➤ Honor 10, the review 🎮

The Honor smartphones of the Chinese giant Huawei have gained a considerable following in Spain over the last few years, thanks to the good balance between design and technology and with an enviable value for money. After the excellent Honor 9 last year, the company took it one step further this time with Honor 10, a device obviously based on Android that already from the first weeks of sale has achieved considerable success, even being sold out in the days following the launch. But is all that glitters really gold?

Aesthetics and technical characteristics

In a historical moment in which, given the adoption of schermi borderless, most of the medium / high-end smartphones are likely to be almost indistinguishable from each other in the front, Honor has chosen to give personality to its new device in the rear area of the body: the metal frame covered with glass, in the Phanthom Green and Phantom Blue, in fact, has the particularity of offering an iridescent effect depending on the angle from which you look at it, with a really pleasant and original result that the company has christened "Aurora Glass Design". The downside is that it is a real fingerprint magnet, unless of course you are using a case.

Ergonomics are excellent, thanks to small dimensions that allow excellent usability even with one hand, without risky soap effects; equally Honor 10 finds space in the trouser pocket without problems, and the weight of 153 grams is contained and distributed in a balanced way along the entire body of the device. Under the body instead we find a Kirin 970 octa-core from 2,36 GHz, the same as Huawei P20 with which Honor 10 actually shares most of the features. This, accompanied by 4GB of RAM, guarantees fluid and rapid use in any situation, from daily use with the most popular apps to the most graphics-intensive games. The front of the device also houses the fingerprint sensor at the bottom, which is located under the glass. Unfortunately, this is neither a particularly fast nor precise sensor, making frequent daily use not very pleasant. The alternative is facial recognition, which actually works much better: fast and reliable even in low light, in our experience it proved to be absolutely preferable and very comfortable. The operating system is Android Oreo 8.1, therefore the most recent currently available, customized by the EMUI 8.1 interface. The latter has actually improved a lot over time, becoming very pleasant to use at present: fast, lean, fluid, with intelligent customizations and almost never out of place. To signal the presence of the 3.5mm audio jack, to the delight of all aficionados of wired headphones. The integrated speaker is instead mono, a choice that could make us turn up our noses but which actually behaves sufficiently well in the use that it is legitimate to ask it. On the other hand, the very concept of stereo in such confined spaces is rather intangible.

Camera and screen

The 5.84-inch IPS LCD display with 2280 x 1080 resolution with a 19: 9 ratio is one of the best panels within this price range: color balanced, bright, extremely readable even in direct sunlight, it has very few weaknesses. Obviously the OLED is in another category, but it also brings with it different costs. The notch, cross and delight in the design of smartphones "post iPhone X" is also present on Honor 10 in such a way as to maximize the available space; whoever should feel an absolute repulsion for this solution can still breathe a sigh of relief since, through a special software option, it can in fact be hidden.

In this way, a small portion of the screen at the top will remain black, thus making the notch disappear. In our experience we have not had great difficulty in accepting the notch, which in fact, once you get used to it, does not cause any particular discomfort. Rather, we find ourselves remembering its existence by passing from an optimized app to a non-optimized one, undoubtedly an unpleasant element from the point of view of the consistency of the user experience; however, this is a problem that hopefully is destined to affect less and less frequently over time, as the individual applications are updated. A necessity, the latter, rather looming given precisely the ever-increasing number of smartphones equipped with notches. There camera it is a slightly protruding dual cam, with a 16 MP color and 24 MP black and white sensor. The main peculiarity is related to the AI Camera, which in practice indicates an option (which can be deactivated at will) through which the software is able to "understand" what type of subject and in which scene you are about to shoot so as to apply all a series of filters and modifications to make the image more vivid, the colors more saturated, the shadows more defined or perhaps blurring the background in the case of portraits. In most cases the result seemed to us to be actually good, except for some occasions when the naturalness was compromised a little too much. In any case, even shooting with the option active, a copy of the same image is saved in the original, so as to allow you to compare and choose the best one.

More generally, Honor 10 allows you to take photos of remarkable quality, even amazing on the most favorable occasions for lighting when the sensor is able to work at its best; the front camera is less exciting, which despite the 24 MP fails to guarantee high-level shots. Finally, the videos can be recorded up to 4K resolution, with overall good quality even if the electronic stabilization only does not work miracles. The 3400mah battery is adequate, fully guaranteeing the "classic" full day of standard use. On the other hand, there is no wireless charging, an acceptable lack in a mid-range terminal. The equipment is completed by WiFi 802.11 a / b / g / n / ac and Bluetooth 4.2, while the absence of FM radio may irritate some users, as well as the absence of expandable memory that forces you to deal with the internal space. In conclusion, Honor 10 is a smartphone that fully deserves the success it is registering: at the price of € 399 for the 64GB version, a figure already tweaked by a few tens of euros by online retailers, it is a terminal with a quality ratio. excellent price, beautiful to look at, balanced in practically all its features and with many lights and very few shadows. Undoubtedly one of the best choices within the mid-range terminal range, and yet another confirmation of the well-established quality of the Chinese brand.

Comment

Tested version Android 64 GB Price 399 €

Lately we tend to abuse the term "best buy", but Honor 10 fits perfectly. Although not a top of the range, it boasts technical solutions and a design similar to those of much more expensive terminals, such as to make the smartphone of the Chinese brand a very advisable purchase for anyone looking for an Android device within this price range.