Huawei has just unveiled the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro in Munich, Germany and I’ve been using those phones ever since. These are one of the best-looking phones on the market and they offer bleeding edge specs and much more. Learn more in our Huawei Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro early review.
VIDEO REVIEW
DESIGN
Both Mates look just gorgeous as they use a quality metal frame and glass on the front and rear. The phones look really nice in the hand despite their huge footprint.
They Mate 10 has a smaller 5.9” 2k resolution LCD display that has a traditional 16:9 aspect ratio, meaning that it is wider but it is a bit shorter than the Mate 10 Pro.
The latter phone has a larger 6” AMOLED display with 18:9 aspect ratio but it has only 1080p resolution. In practice, I found both displays to be plenty sharp for everyday use but I prefer the AMOLED panel on the Mate 10 Pro.
I found both fingerprint scanners to be very fast and accurate. The Mate 10 has one on the front while the Mate 10 Pro has it on the back.
Both phones have 4000mAh batteries that so far have been performing well.
The Mate 10 has a microSD card slot whereas the Mate 10 Pro lacks this feature. Also, it does not have the headset jack like a regular Mate 10 but it has more storage and RAM memory (6GB/ 128GB vs 4GB/64GB). Both phones have the same powerful Kirin 970 chipset.
Another area where the Mate 10 Pro excels over the Mate 10 is the IP67 certification for water and dust resistance.
CAMERAS
The new accent stripe looks really nice in practice. There is an upgraded camera setup too. Both phones have identical cameras. A 12-megapixel RGB camera is paired with a 20-megapixel monochrome sensor here, and both lenses feature apertures of up to f/1.6.
That camera takes really good pictures in daylight but keep in mind that the device runs on the pre-release software. In fact, I have an advanced release review unit meaning that both the device and software may differ when it is made available to consumers.
There are manual, 2x optical zoom and portrait modes that take pretty good pictures but more on the image quality in the full review.
PERFORMANCE
The phone is really fast and responsive but obviously, I haven’t installed many apps like I always do and I have to spend a little more time with the device.
The Mate 10 and the 10 Pro ship with Android 8 out of the box but it has the EMUI skin built on top of it. As usual to Huawei phones, there are plenty of features and customization options to make the phone look your own.
FEATURES
The new Mate 10 phones sport the first Huawei chipset with a neural processing unit or AI component of the processor, which learns how you use the phone and helps the DEVICE adapt to assure the best user experie3nce. For example, the AI chip detects what kind of picture you take to apply the best image settings. Also, it helps apply the right amount of blurring effect in the portrait mode.
Obviously, the AI component does a lot more than helping you take better pictures. For example, it learns how you use the phone to make it faster by allocating the resources to the specific task. So far, Microsoft has updated its Translator app to make use of the AI chipset to speed up the translation process. I will cover the AI capabilities of this phone in detail in my full review.
EARLY VERDICT
The Mate 10 will cost €699 and the Mate 10 Pro will cost €799, which puts the phones in the flagship price category. The Pro model will be released in Europe, the US, and some other markets while the regular Mate 10 will be released in other regions.
Both Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro are very solid phones. They pack great hardware including a dedicated AI chip, a compelling dual-camera setup and much more that we will cover in detail in the full review.
