Huawei Mate 10, 10 Pro and 10 Porsche Design 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 a Mate 10 Pro with its corresponding Mate 10 Porsche Design. There is also a Mate 10 Lite in the family, but that was unveiled earlier and didn't get to share the stage time with its more premium siblings.

Huawei has redesigned 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 QHD 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 novelty 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 got a brighter lens and upgrades in processing. The new chipset comes with dual image signal processing units with movement recognition and the real-time scene and subject recognition powered by the new NPU.

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 video capture, dual-tone LED flash, Leica branding
• Camera features: F/1.6 lens, OIS, Hybrid Zoom, 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 IP67 water-proofing, which is not available on the regular model.

What's different in the Huawei Mate 10 Pro

• 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.

What's different in the Huawei Mate 10 Porsche Design

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

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