Lenovo Moto G (5th gen)

Huawei P10 SCORE ✪✪✪✪✪ PRICE £421 (£505 inc VAT) from alza.co.uk

With minimalist looks and gentle curves, the P10’s design has more than a hint of the iPhone 7. As with Apple’s device, the fingerprint reader is integrated into the home button, but Huawei differs with USB Type-C charging, a microSD tray and a headphone jack. Our review model was an understated black, but you can take your pick from eight colours.

The P10 has a 5.1in, 1,080 x 1,920 IPS display, bordered by thin bezels on either side. That may sound disappointing when the Galaxy S8 ( see p74) offers a 1,440 x 2,560 resolution, but text and images look perfectly crisp. Closer inspection with our colour calibrator shows the screen covers 99.9% of the sRGB gamut, with a high contrast ratio of 1,219:1. Brightness hit 497cd/m2 , meaning you’ll be fine using the P10 outside when summer finally arrives.

Huawei saves the big upgrades for inside, with the octa-core 2.4GHz/1.8GHz HiSilicon Kirin 960 processor backed by 4GB of RAM and 64GB of onboard storage. For comparison, last year’s P9 ran a Kirin 955 processor. That sounds a modest upgrade, but Geekbench 4 registered 1,940 in the P10’s single-core test and 6,299 in the multi-core benchmark – around 20% up on the P9 and on a par with the Galaxy S8. It gets better, though. While the P9 managed a mere 12fps in the GFXBench Manhattan 3 test at native resolution, the Huawei P10 reached 50fps.

The 3,200mAh battery lasted for 13hrs 12mins in our looped 720p video test, which isn’t the best but is respectable: the P10 should comfortably last a day.

One minor annoyance is that it isn’t running stock Android 7 Nougat. Huawei’s EMUI launcher has improved, but notifications are poorly handled; there’s no grouping, which means it’s easy to be overwhelmed by information.

Where this phone excels is photos. Its 20-megapixel/13-megapixel dual camera produces excellent shots, rich in detail, when natural light is abundant. Quality suffers in low light – Samsung pulls ahead here – but the front camera has had a significant upgrade.

The problem for the P10 is that if you’re spending this much you may well be tempted to stretch another £100 and opt for the Pixel. Still, if £500 is your limit, the Huawei P10 is a strong phone.

KEY SPECS Octa-core 2.4GHz/1.8GHz processor 4GB RAM Mali-G71 MP8 5.1in IPS screen, 1,920 x 1,080 resolution 64GB storage microSD slot dual 20MP/13MP rear camera, 8MP front camera 802.11ac Wi-Fi Bluetooth 4.2 NFC USB Type-C 3,200mAh Android 7 69 x 7 x 145mm (WDH) 145g

Lenovo Moto G 5th generation SCORE ✪✪✪✪✪ PRICE £148 (£177 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk

We knew this day would come. For four generations, the Moto G series set the standard for budget phones. With the G5, that’s no longer a title the little handset can hold onto. It starts brightly. Lenovo has jettisoned the Day-Glo colour plastic of previous Motos and joined the modern convention for metal cases. The G5 feels suitably weighty in the hand, and we’re pleased to say you can still remove the battery. A time of 13hrs 39mins in our battery rundown test suggests it will easily last a full day.

Note that Lenovo hasn’t made the jump to USB Type-C yet, still relying on micro-USB. And, although the Moto G5 supports fast charging, there’s no fast charger in the box. Another minor negative is that the Moto G5 doesn’t support NFC. There’s a fingerprint scanner on the front, though, plus a 3.5mm headphone jack on top.

The Moto G has been on a diet since last year’s model, losing 0.5in from its screen size in the process. That makes the display – which stays at a 1,920 x 1,080 resolution – sharper than its predecessor, but top brightness has dropped from 540cd/m2 to 471cd/m2, and the percentage of the sRGB gamut covered has also taken a hit, falling from 90% to 85.8%. To complete the unwanted hat trick, contrast is also weaker. The difference isn’t huge on any of those metrics, but it’s still disappointing to take backward steps. On paper, the Moto G5 looks like it has comparable specifications to the previous model. It has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 instead of a Qualcomm 617, and both are octa-core chips. Last year’s model was a mix of 1.5GHz and 1.2GHz Cortex-A53s, while in this year’s version, all eight are 1.4GHz A53s. The result is that the Moto G5 comes out a touch slower than last year’s version in Geekbench, which is disappointing when rivals such as Lenovo’s own P2 are around 30% quicker.

In theory, the Moto G5 should take better photos than its predecessor. Both are 13-megapixel cameras with an f/2 aperture, but Lenovo has added phase-detect autofocus, which should speed up capture. In practice, results are mixed. Outdoor shots are excellent, capturing crisp details and rich colours, but indoor shots suffered from too much noise.

We’d choose last year’s G4 over the G5, and save £40 in the process – or pay an extra £29 for the Lenovo P2.

KEY SPECS Octa-core 1.4GHz processor 2GB RAM Adreno 505 5in IPS screen, 1,920 x 1,080 resolution 32GB storage microSD slot 13MP/5MP front/rear camera 802.11n Wi-Fi Bluetooth 4.2 micro-USB removable 2,800mAh battery Android 7 73 x 9.5 x 144mm (WDH) 145g

“The G5 feels suitably weighty in the hand, and we’re pleased to say you can still remove the battery”