It seems that 2021 will be the most successful year for Huawei in the Russian market. It not only managed to become the leader in smartphone sales in Russia, displacing the 10-year-old leader Samsung from first place, but also released an excellent (without exaggeration) line of Huawei P20 smartphones, including the flagship Huawei P20 Pro, which is the best camera phone today .
But today we will talk about a smartphone from another family, produced under the Honor brand. It is interesting because in it Huawei usually uses the developments and technologies of older models, while, as they say, “within the budget.” This was the case, for example, with Honor 9: the smartphone turned out to be very relevant and at the same time inexpensive. Our today's hero, Honor 10, is also in many ways similar to the older models from the Huawei P20 line, and in some ways it’s a surprise! - even surpasses them. At the same time, it remains very inexpensive for a device with such characteristics.
Let's see what Honor 10 has more advantages or disadvantages.
What did you like about Honor 10?
The appearance is just bomb!
Without a doubt, this is one of the most spectacular smartphones of the year. You can talk as much as you like about how glass is impractical (especially if there is no support for wireless charging), but how beautiful it is, especially in combination with a gradient. However, even in the icy gray color the smartphone looks very, very good. But I wasn't impressed with the black color.
The same Honor 10, but from a different angle, looks completely different
By the way, thanks largely to the gradient, Honor 10 does not suffer so much from the eternal curse of glass smartphones - instant staining, which kills all the beauty in the bud. Even fingerprints on its body are not so obvious.
Fits in your hand - perfect
The screen of Honor 10 is quite large - 5.84 inches, but this does not cause any inconvenience. The smartphone fits perfectly in the hand and - what is important - does not slip (minus another curse of glass).
As for the “dead zones”: if you hold the smartphone in your right hand, it was not easy for me with my small hand to reach the call button in the lower right corner.
The connectors are fine
Like any decent smartphone in 2021, Honor 10 received a USB Type-C connector, but at the same time - hurray! — they didn’t remove the 3.5 mm headphone jack (but let me remind you that the older Huawei P20 line no longer has it). However, this is where the attraction of unheard-of generosity ends; the headphones themselves are not included.
The screen is quite good
Honor 10 received an LTPS display. Of course, this is not AMOLED, so don’t expect “correct black” and high contrast. But the display does not cause irritation, except on a bright sunny day, when the display noticeably goes blind even with the brightness slider turned up to maximum.
Natural colors are also a plus; unlike many “Chinese” ones, the display on Honor 10 is “warm” and does not turn blue.
By the way, in terms of display characteristics, Honor 10 is slightly superior to the flagship Huawei P20 - the Honor’s resolution is 2280×1080, the number of pixels per inch is 432, while the P20 has 1080×2224 and 428 PPI. A trifle, but nice.
Again, as is fashionable in 2018, Honor 10 received a cutout at the top of the screen. The cutout itself looks quite neat. If you don’t like it, you can replace it in the screen settings with the usual dark stripe, although the cutout on the protective film still won’t let you completely forget about it.
Performance is better than the flagship
Another parameter in which Honor 10 is not only not inferior to flagships, but even superior to them is hardware. Like the Huawei P20 line, it uses an eight-core Kirin 970 with a neural module; you can read more about it here. And the Honor 10 has no less RAM than the Huawei P20 - 4 GB.
It is not surprising that in synthetic tests Honor 10 performs as well as possible, leaving behind not only many of its classmates, but also the flagships of other brands.
Geekbench 4 and AnTuTu test results for Honor 10
Geekbench 4 and AnTuTu test results for Nokia 7 Plus
Geekbench 4 and AnTuTu test results for Meizu 15 Plus
In real, not synthetic, reality, the smartphone also does not disappoint: after two months of active use, Honor 10 showed its best side: no slowdowns, no lags, no sudden reboots. To the proprietary firmware - Honor 10, let me remind you, runs Android 8.1. + EMUI 8.1 - there were no complaints either, everything is convenient and intuitive.
Battery is excellent
What I want to praise and praise Honor 10 for is charging and battery. The smartphone charges fantastically quickly - 64% in half an hour, 94% in an hour. And it holds a charge for a long time, especially if you don’t turn the brightness slider all the way up.
The camera does not disappoint
The camera, of course, is the key difference between Honor 10 and the flagships of the Honor family. Here you, of course, will not find three cameras or a proud Leica logo. But you will find an intelligent assistant that analyzes the frame and selects the optimal shooting mode. The same assistant is used in the Huawei P20 Pro camera phone, but Honor has even more plot scenarios, including very exotic ones.
Does artificial intelligence help? In general, yes. Photos taken with AI enabled tend to be more detailed, brighter (sometimes too vibrant), and more visually interesting.
This photo and subsequent ones can be seen in the original by simply clicking on the photo
The shot was taken without the use of AI...
... and a shot taken with the participation of “artificial intelligence”. The colors are brighter and there are more details.
Another feature that is well known to owners of Huawei and Honor smartphones is the ability to change the focus and sharpness of a frame taken in the “Aperture” mode. Sometimes this helps out a lot.
Overall, the shooting quality of the Honor 10 does not disappoint. It reproduces colors well, does not lose detail, and copes well even when shooting in low light conditions.
What connector does Honor 9x have?
Review of the Honor 9X smartphone: on the bandwagon of a departing train
| Honor 9X | realme 3 Pro | |
| Connectors | USB Type-C, 3.5 mm mini-jack | MicroUSB, 3.5 mm |
| Memory card slot | Eat | Yes (separate slot for microSD) |
| SIM cards | 2 × nano-SIM | 2 × nanoSIM |
| Cellular connection 2G | GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz | GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz |
What didn't you like about Honor 10?
Unfortunately, during operation, the Honor 10 also revealed shortcomings, and serious ones.
Unstable housing coating
Just a few weeks after use, it turned out that the smartphone is not resistant to external damage. First - traditionally for Honor - the coating peeled off from the rim around the main camera, then abrasions were found on the lower end of the case. A couple of small scratches appeared on the glass back cover.
Phone screen
Honor 10 is equipped with a 5.84-inch Full HD+ display with a resolution of 2280×1080 (432ppi) and an aspect ratio of 19:9.
The image quality here is similar to the regular 1080p panels found on most mid-range smartphones. Colors are crisp, viewing angles are good, and brightness is sufficient for use in direct sunlight.
Out of the box, it comes with a bright mode that oversaturates the colors, but you can switch it to a cool, normal mode in the Settings menu. There is also a comfortable lighting mode with blue light filtering, which can be scheduled to turn on at a certain time of day, as well as an intelligent resolution switch, which automatically lowers the display resolution to 1520×720 to save battery power.
The only drawback is the lack of protective glass, which makes the front panel of Huawei Honor 10 more fragile.
Not with recognition either, thank God.
Honor 10 inherited from its older brothers the P20 line and a fingerprint scanner - it is built into the Home button and is located under the glass. And like older models, the scanner is very problematic: it does not work too quickly and not too accurately. For recognition to fail, you just need to move your finger a little.
After about a week of use, you adapt to this, getting used to immediately positioning your finger so as to please the capricious sensor, and Huawei, for its part, has somewhat corrected the situation in the update, but nevertheless, the problem has not been completely solved, and this is frustrating.
Not everything is in order with facial recognition: if you put on glasses, find yourself in low light conditions, or take the smartphone at a slight angle, Honor 10 makes mistakes again.
Performance
Huawei Honor 10 is one of the few budget phones that boasts a powerful HiSilicon Kirin 970 SoC, also found on the Honor View 10, Huawei Mate 10 Pro and P20.
Whether it's HD gaming, high-quality audio streaming or intense multitasking, the smartphone handles it without problems, thanks in part to the 4GB of RAM and Mali-G72 MP12 GPU.
The Honor 10 comes with 64GB or 128GB of internal storage, but no expandable storage options. But, both SIM cards support 2G, 3G and 4G networks.
The sound is very average
Honor 10 received a single, but loud speaker and a 32-bit AK4376A DAC. Don't expect miracles - the sound, although loud, is flat even to my inexperienced ears. What’s bad is that the customization options are also sparse: the set of Huawei Hisense audio effects is quite limited and, moreover, is activated only when headphones are connected.
But Honor 10 has another interesting feature - party mode, which allows you to synchronize music on several smartphones via Wi-Fi, NFC or by scanning a QR code.
And as usual, we’ll answer a few questions about Honor 10.
Additional Information
Tips for choosing a charger:
- to extend the life of the nutrient element, give preference to branded cables and blocks;
- be sure to ensure that the number of Volts and Amperes matches the technical requirements of the battery;
- When purchasing, test the device by charging it for 5-10 minutes, this will help determine compatibility.
If you purchased a device and your phone or tablet begins to overheat or show other signs of incompatibility, we advise you to promptly replace your purchase. This way you will save the battery and extend its service life.
Honor 10 Specifications:
- OS: Android 8.1;
- processor: HUAWEI Kirin, 4×Cortex A73 2.36 GHz + 4×Cortex A53 1.8 GHz;
- RAM: 4 GB;
- built-in memory: 64 or 128 GB;
- Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g/n, 2.4 GHz/ 802.11 a/n/ac, 5 GHz
- Bluetooth: BT4.2, BLE, aptX and aptX HD, LHDC;
- LTE frequencies: LTE FDD Band 1/3/5/7/8/19/20
- screen: 5.84 inches, LTPS, 2280×1080 pixels, 432 ppi;
- main camera: 16 MP (f/1.8) and 24 MP (f/1.6), dual, flash, autofocus, video recording up to UHD 4K;
- front camera: 24 MP f/2.0;
- slot tray configuration: two Nano-Sim;
- memory card: not supported;
- navigation: GPS/BDS/GLONASS;
- sensors: NFC, fingerprint sensor, face scanner;
- battery: 3400 mAh;
- wireless charging: no;
- fast charging: supported;
- body: aluminosilicate glass;
- dimensions: 149.6 x 71.2 x 7.7 mm
- body colors: midnight black, ice grey, shimmering green, shimmering blue
- Honor 10 price: from 26,990 rubles
Cameras
The Honor 10 camera is what makes it worth buying the device:
- main dual camera 24 and 16 megapixels;
- front 24 MP;
- autofocus;
- aperture and portrait modes;
- professional and night photography;
- creation of 3D portrait and panorama;
- creating effects using gestures, applying backgrounds;
- Built-in dual LED flash.
Minuses
cameras in:
- Lack of stabilization, which is especially evident in the inability to take high-quality night photography.
- There is a hybrid 2x zoom, but you can’t zoom in on an object to the required distance.
You can shoot video in:
- Ultra HD 4K format;
- in resolution 3840×2160;
- in slow motion.
The videos turn out to be very mediocre; when uploaded to Youtube, the slowdown disappears for a reason unknown to me.
I have already posted a review of the Honor 10 camera and sample photos in this article, so I won’t dwell on this in detail now, but will post a few pictures from the camera:
honor 10 photo honor 10 photo honor 10 photo honor 10 photo honor 10 photo honor 10 photo
As you can see, handheld night photography is not an advantage of a smartphone, just as background blur is not ideal.
Honor's smart camera eats up image quality, but it amazes with its ability to determine the subject of the photo and adjust the brightness of the image.
But selfies from the tenth Honor turn out very good.
honor 10 photo from front camera
Connection quality
One of the main advantages of Honor 10i is the presence of an NFC module, which allows you to use the phone for contactless payments. There are no complaints about the connection, the device picks up the signal well and transmits voice in both directions. GPS navigation works stably, and there were no problems connecting the Honor Band 4 bracelet, despite the not the latest version of Bluetooth 4.2. But single-band Wi-Fi, which does not support operation at the 5 GHz frequency, in a smartphone costing 20 thousand rubles looks like a bad joke from Huawei. The phone also lacks a gyroscope, which means that in some games like PUBG you won't be able to control your aim by tilting the device.
