Huawei Mate 10 Pro review: A feature-packed flagship with extra AI

Huawei has dependent a fashion of releasing general and ‘pro’ versions of its flagship Mate handsets, and the latest fashions continue that style. really, there are three types of the Huawei Mate 10. in addition to the Mate 10 and Mate 10 seasoned, there may be an even extra high priced Porsche Design edition too.

i was despatched the colossal-structure (6-inch) Mate 10 pro to assessment. it be bursting with top-end elements, together with Android 8 (Oreo), the Kirin 970 processor with built-in AI (which influences many points of the mobilephone, including images and power effectivity), a Leica-branded twin-lens rear digital camera and dual 4G LTE SIM help.

The Kirin 970-powered Mate 10 professional is available in midnight Blue, Titanium grey and Mocha Brown, with a red Gold edition additionally available in China. It has a 6-inch minimal-bezel OLED reveal and weighs 178g.

photograph: Huawei

The Huawei Mate 10 pro is a big handset, besides the fact that children given its 6-inch reveal it be not oversized. it truly is because of the almost absent bezel on the handset’s long edges and minimal suitable and backside bezels. Huawei calls this arrangement FullView — smartly, every part-to-aspect screen design needs a reputation. in spite of the fact that the small bezels, don’t expect to squeeze this seventy four.5mm by way of 154.2mm through 7.9mm handset into every pocket, and do expect to note its 178g weight.

One ramification of the small backside bezel is that the fingerprint sensor sits on the back of the handset. I discovered this relaxed to use — indeed, on a huge phone it be tons less complicated to get at one-passed than a sensor it is under the screen.

there’s a variety of things you could do with the fingerprint sensor in spite of no matter if or not it’s used for login. without registering a fingerprint you can make each tap and glide gestures to answer a name, take a photograph, browse photos and greater. if you need to use fingerprint login, I found it quickly and legit.

i was despatched a Mocha Brown overview sample which appears distinctive and rather wise. other alternate options are dead night Blue and Titanium grey (and, when you are in China, purple Gold). In each and every case the edges are crafted from aluminium and the backplate is reflective and slippery glass. or not it’s now not truly to my style, and it’s now not essentially the most grippy of substances. it be additionally extra susceptible to smashes onto pavements or drops down stairs than an all-metal chassis can be.

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The handset comes with a transparent plastic shell that offers extra grip than the glass, but adds bulk and weight and adjusted the bronzed brown shade of my handset to a greater grey-like color.

The Mate 10 pro has IP67 certification for dust and water ingress. This continues up with the flagship smartphone market, but looks to have come at the cost of a 3.5mm headphone jack. Huawei gives a USB-C headset and a USB-C-to-3.5mm jack adapter, otherwise you can go wireless. The Mate 10, incidentally, has a headphone jack, but lacks an IP rating.

The 6-inch reveal has an 18:9 aspect ratio. it really is especially infrequent on handsets, although the LG G6 and Samsung Galaxy S8 are two correct-end models that share it. The resolution of 1,080 by 2,a hundred and sixty pixels would not ruin any new floor, but the ensuing 402ppi pixel density is perfectly good sufficient for commonplace use.

This factor ratio can depart a big black strip to the left and right of vast-display YouTube streams, despite the fact i ended noticing these after ages. It also outcomes in a taller-than-commonplace portrait mode screen, which may please folks that do lots of web looking or e-book studying.

that you could manually regulate the OLED reveal’s colour temperature, and choose Eye comfort mode for minimal blue easy.

photograph: Sandra Vogel/ZDNet

i’m actually bought on the taller monitor, but not so enamoured of the knuckle gesture that’s mandatory to create a split display for viewing two apps without delay. The idea is sound, however I discovered it a bit hit and miss. maybe I just need more observe. One aspect i’m actually comfortable to look is the capacity to join a bigger monitor via USB-C to HDMI. If nothing else, this will be useful for on-the-go shows.

The OLED panel is fantastically bright and clear. It helps HDR10, a specification for HDR content material this is increasingly widespread on handsets (and other gadgets) and which helps be sure that visuals get near what the creator meant.

in addition, Huawei offers a couple of general utilities that permit you to tweak the monitor. Eye consolation mode reduces blue gentle, which is exceptional for those late-night analyzing sessions. This can be set to switch on and off automatically at set instances. you could additionally manually fiddle with the color temperature, and play with preset color modes, toggling between ‘standard’ and ‘vivid’ — with the latter definitely popping colours out.

The 6-inch Mate 10 pro is a big handset, which some might also combat to navigate one-surpassed.

picture: Huawei

there’s no room for Android shortcut buttons below the monitor. Having the buttons within the reveal is infrequently a novelty, of direction. in this case, a quick sweep up from the slim bezel onto the screen explanations them to occupy a slender strip. they are intricate to make use of one-handed, though: the sheer dimension of this handset, together with its slippery backplate, meant i was always wary of shedding it when getting access to the buttons. because of this, here’s a two-exceeded operation for me.

Huawei has a stab at fixing this by using letting users area a ‘floating dock’ anyplace they like on-monitor. here is readily a large white spot that can also be parked at the most handy place for thumb access, and which will also be used to navigate via apps or get promptly lower back to the domestic display. I found this fairly comfy to work with.

The SIM caddy on the left fringe of the chassis will accommodate two 4G SIMs — a world first, according to Huawei. there is no MicroSD card slot on the Mate 10 professional (although the Mate 10 does have one, as an alternative within the 2nd SIM slot), but you get 128GB of interior storage. Out of the container my evaluate handset reported 108GB free. A 12 months in the past I may have referred to here’s satisfactory storage for anyone, however these days i am not so sure. And with 128GB MicroSD cards available for as little as £50, boosting handset reminiscence vastly is not an important cost. So, on balance, i’d opt to see a card slot right here.

The Kirin 970 processor is backed up by 6GB of RAM. Huawei is hailing the its new SoC as the first AI processor for smartphones, complete with a Neural community Processing Unit (NPU) and there are aspects all through the telephone that use its capabilities, from the battery to the cameras. Huawei even says the AI within the CPU can help increase name exceptional with the aid of boosting low quantity calls and invoking ambient noise cancellation when calls are made in loud environments.

in the meantime, with Microsoft Translator preinstalled, the handset can operate rapid translation in more than 50 languages by means of bringing the NPU into play. I had success with some overseas language websites, so this bodes neatly for future use.

Huawei says that the Mate 10 seasoned is competent for upcoming AI-based apps that may be greater responsive and intuitive. Time will tell how developers reply.

The Leica-branded rear digicam device includes 20MP mono and 12MP coloration sensors, both with f/1.6 lenses.

photograph: Huawei

efficiency and battery existence also get a helping hand from the NPU. The handset can learn your regularly occurring apps and immediately allocate greater equipment elements to them. there’s no counseled existence for the 4,000mAh battery, however my anecdotal proof up to now suggests it’ll readily closing through a working day — it hasn’t failed me so far on that front, and might even go for 2 days. The provided cable supports Huawei SuperCharge, and half an hour’s charging can carry pretty much 60 % battery cost.

The digital camera advantages from AI too. The main rear digicam gadget contains Leica-branded 20-megapixel monochrome and 12-megapixel RGB sensors, each with f/1.6 lenses. The front digital camera is an 8MP f/2.0 unit.

The rear cameras can determine some objects, and make automatic adjustments to environment for more suitable-fine pictures. This ‘state of affairs identification’ labored neatly, recognizing food, textual content, vegetation and my cat easily. if you don’t like what the AI does, a sweep up from the ‘shoot’ button invokes pro mode, where guide settings can be made. There are lots of capturing modes accessible through sweeping left.

The Huawei Mate 10 professional runs on Android eight (Oreo) with a brand new Huawei overlay — EMUI 8.0. The outdated new release of EMUI changed into edition 5, but Huawei in all probability feels it includes extra clout to tally with Android’s versioning.

If need be, that you can cut back the monitor to make one-surpassed operation less difficult.

picture: Sandra Vogel/ZDNet

there’s a great deal occurring with EMUI, a few of which I’ve already mentioned, and any person hunting for a vanilla or near-vanilla approach to Android may still seem to be elsewhere. in addition to masses of issues there are a number of usability tweaks. for instance, which you can sweep left or appropriate alongside the button bar when it be visible to decrease the display either to the left or appropriate to make one-exceeded use simpler, and similarly shift the keyboard left or right to support reach throughout it one-passed.

Huawei’s PrivateSpace may additionally additionally enchantment. here’s a separately passworded component to storage the place you can maintain ‘secret’ data in the back of a 2nd safety wall. ultimately, with a USB-C-to-HDMI adapter, which you could plug the Mate 10 professional into a video display and get a computing device-like event — either by means of additionally attaching a keyboard and mouse, or by using navigating the EMUI computer using the mobilephone’s screen as a touchpad. Samsung offers equivalent performance with its Galaxy S8, but requires you to buy the not obligatory DeX dock.

i discussed on the outset that there are three types of the Huawei Mate 10. This evaluation appears on the 6-inch Mate 10 pro, but there is additionally the 5.9-inch Mate 10 and a ‘luxurious’ Porsche Design model. listed here are some key facets of difference:

	Huawei Mate 10	Huawei Mate 10 seasoned	Porsche Design Huawei Mate 10
screen	5.9 inches, 16:9 factor ratio, 2,560 x 1,440 pixels, 499ppi	6.0 inches, 18:9 element ratio, 2,one hundred sixty x 1,080 pixels, 402ppi	6.0 inches, 18:9 aspect ratio, 2,160 x 1,080 pixels, 402ppi
RAM / internal storage	4GB / 64GB	6GB / 128GB	6GB / 256GB
MicroSD slot	sure	no	no
dirt/water resistance	no	IP67	IP67
Headset connector	yes	USB-C	USB-C
price	€699	€799	€1,395

Conclusions

Huawei’s flagship Mate 10 seasoned is bursting with points. a superb display, very decent battery life and common use of AI make it a pleasure to use, whereas IP67 insurance policy is welcome. or not it’s not devoid of drawbacks although. interior storage capacity of 128GB feels like lots, however i would nevertheless respect a MicroSD slot. The slippery glass backplate reduces self assurance in one-surpassed operation, and the inability of a dedicated headset jack will irritate some, notwithstanding Huawei provides a USB-C headset and an adapter.

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