Honor 10 Review: Strong camera and design compels buyers

Huawei's sub-brand, Honor, is quite popular among online shoppers and an apt rival to brands like Xiaomi and OnePlus. The recent addition to the Honor smartphone portfolio, Honor 10, has been making strides in the premium category despite the presence of handsets like OnePlus 6 and the newly launched Vivo X21.

International Business Times, India, tested the Honor 10 to see if it really is the handset worth its hype. Honor 10 is priced at Rs 32,999 and available exclusively on Flipkart. The handset packs some serious power and if anyone has to judge the book by its cover, the Honor 10 will leave a lasting first impression.

As was the case with us when we did an unboxing review of Honor 10 last month and it didn't fail to surprise us with the AI magic in camera and a refreshing design. But there's more to the phone than what meets the eye, which is why we have a complete review detailing Honor 10's performance, battery and overall worthiness.

Our take on the design and display of the handset remains unchanged. In fact, Honor 10 has one of the best designs for single-hand use despite boasting a large 5.8-inch full-screen display with 19:9 aspect ratio. As for the screen resolution, using the handset under broad daylight did not seem to be a problem and the "eye comfort" feature is a boon for night owls.

Moving on, the next natural question for any buyer interested in the Honor 10 is how good the camera is. To answer that question, we tested the phone under various conditions and below are some results.

Honor 10 rear camera, comprising of 24MP + 16MP sensors, delivers satisfying results with balanced colours, exposure and light. But the main trick is in the AI, which if activated can do some wonders. The colours are saturated and well balanced to produce some striking results that are needless to edit before sharing. Overall, the rear camera on the Honor 10 is one of the best we've seen in the sub-Rs 40,000 price category.

In addition to that, the camera comes with series of modes, including portrait with different lighting settings, Pro mode, HDR, Light Painting and more. You can read about the camera features of Honor 10 in our previous article.

Performance

Honor 10 is powered by HiSilicon Kirin 970 chipset with NPU and 6GB RAM, designed for optimum performance. The power-packed handset makes sure your high-graphics games such as Asphalt run smoothly without any lags. But the EMUI 8.1 based on Android 8.1 Oreo could use some improvements as there were unexpected app crashes during the review. At one point, the handset froze completely and the only way to revert back to normal was by hard restarting the device.

Honor 10 did not quite exceed our expectations in terms of performance, especially since it is pegged against OnePlus 6, which has proven its potential in more than one instance.

Battery

Finally, the Honor 10 packs a 3,400mAh battery, which handles your daily chores and still pushes through most part of the day. With the mixed usage of calls, messages on internet-based apps, social media browsing and occasional games and music, the handset would last 7 hours. If you cut down on the games, music and video browsing, the battery life can easily reach 8-8.5 hours.

Honor 10 also comes with Huawei Quick Charge, but after using OnePlus 6's Dash Charge, this one's not even a close match. It took us 45 minutes just to get the phone charged from 30-75 percent, which by today's best standards isn't quite acceptable.

Verdict

Honor 10 nails it on the camera front and the design of the handset is a strong USP. But the handset lags in terms of user experience and the battery charging isn't as fast as its rivals, making it fall behind OnePlus 6 in these areas. If buyers can overlook these two setbacks, Honor 10 is certainly a good buy at Rs 32,999.