Honor 10 Review | NDTV Gadgets360.com

Huawei's sub-brand Honor has not too long ago launched the Honor 10 in India. Synthetic intelligence is the hottest marketing buzzword right now, and Honor claims to have integrated AI options into nearly each facet of the Honor 10 - from clever scene detection and face recognition within the digital camera app, to consumer interface enhancements in its customized pores and skin, EMUI Eight.1.

With a glass and metallic physique, the newest model of Android out of the field, twin rear cameras, a 19:9 show, and a processor with devoted AI , the Honor 10 sounds extremely promising on paper. Priced at Rs. 32,999, this smartphone additionally barely undercuts the much-hyped OnePlus 6 (Review) by way of worth. Is the Honor 10 price shopping for? We discovered in our full evaluate.

 

Honor 10 design

The Honor 10 has a 2.5D curved glass again and a extremely polished metallic mid-frame for rigidity, making it bear some resemblance to the iPhone X (Review). The shiny glass again appears and feels premium however is slippery and will get smudged very simply. Regardless of having a glass again, there is no such thing as a wi-fi charging, which looks like a missed alternative.

The Honor 10 has minimal display screen borders and a powerful 86.2 % screen-to-body ratio. In consequence, it appears modern and is sort of compact and pocketable. Additionally it is simple to carry in a single hand due to the curved glass again, rounded corners, and curved edges.

The notch is quick changing into one of the polarising parts of smartphone design. The Honor 10 embraces this development head-on and has a notch on the high of the show. Fortunately, it is is sort of small and may be masked by way of an choice within the settings menu.

This smartphone is obtainable in two colors in India, Midnight Again, and Phantom Blue. The Blue variant appears fairly snazzy and has a glass again that displays mild once you flip it in your hand. This feature undoubtedly has loads of design aptitude, however we reviewed the black variant which appears rather more understated.

To be able to accommodate minimal display screen borders and edge-to-edge shows, most smartphone producers have needed to shift the fingerprint sensor to the again panel. The Honor 10's fingerprint sensor nonetheless continues to be under the display screen, however embedded into the glass panel itself. Honor has used Qualcomm's ultrasonic fingerprint know-how for biometric authentication. The sensor appears fairly futuristic however is tough to achieve with one hand, and can be sluggish and inaccurate. The setup course of additionally took far longer than we're used to.

The facility and quantity buttons are positioned on the proper of the machine and are a tad too small for our liking. The left edge is barren save for the SIM tray which has two Nano-SIM slots. The Honor 10 has a USB Kind-C port on the backside flanked by a three.5mm headphone jack and a speaker which is loud however distorts at full quantity.

Construct high quality is spectacular, and the telephone feels strong and able to taking a drop or two in its stride. We dropped the telephone a number of instances throughout our evaluate interval and other than just a few scratches right here and there, it was unscathed. At 7.7mm, the Honor 10 isn't the thinnest round, nevertheless it weighs an affordable 153g.

Honor 10 specs and show

The Honor 10 is powered by Huawei's personal HiSilicon Kirin 970 processor, which has been utilized in a number of premium fashions within the latest previous, such because the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, Huawei P20 Pro (Review), and Honor View 10 (Review). The Kirin 970 has a devoted subsystem, dubbed the Neural Processing Unit, to deal with synthetic intelligence computations. This guarantees higher privateness and efficiency as AI computations can occur on the telephone itself and information does not should be uploaded to the cloud.

The Honor 10 has 6GB of RAM, a non-removable three,400mAh battery, and 128GB of storage which can't be expanded. Connectivity choices embrace Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth four.2, GPS, GLONASS, NFC, 4G VoLTE, a USB Kind-C port (USB 2.zero velocity), and a three.5mm headphone jack. The smartphone additionally has a digital compass, ambient mild sensor, gravity sensor, gyroscope, and Corridor sensor. It helps twin SIMs however solely separately can run at 4G velocity - the opposite is restricted to 3G.

The Honor 10 encompasses a 5.84-inch full-HD+ IPS LCD with a side ratio of 19:9 and a pixel density of 432ppi. You may select between FHD+ and HD+ within the settings menu with the intention to save battery life, or set it to auto and let the telephone resolve for itself.

As with most Honor smartphones of late, the show is vivid, vivid and punchy, and has glorious viewing angles. It's a bit too reflective although, which makes outside legibility a little bit of an issue. A Quad-HD show would have rounded off the package deal properly, however the decrease decision cannot actually be discerned in day-to-day use.

In our expertise, most first-party functions ran effective on the smartphone's show, with the realm across the notch getting used to show the time, battery degree, sign energy, and different standing icons. The 19:9 facet ratio lends itself effectively to gaming and multimedia consumption.

Honor 10 efficiency, software program, and battery life

Efficiency was stellar - the telephone dealt with the whole lot we threw at it with ease, be it heavy video games comparable to Asphalt Eight, primary day-to-day duties, or intensive workloads. Calls have been clear and crisp, and 4G reception was strong, even in areas identified to have sketchy connectivity. On a detrimental observe, the smartphone obtained highly regarded, to the purpose of it changing into uncomfortable to carry, when pushed.

Benchmark scores have been spectacular, placing the Kirin 970 in the identical league as final yr's Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, however behind the newest technology of processors. The telephone achieved 204,439 factors in AnTuTu, 23fps in GFX Bench Automotive Chase, 38fps in GFX Bench Manhattan three.1, and 1,894 and 6,678 respectively in Geekbench's single- and multi-core assessments.

The Honor 10 runs Honor's EMUI Eight.1 pores and skin atop Android 8.1 Oreo. EMUI has matured loads in the previous few years and is now a slick and feature-laden software program package deal. Huawei claims that EMUI Eight.1 makes use of machine studying to intelligently analyse consumer behaviour and allocate sources accordingly, Whereas just a few weeks of use isn't sufficient to totally take a look at this, EMUI did run easily throughout our evaluate interval - animations have been snappy and navigating all through the interface was a frustration-free affair.

What compromises the expertise considerably is the quantity of bloatware. The telephone comes with 5 sport demos from Gameloft and a bunch of third-party apps together with UC Browser, TrueCaller and Quik preinstalled. Fortunately, most of those may be uninstalled. Moreover, just a few areas of the interface such because the Settings app and the fast settings panel nonetheless look cluttered and want simplification.

EMUI has a large number of nifty options comparable to as a one-handed mode, knuckle gestures, an clever messages app that filters out spam, and the flexibility to robotically swap between Wi-Fi and cell information relying on which connection is stronger.

The Honor 10 additionally helps face recognition, utilizing the 24-megapixel entrance digital camera, and this works fairly effectively when there's sufficient mild. In unfavourable situations, the telephone will increase the display screen brightness in order to light up your face earlier than making an attempt to scan it, and this helps to a level.

We have been barely dissatisfied with the Honor 10's battery life. The smartphone managed to final simply 9 hours and 18 minutes in our HD video loop battery take a look at. When it comes to real-world efficiency, we discovered ourselves reaching for the charger by round 10-11pm every day, which is lower than what we have seen on many smartphones not too long ago. Our utilization included WhatsApp and Twitter, taking part in video games comparable to Asphalt Eight and Subway Surfers, navigating round city utilizing GPS, and taking just a few footage.

Whereas the included charger has the phrases 'fast cost' emblazoned on it, it takes greater than two hours to cost the Honor 10 totally. In our expertise, a 50 % cost took round 55 minutes.

Honor 10 cameras

On the again, the Honor 10 encompasses a dual-camera module comprised of a 16-megapixel RGB digital camera with an aperture of f/1.Eight, alongside a 24-megapixel monochrome sensor. On the entrance, the Honor 10 has a 24-megapixel snapper with 1.Eight-micron pixels. The digital camera app affords a 3D Portrait lighting mode just like the one discovered on the iPhone X.

The Honor 10 can recognise the item or scene being shot and optimise picture settings accordingly. For the time being, the smartphone can detect 22 various kinds of objects and over 500 kinds of scenes. Because of the Neural Processing Unit, the Honor 10 is wise sufficient to robotically choose related digital camera settings relying on the scenario. Level it at an individual, for example, and the smartphone switches to portrait mode.

 

Huawei's digital camera app is simple to make use of and has a completely featured Professional mode, which lets you alter the shutter velocity, ISO, publicity, aperture, and white steadiness.

We have been impressed with the general digital camera efficiency of the Honor 10, however the AI enhancements are a little bit of a blended bag. Whereas the clever scene detection did assist in sure cases comparable to taking footage of vegetation and animals, most images shot with AI mode turned on have been overexposed and had oversaturated colors. Fortunately, there's a toggle to show the AI enhancements off, and after doing this, our images improved. The rear digital camera has good dynamic vary and pictures shot in beneficial mild are crisp and detailed. With the AI mode switched off, the color accuracy can be spot-on.

Whereas the Huawei P20 Professional's glorious Night time Mode has not made its option to the Honor 10, the monochrome+RGB digital camera mixture helps seize loads of element in low mild. In consequence, photos shot in low mild have a great quantity of element. The telephone does over-sharpen photos at instances, resulting in a watercolour-like impact.

All images taken with AI disabled. Faucet to see full-sized Honor 10 Lite digital camera samples.

 

Each the rear and entrance cameras are able to capturing bokeh pictures. The resultant photos are above common with good edge detection. For blurring the background in bokeh selfies, the digital camera app makes use of software program algorithms. AR stickers are applied fairly effectively and can be utilized with each the entrance and the rear cameras.

The 24-megapixel selfie shooter captures a great quantity of element in well-lit conditions. Noise creeps in in low mild, however the degree of element is passable. The 3D Portrait lighting mode is an efficient option to impress pals, however this characteristic wants loads of work in the mean time. The resultant pictures are flashy, however edge detection is poor.

Video recording maxes out at 1080p for the entrance digital camera, whereas the rear module is able to 4K video recording. The dearth of optical picture stabilisation is sadly obvious when capturing movies, however the degree of element and color accuracy are spectacular. 4K movies have a 10-minute time restrict, and even digital stabilisation isn't obtainable at this decision.

Honor 10 in pictures

Verdict
The Honor 10 is undoubtedly probably the most succesful smartphone that Huawei's sub-brand Honor has ever launched in India. It has a modern and compact design, a vivid and punchy show, and heaps of energy on board. Whereas the AI enhancements are gimmicky, the digital camera is superb and able to taking nice images.

The under-the-glass fingerprint sensor, which could at first come throughout as futuristic, is a ache to make use of. Battery life can be disappointing, and the telephone tends to overheat fairly a bit when pushed. Nevertheless, regardless of these points, it's exhausting to disregard the worth for cash that the Honor 10 affords. At Rs. 32,999, the smartphone presents itself as a strong however much less highly effective different to the pricier OnePlus 6.