Honor View 10 Review: The New Budget Flagship Killer?

Everyone will agree to the fact that the Honor View 10 is a beautifully designed phone with a sleek design, very less amount of bezels on top and bottom. Though it looks quite similar to the Honor 8 and 8 Pro, the design doesn’t feel to bore me.

The metal back with the matte finish which almost hides the integrated antenna lines at the top and bottom edges look beautiful. The curved edges and rounded corners make the phone maintain minimum overall size.

Though the Honor View 10 packs a 3,750mAh battery inside, somehow Huawei has maintained the thickness to 6.76mm, which seems great.

The phone is not too heavy or bulky at all. The front of the View 10 is quite unique. This time the fingerprint scanner is placed on the front which is the best thing about the design of the phone. The phone also has the 3.5mm jack which is kind of mandatory to mention nowadays.

Display

The Honor View 10 has a large 5.99-inch FullHD+ (2160×1080) LCD panel with an aspect ratio of 18: 9. The display looks brilliant, it has good viewing angles, the colors are bright and punchy and the color temperature is just at the right place.

In terms of brightness, it is bright enough, even under sunlight. You can also adjust the display resolution to HD+ (1440 x 720) to save battery or you cloud just let the software take that decision for you, i.e. when you use the FHD+ and when to use HD+.

Also read: Honor View 10 Goes On Sale From January 8 Midnight

Performance

Huawei has been experimenting a lot with AI (Artificial Intelligence). The Honor View 10 is powered by Huawei made Kirin 970 processor, about which Huawei has said that is the first processor to be designed from the ground up for the AI. The Neural Processing Unit (NPU)  inside the 970 enables AI features to be enabled and executed, without using the cloud. Huawei also claims that it enables the Honor View 10 to not only process all AI features faster but also without compromising users privacy.

The use of AI can be seen everywhere, from the overall software of the phone to camera. The Kirin 970 is also fast and makes the phone a delight to use many apps, do multitasking, play games and more. The Kirin 970 chipset supposedly scored higher benchmark scores than Qualcomm’s upcoming flagship Snapdragon 845 processor.

While using the phone as the daily driver for quite a few days, there were no lags or hiccups. With the 6GB of RAM on board, efficient RAM management lags, not for one single time there were any random apps crashes neither any apps got killed. While playing some graphics intense games like Asphalt 8, the performance is smooth enough. However, when you turn on the gaming mode, you can feel what kind of beast the Kirin 970 is. There were no lags or frame drops here and there, at the highest settings also the game was running smooth. So, overall, the Honor View 10 performs great doing multitasking or gaming anytime.

Camera

The Honor View 10 sports a dual camera setup at the back with a 16MP primary RGB sensor paired with a 20MP monochrome sensor. Both sensors have an aperture of f/1.8 and are accompanied by an LED flash.

On the front, the V10 comes with a single 13MP camera. However, the front camera can also provide shallow depth of field using the AI.

The bokeh mode is now much improved from the Honor 8 Pro but sometimes it is quite aggressive. If if it set to medium, it brings out a good background blur effect keeping clear outlines but at high settings partial blurring at some places is visible. Overall, the bokeh mode is quite excellent for the price. The front camera of the Honor View 10 is somewhat mediocre when compared to the rear setup. The bokeh shots with the help of AI are good and improves with every update.

Software and AI

The Honor View 10 runs Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box, which sounds great and is skinned with EMUI 8.0. Machines learning has been integrated to the EMUI 8.0 which allocates resources to the most used apps. View 10 is almost a complete smartphone for the features it offers like App Twin (running two instances of an app), Smart resolution (let the phone decide when to use FHD+ and HD+ resolutions of the display, Face recognition, App lock (to lock any app with password and fingerprint), PrivateSpace (to keep private data hidden), File safe to keep your data encrypted, Motion control and more. Honor View 10 also offers the infrared remote controller, helps to control home appliances at home.

The AI experience in Honor View 10 is kinda positive. Answering and placing calls with voice works well, there is facial recognition skills. However, the facial recognition cannot be used to unlock the smartphone as of now and this feature will be coming soon via a software update. As of now, it enables you to see the content of the notifications on home screen once the phone recognizes your face. It works almost same as of iPhoneX except unlocking the phone.

Battery

Honor View 10 packs a 3,750mAh battery. While using the phone for a few days, with moderate to intensive including photography, navigation, watching videos on YouTube, playing Clash Royale, the battery didn’t die. And until the end of the day, the phone still had 20-30% battery level. With moderate use, the phone will easily last 1.5 days on a single charge. In terms of Screen On Time, the best I got was around 6 hours which is very impressive, so in terms of battery, I don’t find anything to complain about.

Final Verdict

Just grab it. Well, there are many other phones in the same price segment but what Honor View 10 provides at this price is far beyond expectations. It was launched at a price of Rs 29,999, that’s the same price at which Honor 8 Pro was launched last year. The phone offers some excellent specs, along with an excellent camera and battery life. There are no hiccups when it comes to performance and it almost offers every feature which every user needs it at some point in their usage.