despite the fact the one raised lozenge on that handset offers with the situation quite more neatly.

The handset is just 6.97mm thick, which means the rear camera lenses protrude relatively.

picture: Sandra Vogel/ZDNet

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The correct facet energy button is a bit of etched, most likely to aid you find it by way of touch by myself, however I didn’t discover that this helped a good deal. The fact that the handset’s only other button, the quantity rocker on the identical side, is tons longer, is the true clue as to which button is for which feature.

On the bottom part you are going to discover the USB-C port for charging, and a three.5mm headset jack. So there isn’t a deserve to surrender on a wired three.5mm headset right here, as Huawei wishes you to do with its flagship Mate 10 pro. The speaker grille is on this edge too.

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there isn’t any IP rating for dirt and water resistance on the View 10, which may put just a few expertise patrons off. or not it’s additionally worth noting that i used to be in a position to get a very slight volume of flex in the chassis through trying to bend the cellphone in my fingers. however, this is rarely a tremendous situation.

The display has the 18:9 aspect ratio it truly is become a well-liked alternative. It measures 5.99 inches across the diagonal with a resolution of 1,080 by using 2,one hundred sixty pixels (403ppi). it’s clear and sharp, and the IPS lcd panel delivers a whole lot of punch even though it doesn’t look as shiny as an OLED. these attempting to find a little extra ‘pop’ from the reveal can change into Vivid mode, and it’s also viable to modify the coloration temperature. Video appears wonderful in wide-monitor mode, and the speaker provides good adequate audio fine for a little of headset-free catch up tv.

person-adjustable settings can be found for the IPS liquid crystal display display, including a Vivid mode.

images: Sandra Vogel/ZDNet

	Honor View 10	Huawei Mate 10 professional	OnePlus 5T
Android edition / UI overlay	Android 8.0 / EMUI eight.0	Android eight.0 / EMUI 8.0	Android 7.1.1 / OxygenOS
screen	5.99 inches, 18:9 aspect ratio, 2,160 x 1,080 pixels, 403ppi	6.0 inches, 18:9 aspect ratio, 2,160 x 1,080 pixels, 402ppi	6.0 inches, 18:9 aspect ratio, 2,one hundred sixty x 1,080 pixels, 401ppi
reminiscence & storage	6GB RAM, 128GB storage, MicroSD slot	6GB RAM, 128GB storage	6/8GB RAM, 64/128GB storage
grime & water resistance	no	IP67	no
Headset connector	three.5mm	USB-C	3.5mm
Dimensions / weight	157mm x 74.98mm x 6.97mm / 172g	154.2mm x seventy four.5mm x 7.9mm, 178g	156.1mm x 75mm x 7.3 mm, 162g
price (UK)	£449.ninety nine	£621/£709 (€699/€799)	£449/£499

the honour View 10 will accommodate two SIMs, however not like on the OnePlus 5T the 2nd SIM slot can also be used for a microSD card. That potential it be feasible to augment the inside storage. My evaluation unit had 116GB free out of the box, and with 128GB microSD playing cards purchasable for beneath £40, it be pretty low-priced to more than double the internal storage capability.

the honour View 10 is powered with the aid of the identical octa-core Kirin 970 processor that Huawei uses within the Mate 10 professional, and it shares the neural processing unit (NPU) that carry AI features designed to speed up the handset’s efficiency.

among the many features on offer is quick multilingual translation via the put in Microsoft Translator app, and an clever photography provider that automatically recognises what you might be trying to picture and adjusts the settings instantly. It as it should be recognized my cat, a plant, and my lunch, for instance, however is also easily fooled: it recognized cats, plant life, and food from net photos too — neatly, it’s not human.

The NPU’s different main claim to reputation is its capacity to learn about the way you use your handset, and so anticipate what you may need at definite instances. it’s a moot factor whether prioritising specific processes, and deprioritising lesser used apps, is helpful given the velocity with which the processor can beginning up apps and tactics anyway.

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Android 8.0 is overlain by Huawei’s EMUI eight.0, which provides a raft of points over and above the Android commonplace fare. There are a number of granular settings to be found that could confuse or delight, depending on your fondness for fiddling round. They encompass the means to make use of both an apps drawer or to reveal all apps on a house screen, plus the reveal tweaks outlined earlier. For all its complexity, EMUI is plenty less obtrusive than it as soon as changed into, and the better for it.

There are dual cameras at the again — 20-megapixel monochrome and sixteen-megapixel colour — that combine to carry fairly respectable photos. there may be a bokeh mode, and the aforementioned means to automatically determine what’s being photographed and regulate settings for this reason. A sweep to the right brings up seasoned picture mode, the place that you can alter special settings and entry other shooting modes.

Monochrome pictures are valuable, and there is an outstanding modifying app that comprises a variety of doubtlessly helpful and enjoyable effects and filters. The 13-megapixel front digicam shoots a pleasant selfie and might use a subset of the accessible latitude of digicam modes.

With all the configurability alternatives, the superior processor and the good cameras, it be a bit of outstanding that there’s no facial unlocking. the honour site says this might be coming through an OTA update, however presently the fingerprint sensor is the simplest biometric authentication formulation available.

Honor adds just a few functions to the usual Android fare, together with a number of video game demos, utilities like a compass, and a controller for the built-in IR blaster.

The 3,750mAh battery is distinctly big for such a slim handset. in accordance with Honor, it’s respectable for 5.5 hours of gaming, 19 hours of video, a hundred and sixty hours of music, 21 hours of 4G browsing, or 23 hours of 3G speak. help for Honor Supercharge potential the battery can get a 50 % can charge in half an hour. i’d expect this handset to get most clients via a full day between charges and located power boosting to be impressively short.

Conclusions

It appears peculiar for Huawei to push a budget manufacturer that presents such first-rate price for funds and without difficulty rivals its personal flagship Huawei Mate 10 professional. but it truly is exactly what’s going on right here. The extra expensive Huawei handset does offers merits such as its Leica-branded digicam device, greater strong build, an IP ranking, a a bit higher (four,000mAh) battery, and a rear-established fingerprint sensor.

but if you are looking for first-rate aspects and performance on a funds, the respect View 10 stands alongside the brilliant OnePlus 5T.

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