We got our hands on the new Huawei P10+ and hung out with it for a good week. It was also accompanied by the Huawei P9, its excellent predecessor. We thoroughly checked all its features and formed an opinion. The Huawei P10+ has pluses, but also some minuses.
Bottom line... Huawei P10 it is a good phone that impresses with many features, but at the same time lags behind the leaders in certain segments, or in the last year it has not been able to make a certain breakthrough, as would be expected from a brand that wants to be at the very top. P10 is a bona fide successor to the P9, but unfortunately it isn't revolution, as we expected after the excellent P9.
First, to the basics of its form and utility
You can get the P10 in two sizes, namely the 5.1-inch screen and the larger P10+ (plus) model, which has a 5.5-inch screen. It has a lock button and a volume control button on the side. On the bottom of the phone, you will find a USB-C connector, next to which there is a speaker and a classic headphone jack. Hooray Huawei!
Compared to its predecessor, i.e. model P9, which had a fingerprint reader on the back, on the P10, engineers moved this button to the front of the phone and added a function Home. All of us who have known and used the P9 model in the past do not like this very much. As the saying goes: ``habit is an iron shirt'', this also applies to the button for reading fingerprints, which was placed in an ideal position on the predecessor and worked flawlessly compared to other manufacturers. Therefore, we have to admit, we miss this button and we don't like the change.
under the 'hood'
Both of them P10 and P10+ powered by Huawei's own processor octa-core Kirin 960, which we have already seen in some top-end Huawei devices like Mate 9 and it does its job with excellence. As for the working charger, it has a classic one P10 4 GB of RAM, while there is space for data storage 64 GB. The larger P10+ raises this bar to 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB data storage space. Of course, both have the option of expanding the memory with an SD card.
Optics see double, which we praise
On the back, we have a dual camera system developed in collaboration with a specialist Leica, which ensures a great photo. Of course, it has a lot of small tricks that can be used to achieve interesting photo effects extremely quickly. However, we do not see excessive progress compared to the model Q9. Everything seems to run a bit faster, thanks to the refreshed software, but we still miss some of the tricks we got used to on the predecessor. Still, we praise photography aids like portrait mode, which keeps the foreground in focus while blurring the background. This creates the effect of a photo with portrait lenses. It is also improved front camera, which is optimized for taking better selfies.
Two things we absolutely miss on the P10
Uhhh, Huawei!!! What we miss the most about this phone is water resistance (standard IP68), as known by all other phones from all major manufacturers and is becoming the standard of every phone in a higher price range. Huawei P10 it must not be soaked in water! Moisture resistance is not a feature that users expect from phones these days, we expect a phone that can fall into water and survive in such a case. But we're also disappointed by the fact that in 2017, a high-end phone doesn't offer wireless battery charging. Something that other manufacturers take for granted today. These two features are the absolute minus of the otherwise interesting P10.
Design – The iPhone is beautiful… the P10+ is similarly beautiful
In terms of design, it's hard to overlook the fact that it is P10 very similar to the iPhone, and this is absolutely not a criticism, but rather a compliment. Well, just a slight observation. It has discreetly drawn strips of antenna on the back bottom, smooth rounded edges that feel nice in the hand, and you can get it in a number of different colors, including blue and green, which are quite unusual for a smartphone, but suitable if you want to go with it to stand out. It's a phone on overall nice, but without special excesses.
S P10 and P10+ Huawei is also introducing a new sophisticated treatment for the back of the phone that they call hyper diamond cut. The effect of such processing gives the metal background a special structure, which is supposed to prevent scratches, but at the same time, such a phone is supposed to slide less in the hands. We like it, but we're not sure how this material will hold up over the long term and when used without protective cases. We in the editorial office are also divided on the statement that the phone is harder to slip out of your hands. The phone slides, but no less and no more than its competitors.
Software at a high level
The smartphone is running EMUI, Huawei's version Android, which we have already gotten used to and works very intuitively once you get to know it well. However, Huawei has gone one step further and optimized performance by using artificial intelligence that resides right inside your new smartphone. Namely, it uses smart algorithms to analyze the operation of your device and learn on the fly which applications you use the most. At the same time, it takes care of the self-maintenance of the software and always makes sure that the phone works really fast. The user will not notice everything immediately, but over time, when his phone will remain as fast as on the day of purchase.
We have to say that while the P10 looks nice and feels compact, it's not as exciting as its predecessor, the P9. It took most of the good features from it, but still did not upgrade them to the extent that the new phone could be called a revolution, but rather just an evolutionary stage. Samsung showed us how this is done with the S8 model. Huawei is also to be blamed for the fact that the phone remained so much like its predecessor, or even lost some ingeniously placed 'button'. One that we users have taken as our own and because of this we hope that the future model will keep this feature. What we got can be described as good, but not revolutionary.
Image gallery: Huawei P10
More information:
huawei.com
