Honor View 10 – A New Age of AI enabled phones is born (Review)

Huawei Honor is on the roll and they have launched their first flagship mobile of the year: Honor View 10. At a Global launch event last year, Honor announced Honor 7x and Honor View 10 and today this mobile is available worldwide, including India. Honor View 10 is priced at INR 29,000. I have used this mobile for over 2 weeks now. So keeping the price aside, let me share my review of this mobile with you.

Design

Honor View 10 has a metal body construction very similar to Honor 8 Pro. It does not have any fancy metal body design, but the metal body is a practical design. It is very sturdy and yet stylish. The mobile feels light to hold in the hand and has an even weight distribution. It has a thin profile. At the bottom, it has a 3.5mm audio jack, micro USB port, mic and speaker grills. There is an IR port on the top, along with a noise canceling mic. The hybrid SIM card tray is on the left while the power and volume buttons are on the right. It has a dual camera setup at the back and the camera has a sharp bump. The fingerprint sensor is on the front, below the display. Honor has managed to squeeze in a fingerprint sensor, in spite of the thin bezels around the mobile. Honor View 10 could have included a branded toughened glass for extra protection, but sadly it does not have any.

Overall, the Honor View 10 has an elegant design and it is an ergonomically designed mobile. It is robust and yet has a good aesthetic appeal. It is available in Black, Blue and Gold color, while the Blue is my favorite of all.

Display

Honor View 10 has a full HD display on an 18:9 tall aspect ratio screen. The screen to body ratio is almost 80% on the front. The bezels are narrow and the display looks brilliant. Honor 8 Pro had QHD resolution on a 16:9 aspect ratio. But the FHD+ resolution on the View 10 packs in a 403 ppi density and has good brightness levels. The colors are natural and the contrast ratio is quite deep. Under direct sunlight, the display adjusts its brightness and contrast for an optimal viewing experience. It has good viewing angles. The colors are accurate. Text and images are crisp and clear under all ambient light conditions. Under display settings, you would only find Eye Comfort mode and other controls to adjust the display to suit your needs.

Camera

Honor View 10 has a dual camera arrangement, with 16MP primary sensor along with a 20 MP sensor. The monochrome and RGB dual camera arrangement is to click portrait shots with background bokeh and to shoot wide-aperture shots for almost any object. It also ensures high contrast and punchy images. The camera UI has a plethora of modes which can be a feast for anyone seeking to click creative shots. The shots out of the Rear camera have good sharpness and details. The exposure is perfect and the contrast levels are acceptable. Focusing is fast. Low light shots have good color reproduction and low noise. The front facing 13 MP camera is a sharp selfie shooter at all lighting conditions. The bundled AR Lens mode is fun to use. The camera and mic combination is good for vlogs and social media posts.

Wide aperture shots are software simulated, but the algorithm has been refined a lot. It does have a portrait mode to enable background blur, but I prefer clicking on the wide aperture mode as the shot can be edited with different aperture values or focus point after clicking it as well. It has over 25 different modes to click creative shots. My favorites are AR lens, 3D Panorama and Light painting which are unique modes of Honor mobiles. RAW format is supported only in Pro mode. The rear camera can shoot videos in 4K resolution. It does not have any kind of image stabilization. Honor View 10 has a highly capable camera system that can please any level of photography enthusiasts. It checks all the needs of a basic amateur photographer to a serious mobile photographer, thanks to the perfect synergy of hardware and software in the View 10.

Artificial Intelligence

Making use of the Artificial Intelligence, the Camera UI can identify the scene and adjust the camera settings. Some Camera has different modes for different types of scenes and we end up using Auto mode as it is a huge hassle to change between the modes. But the Honor View 10, the scene is detected automatically and the camera adjusts the processing.

Artificial Intelligence is also used to detect the face and show the notifications on the locked screen. However, the face recognition does not unlock the mobile and it is limited to showing the notifications. AI is also used to follow your face orientation and change the orientation of mobile. If you are lying down and watching the mobile in portrait mode, the mobile does not switch to landscape mode and so on…

As of now, these are the three implementations of Artificial Intelligence in the Honor View 10.

Hardware and Performance

Honor View 10 is powered by HiSilicon Kirin 970 and it has 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB internal storage. This processor is tuned for Artificial intelligence. Scene recognition and facial recognition processing are instantaneous. I have been using this mobile with over 50 applications and 10 resource intensive games installed, for over 2 weeks now. The mobile shows no signs of lags. The Mali-G72 MP12 GPU does an incredible job in rendering the graphics. It does not heat up even after 2 hours of continuous gaming. It supports Bluetooth 5.0 with A2DP, aptX HD, LE support. I have connected two Bluetooth speakers on it simultaneously in my car. One speaker is to listen to songs and the other speaker is for voice calls. It fits my need perfectly. It has an accelerometer, gyro, proximity, and compass along with other usual sensors. It supports Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, WiFi Direct and WiFi hotspot.

Software

The mobile is running on Android 8.0 with EMUI 8.0 skinned on top. EMUI is a major upgrade for Honor from EMUI 5.0. It has a lot of features tuned for the AI capable processor. It has a bunch of useful features. It has very few bloatware and these Honor specific apps can be uninstalled as well. The UI is smooth and lag free. Honor View 10 offers a smooth and pleasant user experience, thanks to the robust EMUI 8.0.

Battery

The mobile is powered by a 3750 mAh battery and the bundled charger is a Huawei Super Charger. It gets charged from 0 to 100% in about 2 hours. Battery performance in Honor View 10 is exemplary. It can last for 2 days of normal usage. I get about 5 hours of screen time and if the mobile is subject to intensive usage, I still get a days usage on this battery. It also has a set of power saving modes. Honor has managed to squeeze in about 3750 mAh of battery on a thin and lightweight profile.

Verdict

Honor View 10 is priced at Rs 29999. 

While writing this review, I am not aware of the pricing in India. Converting from International price announced, it would be around Rs 38k. I expect the device to be priced at around 35-37k in India. At this price, it would be a good competition to Oneplus 5T. At the moment, Oneplus 5T is the reigning champion of affordable flagship devices. If Honor View 10 is priced smartly, it would be a tough competition for Oneplus 5T.

Honor View 10 has a very practical and robust design. It has a brilliant display and a unique implementation of Artificial intelligence. The synergy between top hardware specification and lean software implementation has given this device a powerful performance. It also has a top-notch camera performance and a dependable battery life.

Price of Honor View 10 in India

We are just waiting for the pricing to pass on the final verdict, so hold on to the edge of your seats until then.

Will be updated soon…

Ladies & gentlemen! Get ready to own #YourFirstAIphone #HonorView10 with the most powerful AI processor & architecture at INR 29,999 only! Register now on @amazonIN to get notified! https://t.co/EcbcLmF1EK pic.twitter.com/xry5EjOW70

— Honor India (@HiHonorIndia) January 4, 2018

According to a tweet from the official Honor India handle, the price of Honor View 10 is Rs 29999. In my opinion, that is a killer price. It is a killer competition for Oneplus 5T. Now it is a very tough choice. Will you buy the Honor View 10 or the Oneplus 5T?