Huawei Mate 10 Pro: The Late Review
So earlier this year, AT&T is the 1st carrier to carry the Huawei Mate 10 Pro and helped Huawei to become a household name. In an alternative universe, this is what could’ve happened. Instead what actually happened is that the carrier pulled out in the 12-hour right before the announcement.
Whatever the case, the company is still out here moving phones via Amazon & other 3rd-party retailers. We just got our hands on the Mate 10 Pro as we’ve been looking forward to doing so for a while now. We’re right around the corner from new Mate series of smartphones so we got a chance to take a look at the Huawei Mate 10 Pro before the new one comes out.
Still top-tier hardware
The Mate 10 Pro offers a beautiful & slim body that’s comprised of metal & glass that isn’t as much of fingerprint magnet as other glass/metal phones. We have the lovely Midnight Blue colorway. You got slim bezels w/o a notch in sight and a pretty fast fingerprint scanner under the camera housing. This even has a damn IR blaster which is now a thing of the past these days. The only thing missing here is a headphone jack.
Now Huawei isn’t necessarily known for – pretty much anything yet. But the 6inch OLED display is an exquisite slightly above 1080p screen. You got a bright display that holds up in outdoor lighting, awesome viewing angles, and eye-pleasing color reproduction. On the entertainment side of things, the Mate 10 Pro speakers are great as well. They go mono in landscape & back to stereo in portrait orientation. Gotta love the nice touches in the details.
- 6inch OLED display w/ 2160 x 1080 resolution + 402ppi
- Kirin 970 CPU + Neural Processing Unit for AI
- 6GB of RAM + 128GB of storage expandable via microSD
- Rear-facing f/1.6 12MP RGB sensor + f/1.6 20MP monochrome sensor w/ OIS + laser/PDAF/depth auto focus
- Front-facing f/2.2 8MP selfie camera
- IP67 dust/water-resistant body
- rear fingerprint reader
- 4000 mAh battery
- Android 8.0 Oreo w/ EMUI 8.0
Superb performance + battery life
They might be the only device outside of Apple not using a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. However, Huawei’s Kirin 970 CPU does a great job of making the Mate 10 Pro a lag-free experience. Coupled w/ 6GB of RAM + its own NPU, makes heavy lifting on this device a breeze.
So before the Note 9, Huawei had a 4000 mAh battery inside of here. Definitely not easy to kill unless you’re watching a lot of YouTube or Netflix. Heavier usage gave me about 18 hours while moderate usage got more close to 3 days on a single charge. I hope the 4000 mAh battery in phones become the norm for 2019.
Huawei strayed away from the telephoto gimmick and stuck w/ an RGB + Monochrome dual camera setup. It also utilizes pretty much all of the ways to focus w/ a laser-based system as well as phase detection + continuous autofocus. The Mate 10 Pro offers a f/1.6 aperture and a Leica certification partnership as well. This leads to it being a powerful performer in regards to its optics, speed, & image processing.
The RGB sensor produces good photos along w/ the option to zoom 2x is great to have. You get superb photos in great lighting and decent results in low-light situations. At times it can be a bit much on the sharpening but not a bad camera at all. But the star of the show is the Black + White photos from their Monochrome sensor. You get amazing detail and dynamic range where you might want to use that sensor all of the time. The 4K video is pretty good but the stabilization could use some improvements.
Definitely the best Huawei shooters I’ve used thus far. It’s better than what I’ve seen from the likes of OnePlus & Motorola. I wouldn’t put next to the iPhones, Pixels, Galaxy crowd but right underneath.
EMUI can be a deal breaker for some.
For many, the software has been the reason they have stayed away from Huawei. More specifically, I’m talking about their EMUI running on top Android 8.0 Oreo. I think it’s decent but the dated icons are definitely an eyesore.
On the upside, you have things like a better one-handed mode than the competition, a native Screen Recorder, and Wi-Fi calling + Voice over LTE at the same time via dual-SIM support. But on the downside, you have to deal w/ things like no expansion of notifications on the lockscreen, too many taps to share screen, and some of the software remains when you throw a launcher on top of it. Most people called it the reason to not buy one but I personally don’t think its completely ruins the day-to-day experience.
The Mate 10 still offers a lot to love from Huawei.
The Huawei Mate 10 Pro is a great alternative to what’s on the market right now. Even better now that it doesn’t cost $800 like it did when it launched -despite the many lackluster reviews it got. You can think of the Mate 10 Pro as the prototype of sorts for the Note 9 – say if the Note 9 still had TouchWiz. I say that as it came out months before the latest Note 9.
However, the EMUI software isn’t gonna win anyone over in its current state on a flagship device. But that’s why we have launchers & icon packs in the Play Store. So along w/ the dumb-long battery life, great performance, superb cameras, and the $500 price point; the Mate 10 Pro is still a great buy as 2018 comes to an end.
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