Honor view10 review

Honor View10 review: A smartphone that aces the mid-tier flagship race

Honor View10 review: A smartphone that aces the mid-tier flagship race on Business Standard. Priced Rs 29,999, the Honor View10, with the company's latest Kirin 970 processor boasting a neuralprocessing unit for artificial intelligence wizardry, comes with 6GB RAM and 128 GB internal storage

Latest News Chinese smartphone maker Huawei unveiled the Mate 10-series, powered by its flagship artificial intelligence-based Kirin 970 system on chip, in its home country last year. Like the previous Mateseries devices, the Mate10-series phones were released in only a handful of markets – and the price-conscious Indian smartphone market was not one of them.

However, Huawei’s online sub-brand Honor has launched in India the View10, an affordable version designed on the footprints of the Mate 10-series, at Rs 29,999. The View10 is Honor’s third launch at this price – the Honor 8 and Honor 8 Pro were the previous two.

The Honor View10 features the company’s latest Kirin 970 processor, which boasts a neural-processing unit for artificial intelligence wizardry. The phone comes with 6GB RAM and 128 GB internal storage packed inside a sturdy metallic body reminiscent of the Honor 8 Pro. The key attraction of the device is its dualcamera set-up on the back and the futuristic 18:9 aspect ratio screen.

Business Standard reviewed the View10 to test the phone’s hardware and software prowess, besides the overall smartphone performance. Here are our observations: Design and display

Despite a 5.99-inch screen, the View10 is narrower than the Honor 8 Pro, which had a 5.7-inch screen; in terms of height and

thickness, it has retained the dimensions of the predecessor. The screen has been stretched to fit the 18:9 aspect ratio which leaves limited space for bezels. The screen resolution has been reduced from quadHD (1440 x 2560) in the Honor 8 Pro to fullHD+ (1080 x 2160) in the View10.

That does affect the pixel counts of the otherwise capable display.

Talking of the overall design, the front is now dominated by the 18:9 aspect ratio screen and a fingerprint scanner embedded under the home key, which is placed on the limited bottom bezel space. While the front sees a major improvement and looks better, the back looks a tad bland, reminiscent of the Honor 8 Pro design. The protruding camera lenses, coupled with prominent antenna lines on top and bottom, temper the overall design theme.

Camera

Honor has a history of using dual-camera set-ups; it is among the first few smartphone manufacturers to introduce the concept in mobile phones. Besides, the company has a dedicated series of smartphones – the P-series – that boasts industry-first dual-camera set-up cocreated in partnership with imaging experts ‘Leica’.

The approach of different manufacturers to the dual-camera set-up is different, and Huawei opted for a monochrome sensor, mated with a regular RGB-based primary sensor, to power its two rear cameras. For the camera-centric P-series and Mateseries smartphones, the camera performance is fine-tuned on the basis of

algorithms co-designed by Leica and Huawei. However, for an all-rounder device like the View10, the company has relied on internal engineering and, therefore, the phone brings a capable dualcamera set-up minus the Leica branding and some software goodies that are limited to the P-series and Mate-series smartphones.

READ MORE