Huawei has been making major strides in the smartphone market for some time, with a huge range of impressive devices proving to be popular for Android fans around the world. Straddling the border between smartphone and phablet, the new device is the most powerful Huawei mobile to date, sporting an updated design alongside upgraded hardware – with the company also keen to promote super-smart new AI tools within.
Getting right to it, the Mate 10 Pro is undoubtedly a beautifully designed smartphone. Its slim bezels are immediately apparent, with just a small forehead and chin visible. Aside from the impressive screen-to-body ratio, the Mate 10 Pro is also very well constructed. Its front and back are made from Corning Gorilla Glass, while the glossy frame of the phone is made of aluminum.
Some people don’t like glass-backed phones as they can crack and are often fingerprint magnets, which is fair enough. However, I think the Mate 10 Pro looks excellent, and Gorilla Glass is actually more scratch-resistant than aluminum, so that is in its favor.
Powering the Mate 10 Pro is the Kirin 970 chip – an Octa-core processor, it is comprised of 4×2.4 GHz Cortex-A73 cores & 4×1.8 GHz Cortex-A53 cores. Alongside this is 6GB of RAM. The Kirin 970 chip supposedly understands how you use your phone and optimizes performance. The phone comes with a built-in 128 GB internal storage.
The Mate 10 Pro’s 6-inch display has several interesting aspects to it. Starting with resolution, Huawei opted for the 18:9 aspect ratio which is the new standard for modern smartphones. Because of that, the resolution has been dubbed ‘Full HD +’, meaning 2160×1080. Most importantly, the Mate 10 Pro’s screen uses an AMOLED panel and that gives it plenty of advantages over more traditional LCD displays.
Huawei partnered with Leica to create something special: a dual-camera setup that is a bit different. Instead of one zoom lens and one wide-angle lens – the setup we find on most modern smartphones – Huawei opted for a 12MP primary camera that shoots in color and supports OIS, along with a 20MP monochrome camera that only shoots in black-and-white. Both lenses offer a wide f/1.6 aperture, too. It is very impressive as image quality is simply fantastic. Shots at both 12MP and 20MP are packed with detail, colors are vibrant and general exposures are accurate. The wide f/1.6 aperture lenses also ensure that low-light performance is similarly good.
In terms of software, the Mate 10 Pro is running Android Oreo 8.0, with Huawei’s EMUI 8.0 skin on top. There are a few hidden gems within EMUI which help make using the Mate 10 Pro a real pleasure. Most favorite of these is the ability to hide the home buttons completely – enabling this setting adds an extra downward arrow to the home button panel, and pressing it hides the panel until you swipe up from the very bottom of the screen.
The phone’s battery life is class-leading. Huawei has equipped the Mate 10 Pro with a huge 4000 mAH battery, and given the slightly lesser 2160×1080 screen resolution, coupled with the increased efficiency of AMOLED panels, it really lasts. The phone costs BDT 83,900 and delivers a worthy performance against the price.
There are very few phones that have the ability to satisfy the customers with a firm consistency. The design is attractive, the screen is good, the camera is great, and performance and battery life are spectacular. This is a phenomenal phone and one we can recommend wholeheartedly. Samsung, LG, and Apple better watch out – Huawei has truly announced itself with the Mate 10 Pro. This is a phone which eventually grows on you, becomes your companion eventually making it hard for you to tone it down for the next phone you buy.
