Huawei Mate 10 Lite review

Telephony

The Mate 10 Lite dialer has a shared interface with the contacts app. There are no groundbreaking features here, but there is nothing missing either.

Smart dialing • contacts • a contact

The dual-SIM settings menu (where available) lets you rename the SIM cards, disable them, and select which one does calls or data by default.

Loudspeaker

There is one speaker on the Mate 10 Lite and it's at the bottom. It scored a Very Good mark in our loudness test. The sound quality is very good, too, but not as impressive as on the Mate 10. The sound is a bit shallow, but we've heard a lot worse, so for the mid-range class we'd say the Mate 10 Lite does just great.

Pre-installed apps

There are a few apps pre-installed on the Mate 10 Lite. Among the more notable ones is the Health app, which tracks steps and calculates calories, but can also supposedly count the number of floors you've climbed.

Health app

You also have a ton of basic tools preloaded, including a proper file manager, calendar app, notes, weather, compass, sound recorder, and flashlight.

Very good file manager • Files • voice recorder • calendar

Pictures, video, and music

The Huawei Mate 10 Lite comes with the familiar EMUI gallery on board. In addition to your camera roll, it offers sorting by albums, or smart sorting by subject, places, events, among others.

The EMUI gallery has its own image editor, if needed, and it also works with variable aperture shots for adjusting the bokeh effects post factum.

The EMUI gallery

The Mate 10 Lite also comes with a pre-installed Video app, which offers basic controls but supports pop-up play.

Video app

The EMUI's Music app is very nice. Its background changes dynamically to match the album art, which is a nice little touch. Lyrics are available and downloaded automatically. Finally, Huawei's Histen sound effects are available on the Mate 10 and include equalizers and simulated 3D audio.

Music app • Now Playing • Lyrics • Sound settings • Equalizer

Audio output is quiet but clear

The Huawei Mate 10 Lite did well in our audio quality test as far as the accuracy of its output is concerned. The phablet had no weak points to its performance with an active external amplifier and plugging in a pair of headphones caused very little damage.

Loudness wasn’t nearly as impressive though and the Mate 10 Lite was well below average in both runs. That might be worth keeping in mind in case you have high-impedance headphones as the smartphone might be unable to produce loud enough output.

Huawei Mate 10 Lite frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.