Huawei Mate 10 Review

Today we will review the Huawei Mate 10, my favorite flagship smartphone of 2017. Why is it my favorite? Well, there are a lot of factors why I liked this smartphone. The Huawei Mate 10 is just one of the two flagship smartphone of Huawei that belongs in the Mate series but despite being the lower variant, the Huawei Mate 10 still performed well. Check out our review of the smartphone below.

A better and sexier design

One of the things that I really love on the Huawei Mate 10 is its design. Unlike the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, the Huawei Mate 10 adopted the 16:9 display aspect ratio which made the smartphone a wider and uncomfortable for small hands but we’ll get to that later.

Again, the design of the smartphone is one of the things that I really liked about it. The smartphone is made up of glass at the back and then there’s the sexy stripe which highlights the dual camera of the smartphone also the LED Flash and the laser autofocus. The smartphone is just sexy to look at. There’s also the metal sides which makes the smartphone not only look premium but also really feel that it’s a flagship smartphone.

The Huawei Mate 10 also packs a home button on the front which also serves as the fingerprint scanner of the smartphone. Actually, I prefer having the fingerprint scanner of the smartphone at the back instead of the front as it will bring a cleaner look. Oh, and yes, the fingerprint scanner is really fast.

One of the things that you would probably like with the Huawei Mate 10 is that they didn’t ditch the 3.5mm audio jack on the smartphone compared to the Huawei Mate 10 Pro and of course, there’s the USB Type-C in the smartphone that supports Huawei’s Super Charge and yes, the smartphone can charge really fast.

Again, the smartphone is a little bit uncomfortable to the hands as the Huawei Mate 10 sports a 16:9 display aspect ratio. But because of its curved back, it won’t really strain your hand while using the smartphone.

The 16:9 Display

Just to be clear, the Huawei Mate 10 sports a 5.9-inch IPS display with 1440p resolution while the Huawei Mate 10 Pro brings a 6.0-inch FHD+ OLED display with 18:9 display aspect ratio. Is the display of the smartphone bad? No, it’s not. It’s actually good as the display of the Huawei Mate 10 is really bright. The smartphone’s display actually has pretty accurate colors and it’s very fun to play with.

My only problem with it is that the smartphone still uses the 16:9 display aspect ratio. Most flagships these days already switched to 18:9 display aspect ratio which is more comfortable to the hands and offers a larger display. It’s also better to have a split-screen mode in portrait mode when you have an 18:9 display aspect ratio.

The A.I. Prowess

This is probably the biggest feature of the smartphone – the Kirin 970 processor inside. This is the world’s first SoC with AI capabilities and Huawei is really proud that the smartphone can do AI computing tasks faster and better than other smartphones. We actually saw a benchmark before from Huawei in where the Kirin 970 processor inside the smartphone can recognize thousands of images a few minutes.

And in my experience, I’m pretty happy with what I got with the Huawei Mate 10. I didn’t experience any slowdowns on the smartphone and whatever that I do with the Huawei Mate 10, it’s fast and it’s flawless to use. Actually, you can fully experience the AI capability of the smartphone when you use the camera of the Huawei Mate 10.

It’s also powerful

Aside from having the A.I. capabilities, the Huawei Mate 10 does actually have a powerful processor inside. Actually, Kirin processors are known to have a powerful performance and the Kirin 970 doesn’t fail to impress me.

When it comes to gaming, the Huawei Mate 10 just performs well and without problems. All games that I’ve played and tried on the smartphone doesn’t have a problem and it ran really well. Most of the major games that I’ve played on the smartphone didn’t have a problem with Kirin processors.

Great Battery Life

When the Huawei Mate 10 was launched, I was really amazed at its battery capacity. Inside the smartphone is a 4000mAh battery. That’s pretty big and thanks to the large capacity and the processor with A.I. capabilities inside the Huawei Mate 10, the smartphone can last a whole day. LITERALLY. The battery life of the smartphone is so good that if you’re not a heavy user, the smartphone would last a day and half of use. In my usage, I was able to use the smartphone in a single workday without the use of power bank.

Amazing Camera

The Huawei Mate 10 might be more affordable compared to most flagship smartphones this year but the Huawei Mate 10 doesn’t disappoint when it comes to camera quality. The Huawei Mate 10 actually performed better than I expected thanks to its Dual Lens Leica Camera. The camera setup of the smartphone is still the same in where one of the cameras is RGB while the other is monochrome.

The Huawei Mate 10’s camera actually brought really sharp photos and the colors were really accurate. The contrasts of the photos were really good just like what Huawei has promised before and the bokeh shots that I took using the Huawei Mate 10 were really great as it was on point most of the time.

And thanks to the Kirin 970 SoC with A.I. capabilities, the smartphone can easily recognize a scene and actually, it can easily recognize if you’re taking a photo of a dog or a cat. The smartphone is just amazing.

Check out the shots that I took using the Huawei Mate 10.

Pretty amazing huh?

Verdict

The Huawei Mate 10 is a great flagship. It’s actually my favorite flagship smartphone of the year as the smartphone has a balance of features and price. Unlike other flagship smartphones, the Huawei Mate 10 is below Php35,000 and yet it offers features that you can find on smartphones at the Php40,000 price range.

The smartphone also doesn’t disappoint in features as the Huawei Mate 10 offers a great design, a camera that can really match up to flagship smartphones today, a powerful processor with amazing A.I. performance, a great camera and of course a long battery life.

I don’t actually have a problem with the smartphone aside from the smartphone from being a little bit too big on my hands as this one sports a 16:9 display aspect ratio. But the rest? It’s actually great.