Huawei Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro teardown shows very similar internals

The Huawei Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro share many of their features so it’s not surprising to see a common design on the inside.

The vanilla phone seems to a rubber gasket on the back cover, which should offer a solid level of water resistance, but the phone is rated only for IP54. There seems to be a rubber ring around the USB-C port, even the card tray has one.

Huawei Mate 10 teardown

Compare that to the Huawei Mate 10 Pro. You can clearly see the rubber ring around the USB-C port on the bottom and the card tray (there’s no headphone jack). It’s not entirely clear what the Pro model does more to reach its IP67 rating.

That aside, the internals of the two phones comprise tow boards around the 4,000mAh battery. The top one is the motherboard and contains the dual Leica camera and the selfie cam. It connects to the bottom board (USB-C port, loudspeaker, etc.) via ribbon cables that go over the battery – so one needs to be careful not to damage those when removing the back cover.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro teardown

You can see another difference – the small ribbon cable for the fingerprint reader. On the vanilla Mate 10, it simply goes over the battery to reach the bottom board. On thee Pro model, it folds over to go the back panel.

The back panel and the battery are glued down, but the rest seems fairly easy to repair. But where's the chink in Mate 10's water-protection armor? The headphone jack, the loudspeaker or something else?

Source 1 (in Chinese) | Source 2