Huawei P10
HUAWEI OR THE HIGHWAY.
CHINESE PHONE-MAKER HUAWEI stepped up its game — big time — with last year’s release of the P9, producing a genuinelypremium flagship that could go toe-to-toe with the best Android competitors, and even packed a killer unique feature in its Leicabranded camera. Now, the company is back with the P10, a follow-up that takes almost everything its predecessor did well and improves upon it, making it an ideal option for the photography-minded smartphone user.
Like the P9 and the phablet-sized Mate 9, the P10 has dual rear cameras (only this time with no camera bumps whatsoever), once again making photography the key selling point of the device. With 20MP (monochrome) and 12MP (RGB) sensors that combine for use with a creative wide-aperture mode, it becomes relatively easy to achieve shots that look downright professional (at least to the untrained eye).
Trust us when we tell you that you’ll never tire of applying bokeh effects and changing your picture’s point of focus — both of which can be done long after the shot’s already been taken. Interested in night photography? With the P10’s Night Shot mode, you can take some truly incredible pictures that make dark scenes look professionally lit (though you’ll still likely need a tripod, or a very steady hand, to get the best results). And if you want to get even deeper with your photography options, a pro camera mode lets you adjust details like ISO levels, white balance and much more. Unlike last year’s models, the P10 can also apply some of these options to its video recording functionality, such as depth of field and monochromatic video capture.
It’s got a speedy fingerprint sensor on the front (one of the fastest we’ve ever tested), a nice 1080p display (which admittedly lacks some of the Mate 9’s vibrancy), a textured power button which is easy to find by touch alone (plus red edging for added pizzazz), 64GB of onboard storage with the ability to add a further 256GB via microSD, a 3,200mAh battery with fastcharging capability, and thanks to the Kirin 960 processor and machine learning algorithm it’s inherited from the Mate 9 — which tracks how you use your phone in order to create shortcuts that improve its overall speed and efficiency — it’s also blessed with snappy everyday performance that Huawei promises will last at least 18-months before any slowdown occurs.
Speaking of performance, while the P10 doesn’t quite live up to last year’s Huawei Mate 9 (despite having the same chipset, GPU and amount of RAM), it’s pretty close, with a Geekbench 4 single/multi score of 1,904/5,762 vs the Mate 9’s 1,944/6,279 — both a fair bit speedier than the Galaxy S7’s score of 1,840/ 5,441. Battery life was OK, but didn’t show a lot of improvement over last year’s P9, lasting 7 hours and 43 minutes of heavy use.
The P10 also introduces ‘knuckle gestures’, allowing you to do things like knocking on the screen twice to take a screenshot, double-tap two knuckles to initiate screen recording, create shapes by dragging one knuckle to screenshot only specific areas, or draw an ‘S’ to create a long, stitched-together screenshot that will continue to scroll down a page until you tap the screen to stop it.
While it may not have the name recognition of a Samsung Galaxy S8 or LG G6, it’s hard to imagine that anyone who spends some time with the P10 will come away wanting. If you’re looking for an affordable flagship that’s fast and takes amazing photos and video, the Huawei P10 fits that profile nicely.