Huawei now is now a very well-known brand in smartphone industry, especially after the huge success of its Honor series. They are known for their innovation and build quality. Huawei is now up again with two new smartphones in the Mate series, which are now re-establishing their Flagship lineup. Let’s get to know these devices in detail, but before that, let’s take a quick look at their specs.
Huawei Mate 10 Specifications:
- Android 8.0 Oreo with EMUI 8.0
- Hybird Dual SIM Support
- Fingerprint sensor, Infrared sensor
- Splash resistant (IP53)
- 5.9 inch (2K) Quad HD RGBW 2.5D curved glass display, 1500:1 Contrast ratio, 96% NTSC Color Gamut
- 2560 x 1440 pixels resolution
- Octa-Core Huawei Kirin 970 (4 x 2.4 GHz A73+ 4 x 1.8 GHz A53) 10nm processor + i7 co-processor with Mali-G72 MP12 GPU, NPU
- 4GB of RAM
- 64GB internal storage memory, Expandable up to 256GB using microSD card
- 20 Megapixel (Monochrome) + 12 Megapixel (RGB) Dual rear cameras with Leica Summilux-H lenses, f/1.6 aperture, dual-tone LED flash, PDAF, CAF, Laser AF and OIS
- Ultra HD 4K video recording
- 8 Megapixel front-facing camera with f/2.0 aperture
- 4G VoLTE, WiFi 802.11ac (2.4GHz/5GHz), Bluetooth 4.2 LE, GPS, NFC and USB Type-C
- 4000mAh battery with fast charging support
Huawei Mate 10 Pro Specifications:
- Android 8.0 Oreo with EMUI 8.0
- Hybird Dual SIM support
- Fingerprint sensor, Infrared sensor
- Water-resistant (IP67)
- 6 inch (2K) Full HD+ 18:9 FullView display, 70000:1 (Typical) Contrast ratio, 112% NTSC Color Gamut
- 2160 x 1080 pixels resolution
- Octa-Core Huawei Kirin 970 (4 x 2.4 GHz A73+ 4 x 1.8 GHz A53) 10nm processor + i7 co-processor with Mali-G72 MP12 GPU, NPU
- 6GB of RAM with 128GB internal storage memory, 4GB RAM with 64GB internal storage, Expandable up to 256GB using microSD card
- 20 Megapixel (Monochrome) + 12 Megapixel (RGB) Dual rear cameras with Leica Summilux-H lenses, f/1.6 aperture, dual-tone LED flash, PDAF, CAF, Laser AF and OIS
- Ultra HD 4K video recording
- 8 Megapixel front-facing camera with f/2.0 aperture
- 4G VoLTE, WiFi 802.11ac (2.4GHz/5GHz), Bluetooth 4.2 LE, GPS, NFC and USB Type-C
- 4000mAh battery with fast charging support
With the Mate 10 Huawei has gone a bit different from last year’s. The phone is covered in shiny Gorilla Glass, with the slight curvature at the back the way it reflects light really catches the eye. The currently available color, Mocha brown looks stunning though it seems more bronze-ish than brown. A nice touch is the dark color band highlighting the phone’s Leica dual cameras. The front of the phone sports razor-thin bezels and the aluminum frame on the sides is pretty easy to hang onto.
There’s a 64GB internal storage and its expandable on the Mate10 but not on the Mate 10 Pro. Also unlike the 10 pro the fingerprint reader is mounted on the front of the phone. It’s incredibly fast and responsive, you can use it for navigation too. Tap to go back, long press to go home and swipe for the app switcher. You can always enable the on-screen navigation keys too or even use the floating navigation dock. Another difference from the PRO version is that here we have a 3.5mm audio jack which is pretty welcome. Unfortunately the Mate 10 isn’t waterproof just splash resistant, even though the 10 PRO is ip67 rated.
At the bottom there’s USB type-C port and on the Mate 10 we have stereo speakers. With the main loudspeaker at the bottom and the air piece serving as the second speaker, they’re not really well balanced but overall music sounds fine. And there’s and IR blaster included which can be used to control some appliances around the house.
The Mate 10 has a 5.9 inches IPS LCD screen with conventional 16:9 aspect ratio and a qHD resolution which is higher than Mate 9. It may not be an OLED like the PRO version but it’s a pixel dense screen and black level are very deep for an LCD which super bright up to 670 nits with the optional vivid mode which helps in the sun light. The Mate 10 is running on the Huawei’s latest chipset, the octa-core Kerin 970 and 4GB of RAM. This process is fabulous in power efficiency.
In benchmark it performs really great, and tout to be in the list of most powerful phones. But it tends to get really hot while doing some heavy graphics still for opening and closing apps and browsing the Mate 10 is smooth, quick and responsive. The Kirin 970 is the first smartphone chipset with a dedicated chip for machine learning and neural processing. It will make predictions and adjustments based on things as encountered before in its life.
The Mate 10 come out-of-the-box with the newest Android 8 Oreo and Huawei’s EMUI 8. There’s no app drawer by default but you can opt for one in the settings. There are lot of wallpapers, icon packs and animations to choose from the theme store. One cool feature is that you can hook-up the Mate 10 and Mate 10 PRO to a monitor and use it like a desktop PC all you need is a dongle that converts USB type-C to HDMI, no need to buy expensive dock for the phone, you can use the phone as a touchpad or connect a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. The downside is you can’t charge your phone while you are connected.
The 4000mAH battery pack is excellent on the Mate 10 which can run for approximately for 87 hours or good for up to 2 days of use on a single charge. Charging is fast too with the bundled charger, which take your phone’s battery from 0 to 58% in 30 minutes without getting your phone hot either, but no wireless charging.
Coming to the camera department, the Mate 10 has new dual set up. One 12-mp color sensor and one 20-mp monochrome. The camera sensors and focusing tech are the same as the last year, but now we have better f/1.6 aperture and there are new image processing algorithms. Color photos take information from both the color and monochrome sensor, images come out sharp with detail and accurate colors. The wide dynamic range is on par with and better than last year’s Mate 9. Thanks to the wider aperture and new image processing, low light photos come out a lot better they are sharper and have less noise.
Thanks to the dual camera you have the capability for two times lossless hybrid zoom and the two lenses can work together to create a blurry background in portrait mode. The front facing camera is 8-mp and shots come out fine though they are brighter than expected. It even has its own portrait mode which is actually OK. Video recording is fine, there is no black and white just like last year’s. 4K video has OIS only and comes out with decent quality but not much impressive. 1080p videos has AIS and OIS too at 30fps with good audio quality
So, how that sounds too you all readers. The machine learning is cool but not mind blowing, until we get app support. But in any case the Huawei Mate 10 is an excellent smartphone dismissing the water resistance and an AMOLED, but still brings you the beautiful build, great battery life and a standout LCD screen. Let us know your user experience if get your hands on one of these handset.
