We fell in love with Huawei’s Mate 10 Pro phablet when it launched back in October and now it’s the turn of sister company Honor who’s bringing its Honor View 10 smartphone to the table. Is this a worthwhile affordable alternative, or simply a pale imitation though?
Honor View 10 vs Huawei Mate 10 Pro: Specs at a glance
| Honor View 10 | Huawei Mate 10 Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Screen size | 5.99-inches, 18:9 aspect ratio | 6-inches, 18:9 aspect ratio |
| Screen resolution | Full HD+ (2160×1080) | Full HD+ (2160×1080) |
| Weight | 172 grams | 178 grams |
| OS | Android 8.0 Oreo w/ Emotion UI 8.0 | Android Oreo 8.0 w/ Emotion UI 8.0 |
| Front camera | 13-megapixels w/ f/2.0 aperture | 8-megapixels w/ f/2.0 aperture |
| Rear cameras | 16/20-megapixels dual sensor w/ f/1.8 aperture | 12/20-megapixels dual sensor w/ f/1.6 aperture + OIS |
| Processor | 2.36GHz/1.8GHz octa-core Kirin 970 | 2.36GHz/1.8GHz octa-core Kirin 970 |
| Memory | 6GB RAM | 6GB RAM |
| Storage | 128GB. Expandable via microSD up to 256GB | 128GB. Non-expandable |
| Battery | 3750mAh w/ fast charging (50% charge in 30 minutes) | 4000mAh w/ fast charging |
| Extras | USB 2.0 over USB-C | IP67-certification, desktop user experience, USB 3.1 over USB-C |
Honor View 10 vs Huawei Mate 10 Pro: What’s the difference?
Just as with the Honor 7X, which launched alongside it, the new View 10 sports an all-metal frame. The Honor 9 is one of the company’s few phones to embrace a glass-backed design, something Huawei’s already running with across the Mate 10, Mate 10 Pro and Porsche Design Mate 10 Pro. As such, the View 10 is less susceptible to fingerprints but a tad more slippery in the hand. It also loses out on the Huawei’s IP-certification, meaning anything more than a light sprinkling of rain puts it at risk of water damage. The Mate 10 meanwhile can take a straight dunking in fresh water for up to 30 minutes at a time and keep on swinging.
The View 10 is also the largest of the brand’s phone’s to sport an 18:9 aspect ratio FullView display, which surprisingly for a more affordable offering, really does run to the fringes of the phone’s front, giving you less bezel and a sexier overall look. It’s essentially aping the Mate 10 Pro’s similarly expansive screen, which according to the Huawei’s own numbers is apparently 0.01mm bigger. Either way, you’re getting a nice, big display that’s well suited to media and gaming, not to mention in both cases there’s an easy-to-use one-handed mode on call for when the UI becomes a little too unwieldy.
The biggest distinction between the two displays isn’t in how crisp they are, as both utilise the same Full HD+ resolution, but in the technology powering them. On first impressions, the IPS LCD found on the View 10 is a looker, there’s mild colour distortion that shifts to cooler hues, along with a little brightness drop-off at more extreme viewing angles, but nothing that really gives cause for concern. However, Huawei’s star phablet boasts an AMOLED screen, giving it greater vibrancy and contrast. It’s also HDR10 compliant meaning you can watch supported content with a wider visual range than is possible on the View 10.
On the inside, the biggest draw for siding with the new View 10 is that it’s powered by the same Kirin 970 processor as the more premium Mate 10 Pro. It even comes with the same 6GB of RAM, 128GB of internal storage and dual-SIM VoLTE-capable configuration too. In a way, it even trumps the Mate as you have the option to swap out that second SIM with a microSD card, to pump to capacity up even further.
Using the Kirin 970 means both phones benefit from its integrated neural processing unit (NPU), which is meant to more efficiently carry out AI-related tasks like voice queries, object recognition and more without sapping up too much power. The Honor does come with a slightly smaller 3750mAh battery versus the Mate 10 Pro’s 4000mAh effort but they both leverage the same 4.5A/5V fast-charging support, meaning you can actually get the View 10 back up to around 50 percent charge fractionally faster than Huawei’s phone.
Power efficiency is also a focus of both phone’s software experiences. The Mate 10 Pro introduced us to Emotion UI 8.0 running atop Android Oreo but the View 10 has now followed suit, meaning you’ll get a similarly optimised and customisable software experience, based on the latest available release of Android, whichever device takes your fancy. No mention of that impressive desktop mode on the Honor, though. We’ll see if it’s included come full review time.
To round out the spec sheet Honor’s graced the View 10 with a dual-camera setup to call its own. The 16/20-megapixel dual sensor on the back has a respectably wide f/1.8 aperture and grants you all sorts of fun abilities like a portrait mode and the option to refocus shots after the fact, just like the 10 Pro. The latter’s Leica-tuned 12/20-megapixel dual camera array not only allows for those smart depth shots but also takes dedicated monochrome shots, features OIS for better stability and one of the widest apertures on the market (f/1.6) giving it killer low light performance that we suspect the Honor will have a hard time following.
Selfie fans might still side with the View 10, however, as it throws in a higher-resolution 13-megapixel front-facing camera, whilst the Mate 10 Pro is only left with 8-megapixels to play with.
If it isn’t already obvious, there’s a lot to like about the new Honor View 10. It’s largely singing from the same hymn sheet as Huawei’s Mate 10 Pro with a big 18:9 aspect ratio display, capacious fast-charging battery, decent dual cameras and the same killer processor. There are some obvious cut corners but the collective shortcomings are nullified when you consider that the Huawei Mate 10 Pro will set you back £699, whilst the new Honor View 10 will do almost as equally good a job for just £449. We just need to wait until it launches on January 8th, 2018. Sigh.
Leave a Reply