Honor 10 review – in pictures
A premium phone on a budget that gives the OnePlus 6 a run for its money
Honor 10 review – in pictures
The Honor 10 has specs that sound like they belong in one of the pricier phones around, but costs just £399. Sure, that’s not peanuts, but it is even more affordable than the value king OnePlus 6. But is it just as good? Let’s find out.
Design: Oh! You pretty things!
The Honor 10 is one of the spangliest phones you can buy right now, regardless of price. It’s a glass and metal construction, like just about every higher-end phone released this year. However, Honor has put some fizz into the glass. It calls this Aurora glass, a 15-layer finish that reacts as it catches the light, causing a bit of a show. Bright streaks of blue jump across its back, and not just when you put it under a lightbulb. It’s also available in grey if you’d prefer a subtler look.
Build and security: Invisible touch
The Honor 10 is very easy to handle and has a significantly smaller screen than the OnePlus 6, but at just 7.7mm thick, it’s not best suited to the big-handed. It’s also the first phone we’ve reviewed to have an invisible fingerprint scanner built into the display glass. Honor has put a little dotted line around it, so you can see where it is. It’s fast and pretty reliable, just like most other Honor scanners, although not as fast as Honor’s best. So what’s missing? Not much, really, aside from water-proofing. You’ll have to choose something else if you want a phone you can drop in the bath.
Screen: Everything’s alright
Like the most expensive phones around the Honor 10 has a notch (that you can hide with black bars either side if you so wish) giving it a wildly tall aspect ratio of 19:9. However, the display spec is otherwise not quite as bold. Its resolution is a sensible 2280 x 1080 and it uses an IPS LCD screen rather than an OLED like the iPhone X and OnePlus 6. The only obvious difference is that the Honor 10 isn’t quite as bright as some, making it less visible on an ultra-bright day. Removing the factory applied screen protector can help.
Software and storage: Tumble and twirl
The Honor 10 runs Android 8.1 and has EMUI 8.1 on top. You can choose whether or not to have a separate apps menu, or just homescreens, and how many icons are packed into each screen. EMUI themes also give the Honor 10 a quick zero-effort facelift. The Honor 10 also has a massive 128GB storage, loads for a phone this affordable. OnePlus charges £519 for the 128GB OnePlus 6. The Honor 10 does have an IR blaster, allowing you to replace your TV remote or any other compatible gear.
Performance: Speed to burn
The Honor 10 is fast for the most part, as it should be given the phone has a Kirin 970 CPU. This is a high-end processor just one level below the Snapdragon 845, meaning it trashes cheaper phones like the Motorola Moto G6 Plus. High-end games like Asphalt 8 and Real Racing 3 run beautifully. However, there are definite performance niggles with the Honor 10 at launch, although the only issues we’ve seen so far are with the camera. This phone has all the potential to be great, there are just few stabilising updates which are likely to be rectified in the not so distant future.
Camera: Hang on to your-selfie
The Honor 10 has a 16MP main camera and a 24-megapixel secondary one, used to blur the background, offer a 2x zoom and improve general image quality. Even at night the Honor 10’s photos are fairly good, but its AI assistance goes too far a lot of time, resulting in shots that bring out loads of shadow detail but look over-processed. It’s also developed a few glitches, taking too long to load and generally lagging in operation, but it’s inconsistent, suggesting it’s a software bug rather than just how the phone behaves.
Battery life: Sense of doubt
The Honor 10 is a relatively petite phone, without the extra room that makes fitting in an super-size battery easy. It has a 3400mAh cell, a fine size but nothing too special. This phone’s stamina is more-or-less average. It’ll last a full day but there’s not a chance at two unless you basically don’t use it. Both the OnePlus 6 and Nokia 7 Plus clear have better real-world battery life. The Honor 10 does at least have fast charging, making it easier to live with just decent longevity.
Honor 10 Verdict
The Honor 10 is an adventurous little phone, and one of almost unbeatable value. It looks striking, has an interesting “invisible” fingerprint scanner and fantastic specs for its £400 price. It just needed a few little extras to really trip up the OnePlus 6. The Honor 10 launches with a few performance bugs and the battery life is nothing special. With an ultra-bold finish and hyperactive AI camera mode, it flirts with the limits of good taste for some too. However, it’s certainly one of the best-value, high-performance phones of 2018.
