Honor 10 is the flagship of 2018 from the Chinese manufacturer. Though there’s no denying its relationship with the Huawei P20 in terms of specs sheet. But Honor is trying to differentiate itself from the parent company by using novel, unusual color and glass color options. Honor 10 is equipped with Kirin 970 and 4 GB RAM. Internal memory can be either 64 or 128 GB. Unfortunately, the manufacturer has removed the option to expand the memory out of its smartphone. Dual cameras have been improved and powered by AI and NPU algorithms. In this Honor 10 review let us find out if this mid-range flagship is really worth buying!
Contents
Design of Honor 10
Compared to its predecessor, the Honor 10 is slightly larger in size. The first impression to mention about the design is the color of the back of the device. The back of the device has the ability to change color depending on the viewing angle. When tilting the device at a diagonal angle, from the blue tone, Honor 10 will turn to a pretty eye-catching and unique purple, this effect is called the aurora effect. According to the manufacturer, to create this effect, the back glass of the device is coated with 15 layers of colors that contrast with the outside light. For the first time ever, a smartphone in this line has the camera bump raised by 1 mm on the back. Furthermore, the glass back is less rounded than in the case of Honor 9.
On the front, the Honor 10 has a quite compact design with an overflow screen, with more rabbit ears according to the trend that is very popular today. The bottom bezel is still quite thick and is placed with a fingerprint sensor instead of the usual “honor” words.
Finishing and machinability are at a good level. Solid metal frame, delicate machining, smooth, no details to cause hand-shake. However, because the back is rounded, the part adjacent to the frame is somewhat inconsistent, the gap can fit the polymer bill. The phone doesn’t warp or make a noise when I try to twist it. The LCD screen can only see waves when pressed very hard. The card slot can accommodate two Nano-SIM cards and is made of aluminum, but the machine does not have a microSD card. The machine does not have dust or water protection certification. The glass material on the back and the smooth border make the device quite slippery, and perhaps that’s why Honor has included a transparent back cover to help hold the device more firmly and confidently.
Software of Honor 10
The Honor 10 runs pre-loaded with EMUI 8.1 on Android 8.1 Oreo.
In addition to the Google apps, other apps and games were pre-installed, including Instagram and Facebook. If you don’t need these apps, you can uninstall or deactivate them. There’s also the Honor app that simply links to the manufacturer’s website.
Camera
Rear camera
The dual camera on the back offers one color sensor and one monochrome sensor, with resolutions of 24 and 16 MP, respectively. Both have f / 1.8 aperture. It doesn’t have optical stabilization, but it should have electronic stabilization. However, up until now, I couldn’t find this anywhere in the camera settings. Honor equips artificial intelligence (AI) on its dual camera system with the ability to automatically recognize scenes and subjects in the image and optimize the parameters, helping to improve image quality depending on the settings. Subjects and shooting conditions vary. Experience shows that the quality of photos with AI has more vibrant colors and contrast than conventional photos. While this is not activated automatically, it will drastically improve the photos and can also be removed later.
The image quality is sharp and lots of details are captured very well and convincingly. Photo taken during the day can only tell the difference from expensive competitors at maximum magnification. While the Honor 10 still produces good images in low light or takes pictures against back light, in these cases, you can clearly see the difference from top models like the Galaxy S9 +. or Huawei P20 Pro.
Its Digital Zoom allows you to shoot at 2x magnification with virtually no rupture.
Front camera
With a 24 MP sensor, the front camera of Honor 10 has a very high resolution, still integrates AI and has 10 different beauty modes. In addition to the beauty mode, there are also portrait lighting modes like the iPhone X or P20 Pro. This allows you to customize a wide variety of light shades, and the point of light can change after shooting. The selfies are pretty good in daylight, the quality drops significantly in darker environments but remains acceptable. Furthermore, the screen can be used as an illuminator if it’s too dark.
Performance
Honnor 10 owns HiSilicon Kirin chip similar to Huawei like Mate 10 Pro and P20. The chip is manufactured using the 10nm process and uses the big.LITTLE architecture with 2 clusters, each with 4 cores. The high-performance cluster runs with the Cortex-A73 core with clock speeds up to 2.4GHz. The A53 cores save energy and reach up to 1.8 GHz. The ARM Mali-G72 MP12 handles the graphics processing function and has 4GB of RAM.
