Huawei Mate 10 Pro Review

Huawei is an interesting company - yet to fully crack the Western market, it is still the world's third-largest smartphone manufacturer. The Mate 10 Pro is Huawei's flagship smartphone, and at £699 its rivals include the likes of the Pixel 2 XL, the Galaxy S8 and the LG V30. Boasting integrated AI, a dual-camera setup designed in partnership with Leica, and an impressive 6-inch AMOLED display, can the Mate 10 Pro do enough to warrant your attention? There's no doubt that the high-end mobile sector is fiercely competitive. It is this market that Huawei is targeting with its Mate 10 Pro, however, so we will have to see what the phone can bring to the table. It does boast plenty of good features, but as we know a good spec on paper is one thing, and a good phone in practice is something entirely different. Specification Dimensions: 154.2 x 74.5 x 7.9 mm Weight: 178 grams Operating system: Android version Oreo 8.0 Battery Charging type: USB-Type C Battery size: 4000 mAh Connectivity: NFC, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, 3G Other connectivity: A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS Camera: dual f/1.6 cameras Processor: Hisilicon Kirin 970, octa-core, Cortex-A53 RAM: 6 GB Display: 6 inches 1080 x 2160 pixels, AMOLED Design Note: if the above gallery is not displaying properly, please disable AdBlock as it is known to interfere with our display code. Getting right to it, the Mate 10 Pro is undoubtedly a beautifully designed smartphone. It's slim bezels are immediately apparent, with just a small forehead and chin visible. For a phone with a 6-inch display, too, it is actually 4.2mm shorter than the iPhone 8 Plus - and that phone only has a 5.5-inch display. Full dimensions of the Mate 10 Pro are as follows: 154.2 x 74.5 x 7.9 mm. Aside from the impressive screen-to-body ratio, the Mate 10 Pro is also very well constructed. It's front and back are made from Corning Gorilla Glass, while the glossy frame of the phone is made of aluminium. Some people don't like glass-backed phones as they can crack and are often fingerprint magnets, which is fair enough. However, I think the Mate 10 Pro looks excellent, and Gorilla Glass is actually more scratch-resistant than aluminium, so that is in its favour. In terms of ports and connectivity, the USB-C port is situated on the bottom edge of the phone, next to the downward-firing speaker. Sadly there is no headphone jack on the Mate 10 Pro. A power button and volume rocker are placed on the right-hand edge of the phone, while the SIM-tray is positioned on the left-hand side. The Mate 10 Pro supports dual nano-SIMs, but there is no microSD slot to expand the storage past the internal 128GB of space. Lastly, the phone's forehead is home to the 8MP front-facing camera as well as the secondary speaker unit. Turning to the back of the phone, we find a fingerprint scanner positioned directly below the dual-camera setup. These cameras have been developed in partnership with Leica, so our expectations are certainly high. Each lens sports a f/1.6 aperture, though the primary camera is a colour 12MP sensor and the secondary camera is a monochrome 20MP sensor. But more on that later. Display The Mate 10 Pro's 6-inch display has several interesting aspects to it. Starting with resolution, Huawei opted for the 18:9 aspect ratio which is the new standard for modern smartphones. Because of that, the resolution has been dubbed 'Full HD +', meaning 2160x1080. This may not be as sharp as other phones with 1440p screens, but at 402 PPI I think it is plenty sharp enough. The lower resolution - relatively speaking - could also help with battery life, but we'll come to that later in the review. Most importantly, the Mate 10 Pro's screen uses an AMOLED panel and that gives it plenty of advantages over more traditional LCD displays. For one, it has a lovely contrast ratio, with some really deep and inky blacks which make watching videos a breathtaking experience. Colours are also very punchy and look really good, while there are again implications for battery life. The only slight downside that I've noticed so far is a small amount of colour shift as you tilt the screen - it is only minor, but it is noticeable especially when viewing apps with white backgrounds. Elsewhere, the display has an excellent range of brightness which has been lovely to use. Not only does the screen get more than bright enough to use outside, it also gets very dim which makes using your phone at night easier on the eyes. Lastly, Huawei provides a tool in the phone's software settings to adjust colour balance to your liking. Out of the box, I found the display to be slightly warm, but thanks to the provided colour wheel it is an easy fix. On the whole, it is a really lovely AMOLED panel. Performance Powering the Mate 10 Pro is the Kirin 970 chip - an octa-core processor, it is comprised of 4x2.4 GHz Cortex-A73 cores & 4x1.8 GHz Cortex-A53 cores. Alongside this is 6GB of RAM. As our synthetic benchmarks confirm, performance of the Kirin 970 is very, very good. Day-to-day I've had no issues with it at all - apps open very quickly and everything feels smooth and responsive. I also have to give a special mention to the fingerprint scanner which has to be the fastest I've ever used. Interestingly, Huawei reckons there should be no performance drop-off from the day you buy the phone until at least 18 months later due to the integrated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) which automatically keeps everything in tip-top condition. We obviously can't test that yet, but perhaps it is something to revisit at the end of 2019... However, what we can say in regards to the Mate 10 Pro's AI is that it is a bit underwhelming. It's been marketed as quite a big feature of the phone, but day-to-day I can't say I noticed much going on behind the scenes. The Kirin 970 chip supposedly understands how you use your phone and optimises performance as a result, but there was no point in time where I stopped and thought: 'ah, that was the AI doing something for me.' The area I actually noticed the AI most was when taking photos (more on that on the next page), but for now I think there needs to be a bit more clarity about what the AI is actually doing, as based on my time with the Mate 10 Pro, the answer seems to be 'not a lot.' Software In terms of software, the Mate 10 Pro is running Android Oreo 8.0, with Huawei's EMUI 8.0 skin on top. To get right to it, I find the software to be frustrating and intuitive in equal measure. The frustration starts, really, with the EMUI launcher. By default, there is no app drawer - something done seemingly in homage to iOS. On its own, that would be OK, but what is frustrating is that to actually enable the app drawer you have to go into the system settings and the option is listed under the display settings which I find a bit odd. It's just much more complicated than it needs to be. Other annoyances include an Android System notification whenever an app is running in the background. Fair enough, that's handy to know. However, when you're actively using something like Spotify to stream music, having this notification - which cannot be removed - gets really annoying and it takes up room on your notification panel too. One more thing I want to point out is the drop-down quick settings. I just don't know why Huawei has designed it to use blue icons on a black background, especially since the icons look quite 'old-school.' The whole panel looks very dated and could do with a face lift to bring it into 2018. However, there are a few hidden gems within EMUI which help make using the Mate 10 Pro a real pleasure. My favourite of these is the ability to hide the home buttons completely - enabling this setting adds an extra downward arrow to your home button panel, and pressing it hides the panel until you swipe up from the very bottom of the screen. It sounds simple, but it gives users that extra bit of screen real estate which makes the display look extra large. It is also very pleasing when reading text-based apps, like the news, as whatever you are reading will take up the entire screen instead of just 90% of it. There are also plenty of detailed battery settings, too, which give you estimates of how long your phone battery will last based on your current usage. We will touch on battery life on the next page, but the ability to change the screen's resolution, as well as enable power saving and ultra power saving modes is great to have. All-in-all, the software is likely to prove divisive. It keeps the core Android experience that we like, but adds in a few annoyances here and there, though there are a few nice touches as well. I can't help but think a more stock Android experience would help the phone - certainly in terms of visuals and the UI at least. In any case, I was still able to do everything I would normally do on my smartphone with EMUI 8.0, so it is certainly not terrible, but I do think it be a bit more refined. Camera At last - we get to the camera. Here, Huawei partnered with Leica to create something special: a dual-camera setup that is a bit different. Instead of one zoom lens and one wide-angle lens - the setup we find on most modern smartphones - Huawei opted for a 12MP primary camera that shoots in colour and supports OIS, along with a 20MP monochrome camera that only shoots in black-and-white. Both lenses offer a wide f/1.6 aperture, too. Interestingly, users can still shoot in colour at 20MP, as the cameras intelligently 'combine' the RGB elements from the 12MP sensor with the monochrome's 20MP sensor to output a final image in colour. In a sense, the camera takes a monochrome shot at 20MP and 'colours it in' using data from the 12MP RGB sensor. It's very clever if you ask me. Note: if the above gallery is not displaying properly, please disable AdBlock as it is known to interfere with our display code. In any case, if we completely disregard the technology behind the camera system, it is still very impressive as image quality is simply fantastic. Shots at both 12MP and 20MP are packed with detail, colours are vibrant and general exposures are accurate. The wide f/1.6 aperture lenses also ensure that low-light performance is similarly good, with little lost detail and minimal noise. On-top of the excellent auto mode photos, there is a very capable 'pro' mode which gives you control over shutter speed (for up to 30 second exposures) ISO, exposure value, auto-focus mode and white balance. It is great if you want to create a very deliberate shot or effect, but I mostly stuck with auto mode and that gave excellent results as you can see above. The monochrome sensor is also quite breathtaking. I'm not usually one to shoot in black-and-white (or convert a colour photo to B&W) but the monochrome camera is capable of taking some very detailed, and also very atmospheric and moody shots that just look brilliant. I wouldn't use it all the time, but the contrast levels are really lovely and it completely outstrips taking a colour photo and converting it to black-and-white. Other things to mention include the beautiful 'wide aperture' and portrait modes. These allow you to get that 'bokeh' which everyone loves, and it does it really well too - the blur is quite soft and not over-done but I think it looks really good (see the above shots of fruit and eggs). Given the artificial bokeh is software-based, too, you can even change the point of focus and adjust the amount of bokeh after the shot has been taken. Lastly, it is worth mentioning how the AI helps when taking photos. Essentially, the phone can recognise 13 different environments or subjects (depending on what you're photographing) and lets you know its detected them with a small icon in the corner of the screen. For instance, if you hold the camera over a flower, a flower icon pops up. The AI then automatically adjusts exposure and saturation (among other parameters) for that environment or subject. It's a simple way to get better photos without really doing anything differently. All-in-all, I really rate the Mate 10 Pro's dual-camera setup. Image quality - even when using auto mode - is fantastic and for a £699 phone, I find the photos really hard to fault. If I had to nit-pick, I'd say that images taken in bright environments can be slightly over-saturated, but that is a quick fix using the built-in image editor. It's a really excellent camera setup, with plenty of features, but most of all, it just delivers high-quality photos. Battery Carrying on from the excellent cameras, immediately I can say that the phone's battery life is class-leading. Huawei has equipped the Mate 10 Pro with a huge 4000 mAH battery, and given the slightly lesser 2160x1080 screen resolution, coupled with the increased efficiency of AMOLED panels, it really lasts. Speaking anecdotally, after a normal day of use - which includes regular emailing, WhatsApping and checking various social media accounts - I would be getting into bed at 10-11pm and more often than not I'd still have over 50% battery remaining. In fact, on multiple occasions I simply didn't bother charging the phone overnight and got a full two days use from a single charge. Of course, heavier users than myself may not get the full two days, but I would be absolutely amazed if a single person could drain this battery in one day. Even if you find yourself in a spot of bother with the battery running low, the Mate 10 Pro supports Huawei's Super Charge technology, where a 30-minute charge yields 58% battery capacity, which is another great feature to have. We tested it and it works as they say too, so its not just marketing nonsense.With Huawei yet to really crack the Western market, I think the Mate 10 Pro is a fabulous device that can really get the company into the mainstream. For starters, it is very well designed with a lovely glass back and aluminium frame. The curved edges also make the phone lovely to hold, and the Gorilla Glass should resist scratches, too. The 6-inch 18:9 AMOLED display is a real joy to use as well, with really punchy colours and an incredible contrast ratio. There is a very small amount of colour shift when moving the phone at different angles, but it is a very minor point. Elsewhere, the phone is very fast thanks to the Kirin 970 processor, while 6GB of RAM gives you a very large buffer for keeping apps open and switching between open apps quickly. I'm yet to be fully convinced by the integrated NPU, though, so we will have to wait and see where Huawei takes that element of the phone. The dual-camera setup is another winner for Huawei - created in partnership with Leica, both cameras can take simply breathtaking photos with a variety of modes and features baked-in. Factor in the class-leading battery life and the Mate 10 Pro looks to be simply flawless. It's not quite perfect, though, as the software is the only slight let-down - there are just a few annoying features which can cause a bit of frustration, like the phone telling you apps are running in the background when you're actively using them. There are some intuitive aspects to the software, though, so it is not all bad - I would just like to see a slightly more 'stock' experience with the next phone. That being said, for £699 here in the UK, the Huawei Mate 10 Pro gives you a heck of a lot of phone for the money. It has all the main areas - display, design, battery, camera - absolutely nailed, and it is only the slightly frustrating software that stops us giving this phone a full 10/10. Even with the software quirks, this is still a phenomenal phone and one we can recommend wholeheartedly. Samsung, LG and Apple better watch out - Huawei has truly announced itself with the Mate 10 Pro. Having had a look online, while MSRP is £699, Carphone Warehouse currently has the Mate 10 Pro for £529 SIM-free over HERE. At this price, all flaws are forgiven - it is a simply incredible deal. We've been told this pricing is only valid for two weeks, though, so if you don't want to miss out on this deal, best to act fast. Pros Lovely design. Fantastic display. Excellent camera setup created in partnership with Leica. Very fast. Class-leading battery life. Fingerprint reader is very quick. Cons Software has some quirks. AI is easy to miss. KitGuru says: Even at its £699 MSRP, the Mate 10 Pro offers really good value as it excels across multiple areas. At its current price of £529 from Carphone Warehouse, this is only amplified - I've never seen such a proficient flagship offer such value as well. Huawei is onto a real winner.

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Huawei Mate 10 Pro Review

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