Huawei Honor View 10 hands-on review

Honor View 10 hands-on

The View 10 is a rather typical representative of the 6-inch 18:9 squad in terms of size. The OnePlus 5T, for example, is less than a millimeter shorter, while the Oppo F5 is just half a mill shorter than the View 10. Another (unrelated) V phone, the LG V30, is one of the most compact 6-inchers and is 5.3mm shorter than the Honor.

Front • Back • Next to the 7X

The View 10 does have a fingerprint sensor on the front to account for its height - way down on its chin. It's not ideal in that it's positioned towards the extreme lower edge of a rather tall device, but if it's good enough for the Mate 10, it's good enough for the View 10.

We can't complain about the button placement, not too much at least. While both the power button and the volume rocker are on the right side, at least they're properly located - volume rocker above power button, unlike you, Pixels.

Button placement makes sense • Just the card slot on the other side

For the Honor View 10 Huawei opted for an aluminum back - there's no sign of the Mate 10 and 10 Pro's glass sandwich. In terms of material choices and build the View 10 is then more akin to the Mate 10 lite. The View 10 is very much flat on its back save for a minor rounding towards the sides, so another departure from the high-end Mates.

The antenna bands are placed along the top and bottom edges, and blend well with the overall shapes and colors so they aren't much of an eye sore - gone are the days of the iPhone 6.

Antenna bands don't draw unnecessary attention

Speaking of colors, you can go right ahead and call us fans of the Navy Blue (or is it Aurora Blue). It's definitely the better-looking handset, with more personality. The black one is a lot more pedestrian and nondescript.

The two color options, we'd pick the blue one in a heartbeat

The two cameras do stand out more on the blue version - on the View 10 they are placed in the top left corner. Huawei is in a constant back-and-forth process of switching between corner and center placement and that varies between model lineups and sub-brands. If anything, the corner location is potentially worse because you could put your fingers on the camera when shooting in landscape and holding with both hands.

The camera is missing the laser autofocus found on the Mates, and only relies on phase detection. The good side of that is there's one fewer window on the back to ruin the minimalist look.

A minion's goggles

Anyway, flip over to the front and you're greeted by the tall 6-inch display. It looked okay in the mixed lighting of the venue floor and if the Mate 10 lite is any indication, the View 10 will be passable out in the sunlight. If we get a chance to review the View 10 in more detail, we'll have more solid numbers. The rounded display corners are a nice touch - the Mate 10 Pro's sharp corners are so last year.

One thing the View 10 has, and the twice as expensive Mate 10 Pro lacks, is a headphone jack. It's on the bottom of the phone on the one side of the USB-C port. The loudspeaker is on the other side. Unlike other Huawei phones, the View 10's earpiece doesn't double as a loudspeaker to make a stereo setup of sorts - bummer.

Good old 3.5mm jack on both the V10 and 7X, USB-C on the V phone only

Up top there's an IR emitter - Huawei is one of the last few holdouts of this useful, yet dying interface. Keep it up, Huawei!

In the hand the View 10 feels quite substantial, maybe not as much as the Mate 10 Pro, but there's a certain density to it that you don't feel with an Oppo R11s, for example. It's still impressively slim - 7mm is practically paper-thin when you consider the sizeable battery.

In the hand

In terms of software, the V10 runs Oreo with Huawei's EMUI 8.0 on top. Huawei heavily advertises the phone's AI prowess, a major talking point since the Kirin 970 chip's announcement earlier this year.

The View 10 boasts an AI-powered face unlock feature, with intelligent notifications (so it shows sensitive content only when it knows it's you), intelligent screen on, and intelligent display orientation - intelligent everything. How all this affects day-to-day use we obviously can't tell just yet.

There's an intelligent scene recognition feature baked into the camera app too. It will detect the scene and adjust settings according.

This seems to be all for now. For more details on the Honor View 10, you'll need to summon your patience until we get a review unit. The phone comes out in the beginning of January, so it shouldn't be long.