The Ugly Writers were invited by the great people of Widget City to witness the unveiling of the latest flagship from Huawei and we felt we had to compare it with the flagship (and honestly, the only phone I am using), the LG V20, the flagship last November of 2016.
We will try to bring this baby in chapters, so feel free to skip some parts whenever you feel like it.
I. Introduction
II. The Unboxing Experience
III. The Specs Sheet
IV. Our Hands-On Experience
V. Comparative Shots
VI. The Geeky Benchmarks
VII. Conclusion
Our MODEST INTRODUCTION
The Huawei Mate 10 Gold and Black variants
With Samsung Note 8, LG V30, the iPhone 8, 8 Plus and X taking up all the airwaves, blog-spots and the limelight, there are still phones that haven’t reached our shores yet but are still worth keeping our eyes peeled for. These are The Essential Phone, The Razor and Huawei Mate 10.
We doubt if the first two will ever hit our local shores but the latest and greatest from Huawei is almost here. To tease us, Huawei and Widget City were nice enough to allow us a review unit for us to ogle at. – and boy did we ogle.
The UNBOXING EXPERIENCE
Good packaging screams out premium feel from the box alone.
The Huawei Mate 10 looks hauntingly familiar
Unboxing the Huawei Mate 10 presents the usual documentation as well some peripherals that come with the device
The Huawei Mate 10 comes with a Standard 3.5mm jack Earphone.
The package also comes with a white high-speed USB Type C charge/sync cable.
Other than the device, the earphone and USB type C Cable, the package comes with the usual flair: the Sim Ejection Tool. Warranty Card and Manual…and an extra clear phone case! That doesn’t come often from a flagship!
Opening the package and setting it up on the table felt like Christmas. When you get yourself one, I bet you’ll feel it too!
The SPECS SHEET
NETWORK Technology
GSM / HSPA / LTE
LAUNCH Announced 2017, October
Status Available. Released 2017, November
BODY Dimensions 150.5 x 77.8 x 8.2 mm (5.93 x 3.06 x 0.32 in)
Weight 186 g (6.56 oz)
Build Front/back glass, aluminum frame
SIM Single SIM (Nano-SIM) or Hybrid Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by)
– IP53 certified – dust and splash protection
DISPLAY Type IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size 5.9 inches, 95.6 cm2 (~81.6% screen-to-body ratio)
Resolution 1440 x 2560 pixels, 16:9 ratio (~499 ppi density)
Multitouch Yes
Protection Corning Gorilla Glass (unspecified version)
– HDR10 compliant
– EMUI 8.0
PLATFORM OS Android 8.0 (Oreo)
Chipset Hisilicon Kirin 970
CPU Octa-core (4×2.4 GHz Cortex-A73 & 4×1.8 GHz Cortex-A53)
GPU Mali-G72 MP12
MEMORY Card slot microSD, up to 256 GB (uses SIM 2 slot) – dual SIM model only
Internal 64 GB, 4 GB RAM
CAMERA Primary Dual: 12 MP (f/1.6, 27mm, OIS) +20 MP (f/1.6, 27mm), 2x lossless zoom, Leica optics, phase detection & laser autofocus, dual-LED dual-tone flash, check quality
Features Geo-tagging, touch focus, face/smile detection, panorama, HDR
Video 2160p@30fps, 1080p@30/60fps, check quality
Secondary 8 MP, f/2.0
SOUND Alert types Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones
Loudspeaker Yes, with stereo speakers
3.5mm jack Yes
– 32-bit/384kHz audio
– Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
COMMS WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, DLNA, WiFi Direct, hotspot
Bluetooth 4.2, A2DP, aptX HD, LE
GPS Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS
NFC Yes
Infrared port Yes
Radio No
USB 3.1, Type-C 1.0 reversible connector; USB Host
FEATURES Sensors Fingerprint (front-mounted), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, barometer, compass
Messaging SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email
Browser HTML5
Java No
– Fast battery charging 4.5V/5A (58% in 30 min)
– DivX/XviD/MP4/H.265/WMV player
– MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV/Flac player
– Document editor
– Photo/video editor
BATTERY Non-removable Li-Po 4000 mAh battery
MISC Colors Mocha Brown, Black, Champagne Gold, Pink Gold
Price About 700 EUR
TESTS Performance Basemark OS II: 3657 / Basemark OS II 2.0: 3415
Basemark X: 40809
Display Contrast ratio: 1383:1 (nominal), 2.742 (sunlight)
Camera Photo / Video
Loudspeaker Voice 90dB / Noise 73dB / Ring 84dB
Audio quality Noise -93.5dB / Crosstalk -93.4dB
Battery life
Endurance rating 87h
COMPARATIVE SHOTS
Now that the paper stuff is over, let’s get down to business!
Our HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE
If this Huawei unit feels and looks hauntingly familiar. It’s because it is. It is reminiscent of the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 of 2015. And it’s actually not a bad thing.
The body (front and back) is adorned with Corning Gorilla Glass for protection, trimmed with aluminum frame. we are all for real-time performance. The volume rockers are on the right side, securely and comfortably reachable with your thumb if you are holding it with your right hand, or index finger, if you are holding it with your left.
Dual Camera setup: 20 MP + 12 MP, f/1.6, with Optical Image Stabilization, two times lossless zoom and Leica optics make this one of the best camera phones out today!
The shots look crisp and it really does smoke other “selfie phones” out there with its true to life color reproduction and saturation.
Among the flagships of 2017, the Huawei Mate 10 is this year’s sleeper hit. No one will see it coming. And this is very much our reason why we’re covering it. This device is the Taj Mahal of smartphones for 2017. Set aside the specs and we are left with actual experience and my experience with the Mate 10 was like great! No fancy marketing will ever do justice to the balance and power this model from Huawei provides. As an average consumer who, at most, has a phone for two years before upgrading, this is very much a great investment.
The Huawei Mate 10 may not be one of the three popular choices of 2016-2017, but it’s a definite win. Specs-wise, it is as good as any 2nd tier flagship of this year, if not the best. 4GB RAM with 64GB Storage Space or a 6GB RAM with 128 GB Storage Space is ample enough to store your media files especially photos taken by the phone’s dual cameras. Sadly, the phone lacks the expandable memory via micro-sd. There’s always Google Photos and Drive for cloud storage though so consumers who will buy the 4GB/64GB Storage won’t feel hindered by the limited (by today’s standard) storage.
Mate 10 is without a doubt, a power user’s phone. But is it a decent camera phone too? Let’s compare shots with my trusty LG V20.
Huawei’s true power is with its camera
LG V20 STOCK CAMERA
LG V20’s take is clear here, but a bit washed out
HUAWEI MATE 10 STOCK CAMERA
Huawei Mate 10 produces more detail and great emphasis on lighting
LG V20 STOCK CAMERA
Despite great quality, LG did poorly on the lighting aspect.
HUAWEI MATE 10 STOCK CAMERA
Mate 10 recreates a great shot with its vibrant colors and richer texture
LG V20 STOCK CAMERA
LG V20 has great manual features but failed to recreate the right lighting.
HUAWEI MATE 10 STOCK CAMERA
Close-ups with the Mate 10 remain sharp and vivid without loss in quality
GEEKY BENCHMARKS
*Please drop by this spot for the actual video of the two benchmark tests in a bit*
Antutu Benchmark
The Antutu Benchmark Result
The Antutu Benchmark Results a good 174021
GeekBench 4
The Geekbench Result of 1873 on Single Core and 6605 on Multi-Core.
The Geekbench Score with a comparison.
CONCLUSION
This great experience is provided by Widget City!
Comparing the Huawei Mate 10 against the LG V20
The newest reiteration from the Mate Series from Huawei may not be popular but it will actually be a great investment for those photography junkies out there as well as power users having a great camera/s and bigger battery in one mobile device. It also doesn’t hurt to know that this is the only flagship known to reach our shore with a reasonable price tag.
If you wish to purchase this device, go to this link and order now!
John Reynold Salandanan
Psy152
Sociology MQ2
This is came from a different country