Honor’s flagship offering, Honor View 10 takes on the OnePlus 5T and Xiaomi Mi MIX 2 and it’s currently the affordable entry in the flagship segment. The company started with the dual cameras, then quad cameras alongside bezel-less design, the Honor 9i is the first quad-camera smartphone with bezel-less type design followed by Honor 9 Lite. Honor View10 is a high-end device which has almost everything a user expects in a smartphone – premium design, dual cameras, FullView display, powerful hardware, large storage, mammoth battery with fast charging, and the list goes on. Want to know more? Our Honor View10 review is up, check it out below.
What’s in the Box
- Honor View10 with built-in battery
- USB Cable (Type-C)
- Charger (9V, 2A)
- SIM Tray Ejector
- User Manual and Warranty Information
Honor View10 Specifications
- Display: 5.99-inch FullView IPS display, 18:9 aspect ratio, Full-HD+ resolution (2160 x 1080 pixels), 2.5D curved glass
- Software: EMUI 8 based on Android 8.0 Oreo
- Fingerprint Scanner: Yes, on the front, gesture-based
- CPU: Up to 2.4 GHz octa-core Cortex-A73/A53 processor, Kirin 970 SoC, 10nm TSMC, 64-bit, AI backed
- GPU: ARM Mali-G72 MP12
- Memory: 6 GB LPDDR4 RAM
- Storage: 128 GB UFS 2.1 internal storage, MicroSD up to 256 GB
- Main Camera: Dual camera (20 MP + 16 MP), Portrait Mode, 4K video, single LED flash
- Front Camera: 13 MP, Portrait Mode, Face Recognition
- Connectivity: USB type-C, 3.5 mm headphones port, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS
- Cellular: 4G LTE, Dual SIM (GSM), microSD on SIM2
- Battery: 3,750 mAh Li-Po (non-removable)
- Color: Midnight Black, Navy Blue
- Price: ₹29,999
Design, Built, & Ergonomics
By looking at it, the Honor View10 looks highly premium, the Navy blue color simply stands out. Not just it follows the mid-ranger Honor 7X design aesthetics, it’s also one of the best-looking phones wrapped inside an aluminum unibody with a 5.99-inch edge-to-edge display.
Moving to the backside, as you can see in the images, the Honor View10 has a dual-camera setup (20 MP + 16 MP) with two separate protruding lenses and a single LED flash. The front side offers a 13 MP camera with Portrait mode and Face Recognition features.
Finally, a fingerprint scanner placed on the front, Honor has managed to put a gesture-based fingerprint scanner on the bottom bezel good enough for some people who wanted a scanner on the front side. The fingerprint scanner also works for the navigation, taping once will go back, tap-and-hold will move to the Home screen, and swiping on the scanner will open recent apps.
The gestures are, however, sounds great and work very well, but some native features are apparently disabled due to it. We didn’t get to enable multi-window and quick switch from the fingerprint scanner gestures itself. The multi-window can be turned on by holding the recent app and dragging to either side, on the top or on the bottom.
The Honor View10 offers a type-C USB port at the bottom, a 3.5 mm headphones jack alongside loudspeakers and an IR Blaster on the top. The two microphones are located at the top and at the bottom. It offers a hybrid SIM tray with dual 4G and VoLTE support, the microSD can be used on the SIM2 slot. Unless Honor decides to offer a dedicated microSD slot, you are all with the single SIM with a microSD card.
Display
The display on the Honor View10 is stretched to 5.9-inches with the 18:9 aspect ratio now going popular on the phones these days. The resolution is, however, not 2K but Full HD+ (2160 x 1080 pixels). Honor 8 Pro which is said to be the predecessor owned 2K resolution on a 5.7-inch display.
It employs an IPS panel, not the OLED/AMOLED, hence, high-end phones like Samsung Galaxy S8 have a better screen overall and capable of having Always-on display features. Same with the rival OnePlus 5T, it uses an Optic AMOLED display.
The brightness is high and sufficient under sunlight shade and also it’s one of the brightest IPS displays out there. Since the screen has the newer aspect ratio i.e. 18:9, some apps may not support it and you may encounter black bars on the top and the bottom. An option to view the apps in full screen will be provided at the bottom, but they may get cropped from the sides.
The viewing angles are excellent, seeing from different angles doesn’t disrupt the viewing experience, the content is clear even from the sides. The color reproduction is great, you can tweak the color mode to Normal or Vivid from the Display settings. Other settings include Color temperature, Eye comfort, View mode, Screen resolution, Smart rotate (which rotates the screen following the direction of your face).
Software & User Interface
On the software side, the Honor View10 has the latest EMUI packed with features. The EMUI 8.0 is based on the Android 8.0 Oreo operating system with security patches dated 6th November 2017. And with the newer version of the EMUI, there are a few features added to it along with the native Oreo features.
One of the coolest features is the gesture-based fingerprint scanner which lets you do all the navigation just with a single button. However, this also disables the quick switch and multiwindow shortcuts that are triggered by the recent apps button.
In addition to the features, the private space which deals with two different system environments unlocks via fingerprints. What that means is each space has its own fingerprint security. The Face Recognition will unlock the locked contents on the lockscreen. I initially thought it would unlock the phone via Face, but sadly, no OTA update has arrived as of now.
The user interface has been changed, there are new themed icons, the Settings menu is now grouped, the notification dots are visible, and several other things are noticeable. We found some bloatware that can be removed from the phone. The rest of the features are carried out from the previous EMUI versions.
Hardware, Performance & Gaming
Honor View10 is no doubt the company’s flagship device with the fastest Kirin 970 octa-core CPU and comes with the World’s first built-in AI processor. It is also the first smartphone to feature Kirin 970 octa-core chip. Further specifications include a high performance 6 GB LPDDR4 RAM and 128 GB UFS internal storage.
Unlike the Qualcomm’s big.LITTLE architecture which uses power-saving cores to compute relatively smaller tasks, the AI processors do it without using the actual cores. The AI chip present on the Kirin 970 takes on the tasks such as Facial recognition, AI Accelerated Translator, and Smart Tips. The tasks are carried out more efficiently freeing up the cores, so the phone can do more things simultaneously.
The benchmarks indicate that the performance is flagship level competing with the top smartphones like OnePlus 5T in the flagship category. Here are the Honor View10 benchmark results.
AnTuTu Benchmark
- 175,855 points
Geekbench 4
- 1,911 points (single-core CPU)
- 6,722 points (multi-core CPU)
- 9,344 points (GPU)
If you are into gaming, Honor View10 won’t disappoint you by any means. The performance of the GPU is high-end and competes with powerful GPUs like Adreno 540. No matter what games you throw at it, they will mostly run without any lags. We played N.O.V.A Legacy, Injustice 2, FIFA Mobile, Spider-Man: Ultimate Power, and Asphalt Nitro on Honor View10.
Games Tested on Honor View10
- N.O.V.A. Legacy
- FIFA Mobile
- Injustice 2
- Spider-Man: Ultimate Power
- Asphalt Nitro
Storage & RAM Performance
Unlike most phones that are based on a 64 GB internal storage, the Honor View10 comes in one storage variant i.e. 128 GB. The storage expands via microSD card on the SIM2 slot, you will lose the dual-SIM functionality if you opt for a microSD card.
The storage on the Honor View10 is high-performance UFS-type, the speed goes beyond 800 MB/s for sequential reading, as fast as the SSDs you see on desktop PCs. The storage performance is slightly better than OnePlus 5T. The benchmarks also indicate higher random read/write speeds, not even Samsung Galaxy S8 and Sony Xperia XZ Premium can achieve.
A1 SD Bench
- 505.49 MB/s (Read)
- 203.79 MB/s (Write)
- 7,933.27 MB/s (RAM Copy)
AndroBench
- 839.59 MB/s (Sequential Read)
- 194.81 MB/s (Sequential Write)
- 147.22 MB/s (Random Read)
- 162.28 MB/s (Random Write)
Cameras
The camera is gradually upgraded from its predecessor, the Honor View10 sports a 16 MP + 20 MP dual cameras on the back with a single LED flash. The cameras on the phone are one of the key features and AI shooting technology.
On flipping the phone, there’s a 13 MP selfie camera that also works for Face Unlock. Both the cameras come with Portrait mode and Live Photos support. Other camera features include depth mode, Monochrome, AR lens, 3D Panorama, Artist mode and many others.
There’s no other phone in this segment that offers as much camera features, the Honor View10 clearly wins in the camera department when it comes to features.
Honor View10 Camera Specifications
- Camera: Dual camera (20 MP + 16 MP)
- Optical Image Stabilization (OIS): N/A
- Rear Flash: Single LED flash
- Features: Monochrome, Portrait mode, Depth-of-field, Live Photos, AR lens, 3D Panorama, Artist Mode, Geo-tagging, Tap to focus, HDR, Pro Photo, Pro video, Beauty Photo, Beauty video, Good food, Panorama, Night shot, Light painting, Time-lapse, Slo-mo, Filter, Burst Shot, Watermark, Audio note, Document Scan
- Video Recording: 4K video @30fps, 1080p video @60fps, 720p video @120fps, HDR support, Pro video
- Front Camera: 13 MP
- Video Recording: 1080p video @30fps
- Front Flash: N/A, Screen flash
Honor now has been a pro in the dual camera segment, we have seen enough phones from the company with a dual camera setup. The dual-camera on the Honor View10 detects the scenes automatically (food, text, low light, portraits, etc…), and works in different lighting conditions efficiently. It is backed up with the AI processor to improve the quality, the overall image quality is very good and satisfactory.
The dual camera is also capable of taking Monochrome shots, shots with depth/bokeh effects, and exposure shots (Night mode). The two added modes to the camera interface are the ‘AR lens’ which adds faces (similar to Snapchat) and a background scene to the image in real-time whereas the ‘Artist mode’ snaps images in a style or creative art, it’s an analog of the Prisma app.
The selfies taken in the daytime or in the good lighting conditions turn out to be stunning and highly satisfying. The low-light performance of the front camera is fair, not the best in class, our samples tend to blur in low lights, a dedicated flash could have helped in this case.
Honor View10 Camera Samples
Battery Runtime & Charging
Unlike the previous Honor phones, here comes the fastest quick charge from Huawei, the Honor View10 supports SuperCharge fast charging technology on 4.5A charger. The battery on the phone which is 3,750 mAh (degraded from 4,000 mAh on Honor 8 Pro) charges from 0% to 100% in ~100 minutes and 45 minutes to reach 50% battery power. Check out the image below which shows the charging time of the battery.
Honor View10 packs a massive 3,750 mAh battery which gives enough power to stay On for a day on medium to heavy usage. We carried out some tests to see how long the Honor View10 battery survives, the tests indicate it runs 1.5 days on moderate usage (includes Music and Video playback, GPS, 4G Data, Calling, Camera, IR Blaster, and apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Gaana, Musical.ly). The battery can also last 2 days on below moderate usage and even more with its battery saving traits.
Honor View10 Battery Test Results
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Verdict
For what the Honor View10 all offers, there’s no other phone in this price category that competes as far as the features are concerned. If you want a phone that performs like expensive flagships, takes smartphone photography to the next level, takes stunning selfies, has software features to amaze you, and lastly budget-friendly, then this is undoubtedly the best phone in the market.
Rivals
- OnePlus 5T – ₹32,999 (64 GB)
- Xiaomi Mi MIX 2 – ₹34,999 (128 GB)
Strength
- Slim Design | Large Bezel-less Screen | Solid Build Quality
- High Display Brightness | Great Viewing Angles
- Worthy Dual Camera Performance | Packed with features (AR lens, Monochrome, Depth, Portrait, etc.)
- Stunning Selfies & Portraits
- Powerful CPU | High-performance 6 GB RAM & 128 GB Storage
- Fast Fingerprint Scanner | Gesture Support
- MicroSD Support
- Dual 4G VoLTE Support
- Fast Charging Support
Weakness
- No water resistance
