Huawei Mate 10 & Mate 10 Pro Review

The huawei mate ten series is all about

promises, the promise of AI in your

smartphone the promise of a rising star

in the industry and the promise of a

better long-term future for your device.

Well huawei's hot on the heels of

Samsung for many years now, slowly

increasing its global market and its

Western mind share in fact it's not

a small thing to say that while way  Samsung is now the premier

innovator in the smartphone space and

the huawei mate ten series a very

promising example of where Huawei is

headed .While Huwaei is essentially

marketing these phones around four main

selling points, the display, the camera,

battery, and AI base performance the

display is the first point of difference

between the two phones both comprised

metal frame sandwiched between sheets of

Gorilla Glass with Huawei's new

signature stripe highlighting the dual

flash engineered cameras there are

differneces from wild ways typical metal

phones but they fall in line with the

current 2017 flagship. trend will be it

without the addition of wireless

charging on the upside you now have a

place to store your fingerprint

collection.The mate zone pro is the more

expensive version with an eighteen to

nine aspect ratio OLED display and up to

six gig of ram in 128 gig of storage the

mate 10 sticks with an IPS LCD at 16 to

9 resolution with 4 gig of ram and 64

gig of storage.While the mate ten's dual

SIM slot can be used for microSD

expansion the pro version only supports

dual SIM both models have HDR 10

displays and while there's still not too

much mobile HDR content around right now

there will be over the lifetime of these

phones .Both panels hit 713 it's in

brightness but the  10 pros OLED

panel producers punchy of colors and

white of whites for some reason why we

chose to put a full HD plus resolution

panel on the pro version while the

regular mate 10 gets a quad HD panel

meaning the regular Mate 10 has higher

pixel density .But unless quad HD is

really important to you you won't be

disappointed by the Pro versions panel

plus the combination of the brand new 10

nanometer chipset Ai battery management

and OLED display with a black theme and

lower resolution means if you care

about battery life you can squeeze even

more battery out of the pro version.On

my best day I managed to hit around 6

hours of screen on time while I was

inside and had the brightness set to

around 40%

obviously your mileage may vary

depending on how you use your phone and

how bright you have your screen but that

number generally hovers around 4 to 5

hours.

Speaking of the battery both units come

with a 4000 mah hour cell,

with Huawei supercharged with the phone

turned off you can charge a third of the

battery in 15 minutes ,a little over half

in half an hour,

and around 85 to 90 percent in a full 60

minutes .Huawei is taking Samsung's

misfortunes to heart ,and has stepped up

its battery safety as well having its

fast charging solution certified by TUV

Rheinland. The battery is also the first

place we see a eye on the mate 10 .Huwaei

power battery management promises the

world much like while weighs born fast a

fast mantra but like that performance

over time promise you're going to have

to wait until the huawei mate n learns

all of your habits only then can it

better allocate resources to eke out

more battery life for your particular

style of usage of course this will only

happen or not long after you've dropped

your cash on it but history has shown

that while waste combination of a large

battery great fast charging and solid

battery management means that May 10 and

May 10 Pro will likely be among the best

battery performers of the year now as

you may have guessed AI plays a pretty

big part in the performance of the may

10 to the Kiran 917 chipset has a

dedicated neural processing unit that

handles complex processing tasks on

device rather than in the cloud but it

must be noted that AI has a prominent

but limited place on the May 10 I

wouldn't go so far as to say it's pure

marketing but the benefits of AI and the

NP you will only really be felt over

time as there are precious few features

using their full capabilities right now

whywe assures me that more will be

delivered over time not held off until

the next device in the series

Google Translate will soon join

Microsoft's Translate app which uses the

mp4 near-instant photo based translation

and the 13 objects in scenes the camera

can currently recognize to automatically

adjust settings will increase as the NPU

image database expands Google's AR core

will arrive via an update later this

year and the neural network ap eyes are

coming next year the curé 970 is also

being positioned as an open AI platform

for developers meaning further

applications to tap its full potential

are sure to arrive in time but for now

the NP you and AI kind of sit in the

background speeding up some parts of the

experience totally learning your habits

suggesting smart tips based on context

awareness and generally just promising

more benefits in future I primarily use

the May 10 Pro during this review and

found the experience to be reliably fast

if

not light-years ahead as the a I promise

might have you believe they experience

the usual stutters and glitches coming

into any phone and had a few issues with

Google Apps playing nice with emui the

main tends run android 8.0 oreo out of

the box with emu i ate on top several

oreo features are on board like

notification dots launch app shortcuts

smart text selection and

picture-in-picture mode but while we

can't exactly be relied upon for the

most faithful implementation of google

features and several others don't make

it at all including adaptive icons and

notification channels fortunately oreo

brings with us the promise of project

treble meaning that updates in the

future shouldn't be a sluggish as they

have been in Huawei's past while way is

even said as much with two years of

guaranteed updates and at least one

major Android version bump as always

huawei like the Samsung of old makes up

for it by loading on more software

features than you can poke a stick at

perhaps the biggest ticket feature on

the may 10 and a big middle finger to

Samsung is a Doppler desktop mode you

just need a USB type-c to HDMI cable

with DisplayPort support and you can

plug your phone directly into a monitor

lore'l lets you attach various

peripherals like a bluetooth mouse and

keyboard where you can use the phone as

a kind of trackpad to get you through a

presentation it's a little sluggish but

it works any calls or messages that come

in while in desktop mode will still be

handled by the phone and not show up on

screen to maintain your privacy it's a

little weird to get used to but a handy

option to have and it'll be interesting

to see where this kind of functionality

goes in the future other software

features include smart split screen so

if you're watching a video or playing a

game and a message comes in the main

tone will let you jump into split screen

mode so you can do two things at once

now if snooping is an issue for you you

can register a fingerprint which

accesses a whole other version of your

phone that way you can keep your dirty

secret secret by unlocking your phone

with your clean finger or pattern a

floating navigation dope lets you open

up all that screen real estate by using

a floating bubble that works much like

fingerprint scanner gestures to control

navigation without the usual on-screen

buttons now can go on endlessly about

the specifics of huawei software

features but if you want to read the

full review head on down to the video

description because now I want to move

on to the camera which I firmly believe

is the most impressive part of the May

10 series 2f 1.6 summer Lux HD lenses

sit on the back of both mate

a 20 megapixel monochrome sensor and a

12 megapixel RGB sensor four-way what I

focus is very reliable and oh is on the

RGB lens helps with image stabilization

especially in low-light conditions

I found the photos out of the may tend

to be generally very good well you get

some impressive shots out of the mate

nine if you were using full manual

controls the may tenant offers the same

level of quality but in auto mode

bringing Huawei's photography potential

mainstream low-light photography

especially was impressive with very

little noise or visible brain it has to

be noted though that the May 10th ends

to crush blacks in its attempt to stamp

out noise altogether making most

nighttime photos look good but visibly

darker than the actual scene depending

on how you feel about noise versus

overall lightness you'll either love or

hate flyaways approach here other phones

like the pixel to try really hard to

lighten the scenes that tend to add much

more noise than you'll find on the may

10 some of this no doubt has to do with

the AI scene recognition which you can

thankfully override but only by using

the manual controls or choosing another

preset like HDR which is not my ideal

solution if you don't like the a I

assisted results a simple toggle in the

camera app for disabling AI scene

recognition would be a much better idea

but IIM the camera is not all bad though

io motion detection means capturing

moving subjects without blur is quite

easy with the maintain able to capture

action shots without any visible

movement even in pretty poor lighting

the scene recognition works very

reliably to automatically adjusting

settings to best capture the subject or

scene it'll just depend on whether you

agree with the AI or not on what

constitutes the best settings the only

real problem I had with the may 10

camera was over sharpening the

sharpening in some shots tends to make

the result look too fake take this dog

photo where everything is a little too

sharp and to look lifelike then there's

this one where everything pans out

perfectly this kind of variability is

emblematic of the may 10 camera

performance for me multiple shots taken

one after the other can often produce

very different results in HDR mode to

the HDR version would occasionally

lighten the shadows as you'd expect it

to but in others that would produce

darker shadows than the original shot

you'll always get at least one photo

that is fantastic but I definitely

recommend always firing off a couple

just to be sure in good lighting the may

10 shoots great shots like any other

high-end smartphone the monochrome

sensor doesn't always seem to provide

that much extra detail though making me

wonder how much more fun the may 10

camera could

if it had a wide-angle lens like the LGP

30 or a 2x zoom lens like the note 8 hey

I also helped provide a 2x hybrid zoom

which produces results a lot more like

those you'd find on the pixel with more

noise but a lighter palette and more

detail in the shadows

it definitely produces better detail

than a crop 10 standard shot what remote

is very reliable if not perfect and wide

aperture mode has improved since the

Mait 9 to both understandably look a

little fake but are perfectly good for a

new profile pic or social share if while

waist cameras put you off in the past

for being too complicated the may 10

rectify that situation bringing very

impressive results to a point-and-shoot

audience there's a little bit of

character to the may 10 camera that

you'll have to learn to love but if that

doesn't put you off then it's a very

capable shooter there's a whole laundry

list of other firsts and improvements on

the mate 10m 810 Pro from dual 4G voice

over LTE and cat 18 LTE to AI voice

recognition and noise cancellation and

calls both devices have stereo speakers

courtesy of bottom firing grill and the

earpiece speaker but at max volume which

hits around 80 decibels the sound gets

too tinny for my liking especially from

the earpiece and the headphone

experience is much better support for

lossless 32 bit audio at 384 kilohertz

is a nice touch of overkill but the

presence of high-end codecs in norio

will not be enough to satisfy potential

mate 10 pro buyers who prefer wired

headphones fortunately you can always

use the included types of earbuds all

live the dongle life and enjoy Huawei's

audio tuning on your favorite set of

cans water resistance qHD panels

headphone ports and microSD expansion of

the stalwarts of smartphone shopping but

by mixing and matching features so

randomly there's no obvious winner here

at 699 euros the May 10 has all the

regular bases covered

but at 799 euros the mate 10 pro is in

some ways superior well in other ways

not as feature-rich it'll be the only

version to make it to the US though with

global pricing and availability coming

soon

despite a few questionable choices the

maintainer May 10 Pro are really nice

phones and while they may not yet be

meeting Samsung head-to-head they're a

positive step in that direction if while

we manages to come through on any or

even all of the promises that's made

with the may 10 series then they're

guaranteed to get better over time .