Huawei has just unveiled the new dual-camera flagship smartphone – P10. It is a premium device that has a promising camera setup, great specifications and a lot more that is packed into the all-metal body. Learn more in the full review.
VIDEO REVIEW
UNBOXING
The Huawei P10 ships in quite a premium box. Inside of it, you can find some paperwork, a hard plastic case, a pair of earphones, USB c cable and lastly, the fast charger.
DESIGN and DISPLAY
Once you first take the P10 out of the box, you will notice how compact it is due to the 5.1” LCD 1080p display, which is sharp, bright and it has vivid colors.
Also, the display has the latest Gorilla Glass 5 for scratch resistance. Finally, the sunlight legibility may not be the best but it is pretty good.
I love how nicely the phone sits in the hand due to rounded edges on the back and all-aluminum housing that is smooth to the touch and it does not attract fingerprints or smudges like the glass-made phones.
The brand new home button has a built-in fingerprint sensor that is very fast, accurate and it unlocks the phone straight from the standby mode. The home key has a lot of other features but more on that later on.
When it comes to the camera, the Huawei upgraded its Leica-branded dual camera system by using the latest 20MP monochrome sensor, which is mainly used to capture sharper detail. Also, there is another 12MP shooter, which is essentially used to capture colors. The camera system has the OIS, dual tone dual LED flash and finally, the cameras use f/2.2 aperture Leica lens.
As far as selfie camera, Huawei also cooperated with Leica and as a result, we have an improved 8MP selfie shooter with a bright f/1.9 aperture lens. We also have a notification LED light on the top.
The sound quality via the headset jack is great. No distortions, rich and balanced sound and great volume output. Also, I love the sound quality of the loudspeaker. The sound is balanced, rich and the volume output is very good.
SPECIFICATIONS
The Huawei P10 got a little performance upgrade and it runs on the same processor as the Huawei Mate 9. The Kirin 960 chipset is a small upgrade over the Kirin 955 found in the Huawei P9.
As we expected, it only comes with one storage option and that is 64GB, at least you don’t need to think about different models and if you need extra storage, you can further expand it via the microSD card slot up to 256GB.
The Kirin 960 uses an octa-core CPU (2.36GHz) and is supported by 4GB of RAM. If you want even more power, you should check out the Huawei P10 Plus that has 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.
USER INTERFACE and PERFORMANCE
As most of the phones right now, it runs Android 7. But no stock Android, Huawei has included its Emotion UI 5.1 overlay on top of Android 7.
This disappoints a bit because some of the key Nougat features are missing like Google Assistant and Daydream compatibility, at least at the launch there is no sign when it will come to this phone but we may see it with the future software updates.
The software has improved a bit over the software on the P9. Also, there are some cool new features like themes of Emotion UI can now be tailored to the color of your phone. The P10 also comes with a new approach to navigating through the UI. The home button on the front is not only a fingerprint scanner, it’s also a multi-navigation button that allows you to access your multitasking menu if you swipe to the right, go back with one tap and go home by tapping and holding it.
It feels different than on P9 because the P9 had the fingerprint scanner on the back but it was quite easy to get used to using this feature. Huawei also included Quik Integration. This GoPro owned app allows you to pick photos and videos, and the app automatically edits them into a video. It’s a pretty cool feature, it works straight out of the gallery and it helps you make a social media-ready video from your latest events or parties.
The Huawei have also included predictive fingerprint tracking which will suggest the phone where your fingers will probably go next. That means if a lot of people exit an app after using it, the phone will predict that and it is able to make it work quicker. The overall user experience in the UI is good, the phone is fast, fluid and there are no hiccups.
The gaming performance is the same like on the Huawei Mate 9 and it also supports the new Vulkan API which renders game faster and with more details. All in all, games run fine and you can play the latest titles like World of Tanks with maximum graphic details. Also, the phone does not have any overheating issues.
CAMERA
The camera app has been improved and it comes with a lot of great features. As on previous Huawei phones, we have a monochrome mode, which takes pretty decent looking 20MP black and white pictures. There is also an HDR Mode, Light painting, Time-lapse mode, Slow-motion up to 120fps in 720p. There are some other modes for you to download.
IMAGE QUALITY
When it comes to the daylight image quality, the Leica-branded dual cameras can take some nice-looking photos with a good amount of detail, great dynamic range adjustment and very accurate color reproduction. In fact, some of the pictures we took are one of the best you can get on any phone.
The night image quality on the P10 is almost the same as on the Huawei Mate 9, I just noticed that some shots are a bit higher exposed on the Mate 9 or have a higher ISO. The noise looks a bit better on the P10 which could be due to a software improvement in noise reduction.
The 4k video quality looks pretty good. The footage looks pretty sharp but there could be more detail if we compare the quality of video to some of the top tier flagship devices. My biggest concern is, however, that the phone uses H.265 video format, which is not supported by Youtube, so you would need to convert the video first.
The selfies look great. There is lots of detail, the colours look nice and the pictures will definitely do the trick for social media needs. The selfie video looks pretty sharp and detailed too, definitely more than enough for video chats and other stuff.
Download full resolution camera samples
CONNECTIVITY
As far as connectivity, we didn’t have any issues at all. The signal reception and the call quality have been great, the Wifi speed and range are excellent and finally, the GPS is accurate whether you need to use it for driving or walking down the street.
BATTERY LIFE
The Huawei P10 has a 3200mAh battery that can be fully charged in about 1 h and 10 mins with the supplied fast charger.
I used the phone mostly for taking lots of pictures, checking social media, web browsing and I was able to get about 5 hours of screen-on time using a 50% brightness setting, which is a pretty good result.
CONCLUSIONS
After using the Huawei P10 since the official launch, I have to tell you that I like this phone for a lot of reasons but it doesn’t mean it is a perfect phone.
First of all, I love the design and build quality of the phone even though some may say that the looks were inspired by some other phones. Also, I love the form factor that allows me to manage the phone in one hand and scroll through the nice and sharp display.
Other things that we really love include a dual-camera setup that can take some of the best-in-class daylight images, excellent gaming and user interface performance and great battery life.
Since I always prefer stock Android, I’m not a huge fan of the cartoonish look of the Emotion UI but I appreciate all the extra features, especially the fingerprint reader gestures. Another shortcoming is that the phone uses H.265 video format, which is not supported by Youtube, so you would need to convert the video first.
All in all, the Huawei P10 is a very solid phone and it can be called a legit flagship despite a few shortcomings but given the suggested retail price of 649 EUR, this phone is really worth your attention and it is definitely one of the best for the price.
