The unique back case of the Honor 10 is what caught my eye. Fantastic color gradient, oh, my. The specs for Honor’s flagships have been quite easy to guess lately, for example take the most current Huawei P smartphone, leave the Leica branding out of the specs sheet and voilà, don’t mind my French side. The same applies for the Honor 10 – it’s a P20 which accounts for the fancy branding. But priced at just Rs 32,999, the flagship costs equal, if not less, to an average mid-ranger. Honor is dead set on offering affordable high-quality smartphones so, in most markets, sales happen only through online marketing. The Honor 10 follows the trend set by Samsung with the Galaxy S6 three years ago of having glass on front and back. The glass on the back is curved, the phone’s edges are polished metal, making it feel almost exactly like the latest Samsung Galaxy. It’s smooth, feels very well made and is undoubtedly the most acquisitive feeling Honor, yet that believes its “budget” market positioning.
DESIGN
When it comes to design language, Honor 10 has added some finesse to the design. The phone comes in two colors-Phantom Blue and Midnight Black.Honor has used what it calls “Aurora Glass design elements” with the phone, where even though the Midnight Black colour looks like any other glossy back phone. The honor 10 is smudge and dust magnet.The glass back is complemented with an aluminium frame, which is glossy on the Midnight Black phone, and matte on the Phantom Blue variant. An LED flash feature is present beside the camera module. The Honor 10 comes with a 5.84-inch FHD+ display with a resolution of 2280 x 1080 pixels, which translates to a pixel density of 432 PPI. There’s a notch up top and a chin down below. In the centre of the chin, you have a marked area for a fingerprint sensor. It’s not a separate button but a perforated rectangular demarcation that is flush with the entire chin.
SOFTWARE AND OS
Honor 10 also runs on Android 8.1 along with the Emotion UI 8.1 skin atop it and it comes with the 1 April 2018 security patch.EMUI is definitely not the best skin out there, but it gets the work done and does include some welcome refinements.
The face lock feature is not that amazing.And the fingerprint sensor is slow and takes at least a couple of tries in most instances to unlock the device with just a fingerprint. But the good thing about it is, it responses to were fingers.
PERFORMANCE
The Honor 10 houses a Kirin 970 SoC along with 6 GB of RAM, which ensures that that device is capable of running everything. But the disadvantage the phone shows is that , it warms up when any heavy game or app is used. The thermal-management algorithms definitely need to be looked after, as the heating issue isn’t that prominent on most devices these days.
CAMERA
On the back the phone has two cameras, one 16-megapixel and one 24-megapixel, which work in conjunction to produce images, simulate depth of field effects and other tricks. It captures all the tiny details with excellent quality.The selfie camera is good, but struggled to produce images that were pin sharp in dim indoor lighting.
BATTERY
The Honor 10 comes with a 3,400 mAh non-removable battery which supports the Super Charge feature. By charging once a day, you can keep on working on your phone. And thanks to the super charging feature, it doesn’t take a long time to charge your phone.
The Honor 10 has the glass body of the P20, the unique paintjobs included. On paper, the two also share the same screen, same processor, same battery with the same SuperCharge support, same software, and rather similar cameras. And yet, the 10 is impressively cheaper. The dual-camera setup on the back uses the same RGB+B&W combo but relies on different camera sensors. We are yet to see if the image quality would be comparable to P20. if you really want that 128 GB storage, a relatively compact form factor, and that punch in every image you capture, then the Honor 10 will not disappoint at Rs 32,999. The Honor 10 is a well-rounded device which offers great real-life performance, a really good camera with a lot of options to play around with, gorgeous design language.
