Huawei Mate 10, 10 Pro, and 10 Porsche Edition hands-on review

Introduction

Another fall, another phablet season. We've already seen what Samsung and Apple have to offer, but maybe Huawei has a trump card ready? We finally get a glimpse of the new devices in the Mate series.

The Mate 10 series was just unveiled at an event in Germany and rumors were spot on with three high-end devices getting unveiled today - a regular Mate 10 and its corresponding Mate 10 Porsche Design, and also a Mate 10 Pro. There is also a Mate 10 Lite coming soon, but it didn't share the stage time with its more premium siblings.

Huawei has redesigned completely the new Mates in line with the most recent trends but also succeeded to add an original spin of its own. The company has trimmed the bezels and has added curved glass panels to the backs. The Mate 10 is updated with a QuadHD resolution screen, while the Pro gets an 18:9 AMOLED display.

The Mate 10 flagships are the company's first smartphones to feature the new 10nm Kirin 970 chip, which brings a new processor, faster GPU, and a brand-new NPU (neural-network processing unit).

Indeed, many of the new features of the new devices make use of machine learning and Huawei has added this chip to provide hardware acceleration for these tasks.

The camera has perhaps seen the smallest upgrades and these are mostly made available by the upgrades in processing power. The new chipset comes with a dual image signal processing units with movement recognition and the real-time scene and subject recognition powered by the new NPU.

The camera hardware itself was treated to an optical image stabilization system, wider f/1.6 apertures, and higher-quality Leica SUMMILUX-H lenses.

Huawei Mate 10 at a glance:

• Body: Glass body with metal frame, curved Corning Gorilla Glass
• Screen: 5.9" IPS LCD, 1440p resolution (499ppi); HDR10 support, up to 730 nits brightness
• Chipset: 10nm Kirin 970 chipset, Octa-core processor (Cortex-A73 2.4GHz + A53 1.8GHz), Mali-G72 MP12 GPU
• Memory: 4GB RAM, 64GB storage, microSD slot (hybrid, uses SIM2 slot)
• OS: Android 8.0 Oreo with EMUI 8.0;
• Camera: 12MP color + 20MP monochrome, phase-detect and laser-assisted autofocus, 4K at 60fps video capture, dual-tone LED flash, Leica branding
• Camera features:F/1.6 lens, OIS, Hybrid Zoom (2x magnification), Variable aperture mode and Portrait mode
• Selfie cam: 8MP, f/2.0 lens, Portrait mode
• Battery: 4,000mAh; Fast charging (58% charge in 30 min)
• Security: Front-mounted fingerprint reader
• Connectivity: LTE Cat.16, Dual-LTE SIM, IR blaster, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2 + LE, NFC, USB Type-C, 3.5mm audio jack

The Mate 10 Pro, just like last year, swaps the IPS screen for an AMOLED one. It's an 18:9 aspect ratio screen but it surprisingly has a lower screen resolution compared to the Mate 10. The Pro however gets an exclusive IP67 water-proofing, which is not available on the regular model.

What's different in the Huawei Mate 10 Pro at a glance:

• Body: Thinner and lighter body with metal frame, IP67 dust and water resistant
• Screen: 6" AMOLED, 1080p resolution (1080 x 2160 px), 402ppi, HDR10 support
• Memory: 6 GB RAM, 128 GB storage, no microSD slot
• Connectivity: LTE Cat.18 with 4x4 MIMO and 256QAM
• Security: Rear-mounted fingerprint reader
• Misc: No 3.5mm audio jack.

Finally, the Porsche Design model is the same as Mate 10 Pro, but adds a glossy finish on the frame and Porsche branding.

Huawei Mate 10 Porsche Design at a glance:

• Body: Exclusive Diamond Black glass with Porsche accents
• Memory: 6 GB RAM, 256 GB storage, no microSD slot

Huawei had quite a few things to show besides the new Mate designs. The new Kirin 970 puts a huge focus on AI and with the new NPU the Mate 10 phablets should be the best in on-device machine learning to date. The improved Leica Dual Camera is another first on the Mate 10s, as well as the EMUI 8.0.

We spent some time with the new Mate 10 smartphones and we are ready to share our impressions on the following pages.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro hands-on

Huawei Mate 10 Pro is arguably the prettier of the Mate 10 duo. That is not because of the AMOLED panel or the somewhat refined footprint. It's because Huawei also placed a bet in the bezel-less-almost-all-screen game, but the smart way.

The Pro model wraps a bigger screen into a narrower body by trimming 40% of the bezels and moving the fingerprint sensor on the back. But instead of bragging about bezel-less design, Huawei named the screen FullView and stopped there. No claims for all-screen or similar achievements, everything else is specs-related. Let's face it - nobody has managed to really fill completely the bezel-less shoes and we are glad Huawei stayed out of this.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro in Titanium Gray

The Mate 10 Pro features a 6" FullView AMOLED display of 1080 x 2160 px resolution and HDR10 support. The resolution is inferior to the Mate 10's but the 402ppi density still has the flagship vibe to it. Just like on the Mate 10, the screen on the Pro model is covered with a flat protective glass ending on a 2.5D curved edge.

The Mate 10 Pro will be available in Titanium Gray, Mocha Brown, Pink Gold, and Midnight Blue. All EU markets will get the brown and gray versions, the gold will be available globally, too, while the blue will be launched later on as an exclusive for different regions and carriers.

The metal frame running around the sides of the Mate 10 Pro comes with matte, close to sand-blasted, grippy finish and it provides for a rather secure grip between all these slippery glass panels.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro in Mocha Brown

And speaking of the panels, flipping the Mate 10 Pro backwards is as beautiful scenery as the regular Mate 10. The 4-axis curved glass looks stunning, while the neighboring to the camera fingerprint scanner and its polished rim fits very well. We somewhat got used to have the fingerprint reader on the back since the Mate 9, so we like its placement on the Pro better.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro next to the Mate 9

The so-called reflective band serving as an accent on the new Leica Dual Camera is actually a darker hue of the base color. But it serves its purpose and successfully highlights what's important here - the two camera sensors, sitting behind f/1.6 bright lenses and bulging just a tiny bit. The two metal rims mask those small humps very well though, and this is one of the cleanest dual-camera setups we've seen.

A closer look around the sides of the Mate 10 Pro reveals it's also lacking an analogue audio jack. Huawei has joined the anti-jack club and has abandoned the 3.5mm plugs for good. We sure don't endorse this departure, but it seems the makers have already made their minds and are going with Apple on this.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro

Finally, the Mate 10 Pro is IP67-certified for dust and water resistance. Unless we count this old Ascend G350, the Mate 10 Pro is the first modern Huawei smartphone do get water-proofing. And we are very happy Huawei has finally joined the club, but we just can't see what made this impossible to happen for the regular Mate 10 as well.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro, just like the Mate 10, has a clean and stylish design. It has no antenna lines and the trimmed bezels make the AMOLED screen look even bigger and better. Handling this Pro model is a pleasure - it's about as big as the Galaxy S8+, feels nice in hand, and is easy to operate in spite of the 6" display.

The next set of photos will show you the Mate 10 Pro sized up next to the Galaxy S8+. It does feel remarkably similar when held in hand, since the rear glass surfaces on the two phones are quite alike. The Mate 10 Pro is a tad lighter, though you wouldn't notice this without a direct comparison.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro next to the Galaxy S8+

The Mate 10 Pro has the same 4,000 mAh battery as the Mate 10. It should also be enough for 2 full days of battery life. Huawei gives some specific numbers in case you are interested - 30h call time or 20h video playback or 20h 4G browsing on a single charge. It supports Huawei Super Charge and can charge up to 58% of the battery in 30 mins.

While we could see why people went for the Mate 9 Pro last year, the Mate 10 Pro isn't as tempting. The lowered screen resolution will be a turn-off for some despite the water-proofing upgrade and the trimmed bezels. That's will be a tough choice to make no matter what.

Kirin 970 on the Huawei Mate 10 series

Huawei has already introduced the Kirin 970 chip over at IFA a few weeks ago, but this is the first time we see it integrated in a smartphone. Just as previously announced, the Kirin 970 is manufactured using a high-end 10nm process and promises faster performance, and yet should be both battery-efficient and less of a heater.

The highlight of the new Kirin 970 isn't the 25% faster CPU or 4x more powerful GPU, but the brand-new Neural-network processor unit (NPU), which provides hardware acceleration to machine learning tasks. These tasks include processing image recognition, voice recognition, and natural language processing. Huawei has already trained the chip by showing it millions of images, voice samples, and text, so now it's able to interpret new images, voice and data when you subject it to them much faster.

Huawei likes to call the whole process artificial intelligence, but it's not the AI from the sci-fi movies we've all seen, so don't get that excited. And it's not even close to thinking, seeing or learning like a human despite what the ads would tell you. But it does a lot more than Apple's face-recognition so highly advertised for the A11 Bionic chip, and that should be a huge benefit of having a dedicated NPU.

The new Kirin 970 chipset offers an octa-core processor that should provide 25% performance improvement over the Kirin 960's, while remaining up to 50% more power efficient. The CPU still packs the same 4x2.4 GHz Cortex-A73 & 4x1.8 GHz Cortex-A53 cores, but the A73 cluster can work side by side with the efficient cores and the NPU to deliver faster performance.

The new GPU in charge of graphics is a 12-core Mali-G72MP12. It should provide 4x performance increase over the 8-core Mali-G71MP8 inside the Kirin 960, while its power efficiency is 8x better than the GPU inside old chip. We are interesting how this will stack against the 20-core Mali-G71 inside the latest Samsung Galaxies, though.

Huawei will be giving the developers access to the Huawei's proprietary SDK for the NPU, so they will be able to address it and use it as they see fit. In the future, the company plans to support the Android NPU API as well, so it would be even easier to run standardized machine learning features on the Mate 10 phones.

Microsoft's translation app is one of the first to make use of the NPU. Huawei claims that thanks to this, the real-time augmented reality-style camera translation of foreign text and signs has become up to 3x faster on the Mate 10.

Kirin 970 and also comes with a built-in Dual ISP, which is 25% faster and supports motion detection. AI capabilities allow it to recognize objects, people's faces and bodies, and the environment to adjust the camera settings accordingly. It should also provide less washout of the dark tones and less clipping of the highlights in low-light photos.

The Mate 10 Pro and Porsche will benefit with 4x4 MIMO and 256QM, which has resulted in Cat 18/13 LTE support. This means it can provide a download speed of up to 1.2Gbps. The Huawei Mate 10 will only have Cat 16 support.

Signal should also be better as Huawei has made sure to optimize the antenna performance in various specific scenarios among which is a high-speed train scenario, and it's already been tested in several countries and on different networks.

Using machine learning, the phone should be better in noise suppression as it will be able to detect your voice more accurately even if you are whispering.

The chipset has a Dual LTE modem with Dual VoLTE

support, so if you get the Dual SIM model, it will support 4G on both SIM cards. It will also offer dual Wi-Fi Calling including LTE handover.

Not all markets are getting the Dual SIM model - the UK for instance will only get the Single SIM one. You should check your local Huawei websites for more information on the exact models.

EMUI jumps to v.8

EMUI is now going up from ver. 5.1 straight to ver. 8.0 to match the version of Android it comes with - Android Oreo. And we don't mind that, a little coherency never hurts.

Many of the EMUI's new features are powered by the dedicated NPU inside Kirin 970 chipset.

EMUI 8 will be building on-device user behavior model to allow for faster app startup and for more intelligent power allocation. Huawei promises 12% performance improvement compared to the previous version.

EMUI 8.0 will also (intelligently) suggest features based on the environment and the user interaction. For instance, it should offer the user to turn on the blue light filter towards the end of the day. Or when a new notification comes, while you are watching a video, it will offer you to go straight into split-screen mode. Of course, this will work only for apps, which support it.

The landscape mode of the interface will now feature a two-column interface in a few of the default apps - not unlike the way it's implemented on Samsung devices.

EMUI is also targeted at making the best out of the large screen and you can replace the navigation keys by using the flexible on-screen floating navigation dock. Swipe left or right and it gets you the Task switcher. A longer press gets you to Home. A longer press and swipe gets you Back on the previous screen you were on.

Another new feature in EMUI 8 is the desktop mode. Once you connect the phone to an external screen via a HDMI-to-USB-C cable (it needs to support DP), you will get a desktop PC-like user interface. To control it, you can either use a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard or use the phone's screen as a trackpad and invoke the on-screen keyboard when needed. This desktop-like experience is called Projection and it doesn't require a special dock - just one cable. Even though the phone doesn't come with Bluetooth 5.0, you can connect a Bluetooth mouse and a keyboard at the same time.

Of course, you can't charge the phone while using it in this mode. But you can still make calls and send messages without interrupting the desktop view. Your privacy is protected too as they won't show in the big screen, only on your phone's.

Most of the EMUI updates happened under the hood, while there are no groundbreaking changes through the user interface. A few refinements here and there, but far from a massive overhaul. And you can also do such, if you want, by opting for some of the rich themes in the Themes app.

Some good news to current Huawei users - the Mate 9 and the Mate9 Pro will be updated to EMUI 8.0 three to four weeks after the release of the Mate 10 series. Updates to the Huawei P10 and P10 Plus are also coming in near future. Huawei will integrate the intelligent features available in the Mate 10 on the Mate 9 and P10, too, but those will be relying on the processor alone in there. Here is hoping the overall performance won't take a big hit.

Security is also really important to Huawei and they plan on providing Google's Android security updates regularly. The company is committed to providing high-end premium phones with these updates every month. Mid-tier phones will be getting them every two months, while entry-level phones will be updates with the latest security patches every three months.

Leica Dual Camera

The Huawei Mate 10, Pro, and Porsche - all come with the new dual-camera by Huawei and Leica. It's the third generation, but one thing stays the same as before - the camera sensors. Huawei has kept the 12MP color and 20MP snappers from the Mate 9 and P10, but has tweaked minor aspects here and there.

Much like on the Huawei P10 Plus, the camera now has OIS, which is a step forward from the Mate 9.

The new higher-grade Leica SUMMILUX-H lenses have f/1.6 apertures. Thanks to the Kirin 970 and the new dual ISPs, processing and noise reduction have gone better. Photos should have less wash-out, blacks should be darker and highlights should have less clipping. The camera will detect movement and adjust shooting parameters accordingly. The powerful hardware also allows for 4K at 60fps video recording.

So, new lenses, new processors, new stabilization, 4K at 60fps video - those are the hardware upgrades for the camera. It relies on the same 4-way focusing technologies as before - you get laser AF, depth detection, contrast-detect AF, phase-detect AF and phase detect AF.

But the novelties don't end here. The new AI engine powered by the NPU core can identify up to 14 different scenarios and automatically adjust camera parameters for better pictures.

Deep learning algorithms allow for better quality of the hybrid digital zoom. Portrait mode and the variable aperture also benefit from the new on-device machine learning capabilities for better accuracy, and stronger bokeh effects.

Finally, the hybrid photos (shot with the two snappers and then combined) will be better and should look better for 20MP high-res color images when you need such.

The selfie camera is 8MP in resolution and has an F/2.0 aperture. It comes with a portrait shooting mode, too, which is able to create a digital bokeh for your selfies. The AI engine takes care to recognize all faces in the shot, so if you are doing a groupie, it will keep all faces in focus and blur the background accurately only. Huawei is calling this AI Selfie. Let's hope it works better than the one on the P10 selfie snapper.

We snapped some photos with the pre-production units of the Mate 10 Pro. We are yet to see the retail unit, so we'll keep the comments for later. For now, just enjoy the images.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro 12MP color photos

And here are some monochrome shots of the same scenes.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro 12MP monochrome photos

Finally, we captured a quick 4K at 30fps video sample.

Huawei EnVizion 360 Camera

The first accessory shown by Huawei wasn't introduced with the Mate 10 series. In fact, the EnVizion 360 Camera was announced back in May, but availble only in China until now.

Like the name suggests, it's a 360-degree camera with a pair of 180-degree sensors on each side (13MP in this case), capable of taking 360-degree 5K panorama photos and 2K videos.

Huawei 360 Camera

The small camera can be attached to any smartphone featuring a USB Type-C port via its protruding connector from one of its sides via USB OTG protocol.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro with the 360 Camera

We tried it on the Mate 10 Pro - indeed, it's easy to plug in, you just need to install the proprietary camera app from the Play Store. The 360-degree images and videos are compatible with the EMUI's gallery and you will have no issue viewing them and showing them off. Those are very easy to share on the social networks, too, no additional tools are needed.

We can't decide if we love the retro/futuristic mix of a design, but it's compact and it works and that should be enough. Here are a few samples we snapped for you.

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Flip cases

Huawei has designed some original cases for the new Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro. Those have a transparent strip at the front and the phone automatically recognizes them. In this visible part of the display you will get to see the clock, notifications, weather, walked steps, among others.

The back of the cases has a rectangular cutout for the camera and a circular one for the fingerprint sensor. While those are surely needed, we found them somewhat raw and not fitting with the design. We think Huawei could have done here better, but that's just our opinion.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro Flip Cases

Wrapping it up

This is probably one of the biggest updates the Mate phablets have ever seen. The new screen, chipset, camera, battery can easily be considered class-leading. We've seen the dual-glass design already, but we don't mind Huawei's take on it, and we liked it.

The regular Mate 10 has finally received the long overdue 1440p screen update, while the HDR10 support and the high 730nits of brightness are more than welcome. The Kirin 970 chip is a real beast, but we are yet to see the benefits of the NPU and the actual on-device machine learning capabilities for everything, including the camera. And speaking, of...

The Leica Dual Camera has the same resolution as before, but the bright lenses, the added optical stabilization, and the dual ISP may bring about much improved photos in any scene or light conditions. You can tell Huawei tried to upgrade everything about the camera - from lenses to stabilization and video recording, while the NPU should be giving an edge over the competition with better portrait, hybrid, varied aperture, and group selfie portrait shots. We can't wait to test all of those.

The Pro model once again gets an AMOLED panel, this time with 18:9 aspect ratio, but it gets to stay at the 1080p resolution. On the other hand, the Pro version is water resistant, with thinner bezels, and a comfy fingerprint scanner on the back.

Everything from the features, through design, and even color options seem thoroughly thought by Huawei and the new Mate 10s look nothing short of promising flagships.

What we liked and what we would have liked

We really liked the new chipset capabilities promising improvements in both performance and power efficiency.

The Leica camera has been nicely upgraded too though most upgrades are deep behind the scenes and we would have to use for a bit longer until we can say these are worthwhile.

The 4-axis curved design is nothing new, but the new design with the reflective band running across make it look unique enough.

And who wouldn't like that 4,000 mAh battery.

We are not fans of the retired audio jack, though. The fact that only the Pro version is getting IP67 water resistance is a disappointment too. In the same time, the fact that Pro comes with a lower screen resolution is equally displeasing. This weird fragmentation could have been avoided for sure.

Finally, we will be missing the flexibility of the having a microSD card reader but that would mostly be true for the Mate 10 as the Pro's single storage configuration is 128GB.

There is this thing with that all-glass designs and yet missing wireless charging. But we can forgive this omission as we are quite happy with the Huawei Super Charge.

First impressions

We are impressed with the new Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro. While they are not perfect, they seem to pack more than enough to be ranked as best-sellers. The Mates tick all the right boxes the previous Mate phablets were loved for, and build on those with nice new additions such as the design, on-device intelligence, very powerful processor, HDR10- compatible screens.

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