Huawei Honor View 10 hands-on review

Introduction

Huawei Mate 10 Pro at half the price - that would be the Honor View 10. Made official in China last week, the View 10 was just announced for the world, and we were there for some hands-on action.



Now, the Honor View 10 may share the form-factor and some of the hardware with the top-of-the-line Mate 10 Pro, but certain things didn't make the cut. Two-hundredths of an inch smaller than the Pro's, the display is not AMOLED, but LCD instead - still in an 18:9 ratio and with a 1080p resolution.
Moving on, the Leica branding has been stripped, though the camera configuration is still a similar color + monochrome duo - 16MP + 20MP in this case, each behind a f/1.8 aperture lens. On the front, the View 10 could have the upper hand - it packs a 13MP f/2.0 camera vs. Mates' 8MP shooters.
The chipset is the same Kirin 970 powerhouse you'd find on the Mates, RAM's plenty at 4GB or 6GB, and you won't be strapped for storage with either the 64GB or the 128GB option, plus there's a card slot if you do end up needing more.
A few mAh have been chiseled off the battery capacity, but the 3,750mAh powerpack isn't exactly tiny. The Huawei SuperCharge 5V/4.5 charger is quite beefy itself, and Huawei promises 0-50% in 30minutes - our experience doesn't leave us doubting.

Honor View 10 at a glance

• Body: Aluminum back, 2.5D Gorilla Glass 3 on the front. Midnight Black and Navy Blue color schemes (Beach Gold, Aurora Blue, Charm Red, Night Black in some markets).
• Display: 5.99" LTPS LCD, 2,160x1,080px resolution, 403ppi.
• Rear cameras: Main camera: 16MP, f/1.8, color. Secondary camera: 20MP, f/1.8, monochrome. Phase detection autofocus; f/0.95-f/16 aperture simulation. 2160p/30fps video recording.
• Front camera: 13MP, f/2.0 aperture; fixed focus. 1080p/30fps video recording.
• OS/Software: Android 8.0 Oreo; Huawei EMUI 8.0 custom overlay.
• Chipset: Huawei Kirin 970: octa-core CPU (4x2.36 GHz+4x1.8 GHz), Mali-G72 12-Core GPU.
• Memory: 4/6GB of LPDDR4X RAM; 64/128GB storage; hybrid microSD slot for expansion (shared with SIM 2 slot).
• Battery: 3,750mAh Li-Po (sealed); Huawei SuperCharge proprietary fast charging (5V/4.5A).
• Connectivity: Dual SIM; 4G VoLTE on both cards; USB-C (v2.0); Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac; GPS, GLONASS, Beidou; NFC; Bluetooth 4.2.
• Misc: Front-mounted fingerprint reader; single speaker on the bottom; 3.5mm jack.

Huawei didn't bother with weather sealing on the Honor View 10, and it has no IP rating - you do need to step up to the Pro to get that, as not even the regular Mate 10 is properly protected (just IP53 on that one). But hey, Mate 10 Pro, show us your 3.5mm jack. You can't, can you? The Honor View 10 swaps out the dongle for a built-in headphone jack, just the way it should be.
Anyway, let's not get hung up on the jack debate, and move on to the hands-on.

 

Honor View 10 hands-on

The View 10 is a rather typical representative of the 6-inch 18:9 squad in terms of size. The OnePlus 5T, for example, is less than a millimeter shorter, while the Oppo F5 is just half a mill shorter than the View 10. Another (unrelated) V phone, the LG V30, is one of the most compact 6-inchers and is 5.3mm shorter than the Honor.

Front • Back • Next to the 7X

The View 10 does have a fingerprint sensor on the front to account for its height - way down on its chin. It's not ideal in that it's positioned towards the extreme lower edge of a rather tall device, but if it's good enough for the Mate 10, it's good enough for the View 10.
We can't complain about the button placement, not too much at least. While both the power button and the volume rocker are on the right side, at least they're properly located - volume rocker above power button, unlike you, Pixels.

Button placement makes sense • Just the card slot on the other side

For the Honor View 10 Huawei opted for an aluminum back - there's no sign of the Mate 10 and 10 Pro's glass sandwich. In terms of material choices and build the View 10 is then more akin to the Mate 10 lite. The View 10 is very much flat on its back save for a minor rounding towards the sides, so another departure from the high-end Mates.
The antenna bands are placed along the top and bottom edges, and blend well with the overall shapes and colors so they aren't much of an eye sore - gone are the days of the iPhone 6.

Antenna bands don't draw unnecessary attention

Speaking of colors, you can go right ahead and call us fans of the Navy Blue (or is it Aurora Blue). It's definitely the better-looking handset, with more personality. The black one is a lot more pedestrian and nondescript.

The two color options, we'd pick the blue one in a heartbeat

The two cameras do stand out more on the blue version - on the View 10 they are placed in the top left corner. Huawei is in a constant back-and-forth process of switching between corner and center placement and that varies between model lineups and sub-brands. If anything, the corner location is potentially worse because you could put your fingers on the camera when shooting in landscape and holding with both hands.
The camera is missing the laser autofocus found on the Mates, and only relies on phase detection. The good side of that is there's one fewer window on the back to ruin the minimalist look.

A minion's goggles

Anyway, flip over to the front and you're greeted by the tall 6-inch display. It looked okay in the mixed lighting of the venue floor and if the Mate 10 lite is any indication, the View 10 will be passable out in the sunlight. If we get a chance to review the View 10 in more detail, we'll have more solid numbers. The rounded display corners are a nice touch - the Mate 10 Pro's sharp corners are so last year.
One thing the View 10 has, and the twice as expensive Mate 10 Pro lacks, is a headphone jack. It's on the bottom of the phone on the one side of the USB-C port. The loudspeaker is on the other side. Unlike other Huawei phones, the View 10's earpiece doesn't double as a loudspeaker to make a stereo setup of sorts - bummer.

Good old 3.5mm jack on both the V10 and 7X, USB-C on the V phone only

Up top there's an IR emitter - Huawei is one of the last few holdouts of this useful, yet dying interface. Keep it up, Huawei!
In the hand the View 10 feels quite substantial, maybe not as much as the Mate 10 Pro, but there's a certain density to it that you don't feel with an Oppo R11s, for example. It's still impressively slim - 7mm is practically paper-thin when you consider the sizeable battery.

In the hand

In terms of software, the V10 runs Oreo with Huawei's EMUI 8.0 on top. Huawei heavily advertises the phone's AI prowess, a major talking point since the Kirin 970 chip's announcement earlier this year.
The View 10 boasts an AI-powered face unlock feature, with intelligent notifications (so it shows sensitive content only when it knows it's you), intelligent screen on, and intelligent display orientation - intelligent everything. How all this affects day-to-day use we obviously can't tell just yet.
There's an intelligent scene recognition feature baked into the camera app too. It will detect the scene and adjust settings according.
This seems to be all for now. For more details on the Honor View 10, you'll need to summon your patience until we get a review unit. The phone comes out in the beginning of January, so it shouldn't be long.