When I went to the Honor phone launch around a year ago, they announced two phones. The first was the 7X which I will link a review to here. Great phone, but was the lesser of the two at the event. The second was the Honor View 10, which is desperately trying to cement itself as a mid-range go to mobile. Here are some thoughts on the device.
As I’ve said before, Honor are an off-shoot brand connected to mobile giants Huawei and originate from the far-east. They’ve proven themselves in that market, so let’s attempt to bring them over to the western world.
Design
Honor has decided to go with the more modern 18:9 aspect ratio with this one, enabling the Chinese manufacturer to stick a six inch screen onto a relatively small body. The phone isn’t quite bezel-less, but the left and right skirting are certainly something to witness. It’s a comfortable phone to hold in the hand, yet the smooth metal finish can feel slightly slippery. The charging port which uses the latest USB Type-C technology (thank you) and a headphone port (again, thank you) are on the bottom.
The fingerprint scanner has also been placed onto the front which explains the slightly fatter bezel across the bottom. Personally, I prefer this position, rather than on the back under the camera like the OnePlus 5T or the Honor 7X. The volume rocker and power button can be found on the side in the usual place, and nicely positioned to hit with your thumb without too much of a stretch.
The entire alluminium case which comes in Honor’s signature blue or also black looks sleek enough to contend with the higher flagship phones. And the colour coded aerials at the top and bottom of the rear of the phone are a nice touch. Being made from metal, this also means wireless charging isn’t available. But who cares, this thing has USB Type-C!
Display
The Honor View 10 has a 2160 x 1080p full-HD display which actually packs quite a punch when it comes to colour reproduction. There are options to tweak the display in terms of colour temperature. I kept the display on Vivid actually, which made colours a lot more saturated, but it was welcomed. Compared to the standard colour mode, it made the display a lot nicer to look at, albeit a little more blue. A trade off that I could handle.
However, if you’re putting the phone against similarly priced handsets, something like the OnePlus 5T with its Amoled display wins hands down for natural looking colours. Yes, the View 10 looks good, but because of the oversaturation, colours do look a little fake. The View 10 uses the older LCD technology, so this is where it’s losing out.
The screen is also awesomely bright which is great now that we’re coming into the summer months in the UK. Sunshine please? I kid, and most of the time I found myself keeping the phone at around 50% brightness on the scale, which meant I was saving battery life in the decision.
Performance
This is where the Honor View 10 shines over its younger sibling, the 7X. Inside you can find a Kirin 970 octa-core processor and 6GB RAM which is absolutely superb and storms through apps and strong multitasking apps. It uses Huawei’s EMUI 8.0 OS which is overlayed onto Android Oreo. Super smooth and super impressed with how this phone performs.
What is really impressive here though is the phone’s AI capabilities. What stands out to me is the language app, which can either translate images of text from another language into your own, and the ability to translate real-time text to speech during a conversation. The latter I couldn’t test, as I don’t have access to my foreign-language speaking friends too easily, but it’s still impressive.
The second which seems rare on a mid-range handset is facial recognition for unlocking the device. Woah! Speak about punching above your weight Honor. I love it! It works very quickly if you are in a well-lit room, but can struggle immensely in dim environments. But you do have a finger print scanner or a password unlock in those times. I’m an occasional glasses wearer too and it didn’t have too much trouble recognising me when wearing them.
The internal 3750mAh battery performance is also pretty good too, as long as you’re not pounding the games. If you are, expect a quick charge at lunch. For those among us who are lighter users, you could easily stretch the battery over a full day. The Type-C port offers some super charging speeds, with around 50% battery life regained in around 30 minutes. That’s good going for those social media addicts among us. Guilty.
Camera
Honor have again gone for a two camera setup, the same as the 7X. But rather than one lens acting as a wide and the other a telephoto, both lenses work in conjunction with eachother. One lens is responsible for capturing colour, while the other has a monochrome sensor and a higher megapixel. Put these two together, and you’ve got a photo with the upmost detail in its shots.
The monochrome camera picks out shading detail as well as pixels from dark and light areas and combines the two together with the information from the colour lens. Both lenses use a f/1.8 aperture which is super wide for low lighting level shots.
One thing that does lack however is the speed it takes for a photo to register a scene. There were times I was retaking photos because it failed to autofocus or it was too overexposed. It also lacks quite a lot if you’re opting to zoom in to your subject. I’d recommend shooting your photographs as wide as possible for the best results. You can also find a lot of noise in low-lighting situations too as the camera tries to up the ISO levels to grab onto as much light as possible.
There’s a whole host of camera modes you could take advantage of like the Pro Manual mode, HDR, AR Lens, 3D Panorama, Time-Lapse the list goes on. Some work better than others, like HDR is cool, and Pro Mode you need to know a thing or two about in-depth photography configurations, but as a whole, a very nice selection of snapping capabilities.
Video shoots at 1080p max so no 4K resolutions which is okay. Most of the time I think phone videos are chucked on social media these days which is heavily compressed anyway. And not having a 4K screen to view them back will make the option a little counterproductive. The full HD resolution works nicely here.
Verdict
The Honor View 10 is a remarkable phone, and one that is definitely worthy of some kind of mid-range handset crown. Sure it costs £400 right now, which isn’t exactly what you want to hear. But as we’re in the age of the £1000 smart phone, that doesn’t sound too bad to me, especially for what this handset is offering anyway.
Unfortunately though, due to its sub-par camera and older LCD technology in the screen, the award still goes to the OnePlus 5T. Although that’s not taking anything away from Honor, they’ve done a remarkable job with this handset and have got a lot of things right, and it’s definitely a phone I wouldn’t mind in my pocket. For more information, why not head over to the Honor website?
