Quick Verdict
The Honor 10 is a reasonably priced smartphone with cameras and performance capability to rival today's premium smartphones. If lack of waterproofing and the ability to insert a MicroSD card don't put you off, it's an excellent phone at an excellent price point.
The Honor 10 is the latest smartphone offering from Honor and offers an AI dual camera functionality to intelligently decipher what it is that you're photographing. There are 24 megapixel f/1.8 black & white and 16-megapixel f/1.8 colour cameras on the back and a 24-megapixel front-facing selfie camera, making it an interesting option for those that are interested in smartphone photography.
Honor is the budget arm of Huawei, who has recently released the P20 family of high-performance smartphones. The Honor 10 seems to have inherited very similar specs and performance attributes to the Huawei P20 however, which looks to give you superior performance for a lower price than most other smartphones of this spec.
The Honor 10 is available in 2 colours, iridescent blue and iridescent grey, and updates the Honor 9. You can buy it for £399.
Honor 10 Features
The Honor 10 is a sleek smartphone with a wide range of useful features built in. On the right-hand side, there is the on/off button and volume control. On the left-hand side, there is access to the memory card slot. On the bottom along with the speaker, there is the USB-C charging port, headphone jack and microphone. There is a home button on the front that doubles as a fingerprint sensor.
The phone is equipped with a gravity sensor, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, gyroscope, compass, fingerprint sensor, infrared sensor and hall sensor.
There are 2 cameras on the rear, the 24 megapixel black and white and 16mp f/1.8 cameras. Using 2 different cameras allows the phone to capture clearer images through the black and white sensor due to lack of an RGB filter, and also offer more overall light collection for all images thanks to the two sensors.
There is a 5.84-inch Full HD+ touchscreen.
These cameras offer 2x hybrid zoom with no loss in image quality. The built-in AI capability of the camera can detect the scene it's looking at to put the camera in the best possible mode and Honor say that it can recognise more than 500 scenes. The camera mode has aperture and portrait modes as well as the standard photo mode and more specific modes can be selected from the more tab which includes monochrome, panorama, slo-mo and pro modes where manual settings can be applied.
Video can be recorded in UHD 4K, 1080p (2160x1064 18:9, 1920x1080 60fps and 1920x1080) and HD (1280x720).
Key Features
- Dual rear camera - 24mp f/1.8 black and white, 16-megapixel f/1.8 colour
- 24-megapixel front camera
- AI technology can identify more than 500 scenes and put the camera in the best mode
- 4K video recording
- 2x hybrid zoom
- 5.84-inch Full HD+ touchscreen
- Flash with on/off/auto toggle
- Fingerprint sensor
- ISO 50-3200 (selectable in Pro mode)
- 3400 mAh battery
- 128GB ROM/ 4GB RAM
Honor 10 Handling
The Honor 10 feels well built with a metal frame and shiny glass back. The phone is very slim and feels good in the hand, although a case is recommended, partly to protect that lovely shiny back which will be prone to scratches and partly in case of drops. Ours came with a basic protective case in the box.
Buttons on the side feel robust and reassuring when pressed. The screen is large and very bright, and the notch design at the top gives it a more infinite feel. The fingerprint sensor is in a familiar place at the bottom of the screen.
It's easy to navigate the phone to camera mode, by tapping the camera button on the home screen. Once here, you can scroll through the modes. These are aperture, portrait, photo and video, and swiping to the more tab gives you 16 more mode options:
- Night shot
- Panorama
- Monochrome
- Light painting
- HDR
- Time-lapse
- Filter (Sentimental, Impact, ND, Valencia, Blue, Halo, Nostalgia, Dawn)
- 3D panorama
- Watermark
- Document scan
- 3D Creator
- Artist mode
The phone scores 1884 for single and 6602 for multi-core performance on Geekbench 4, confirming that it is a very fast and capable phone. AnTuTu gives the phone and overall rating of 190912, placing it behind the Samsung Galaxy S9 + at 265132, and just slightly behind the Huawei P20.
Battery life - At 3400mAh, the battery is very good for a smartphone at this price point, and there are a number of options to extend the battery life performance. The battery can't be removed so you'll need to take a USB-C charger if you think you'll need more power.
Honor 10 Performance
The performance section is where we look at the image quality performance of the camera. Additional sample photos and product shots are available in the Equipment Database, where you can add your own review, photos and product ratings.
Huawei Honor 10 Sample Photos
Colour in images is excellent and the AI is very good at selecting the scene - it correctly identified text, greenery, macro photos and dogs to name just a few. The camera then selects what it thinks is the optimum mode for the photo. This won't be to everyone's liking, as it can make greens, in particular, a little overpowering, however, the option can easily be toggled on / off at the top of the camera screen.
The bokeh mode for portraits is effective. The algorithms for isolating the head from the background could be improved a little for the lighting modes - some of the modes make it quite obvious where the software has tried to cut around the head/hair and left a halo, especially the spot-lighting option.
Detail is well captured and the camera coped well with flare. Colours are wonderful and vibrant.
Huawei Honor 10 ISO test images
ISO Noise Performance - Noise performance is quite good up to ISO400, with ISO800 images showing much more noticeable noise in darker areas. ISO1600 is the highest ISO speed selectable in manual mode and shows the most noise, however, results may still be useful, depending on what you want to use the images for. When using the mono camera, it's not possible to select the ISO speed used, as there is no Mono "Pro" mode. For this, you'll need to look at the Huawei P20.
Huawei Honor 10 White-balance test images
White Balance Performance - Auto White Balance (AWB) gives a warm result under tungsten lighting, with the tungsten preset giving more accurate results. AWB performs well under mixed lighting. AWB performs well under fluorescent lighting, with the fluorescent preset giving a yellow colour cast.
When shooting at 24mp, there is a noticeable increase in detail when shooting in the Monochrome mode. However, there is no real improvement to be found when shooting in colour, so it's best to stick to 16mp for colour photos. The monochrome camera isn't quite as sharp as the camera found on the Huawei P20 when viewing images at 100%. This is particularly noticeable in the corners of images.
Huawei Honor 10 Digital filters
Digital Filters - The Honor 10 has 8 filters available under the More tab, these are Sentimental, Impact, ND, Valencia, Blue, Halo, Nostalgia and Dawn. The maximum resolution you can shoot with filters at is 16 megapixels. There are also lots of effects that you can apply to images after you've taken them.
Video - Video quality is very smooth, however as OIS isn't built in, some movement due to the phone being handheld can be seen. The video recording options are quite basic, you can change the size of the video from 4K UHD down to 720p HD, and toggle GPS on or off. Electronic image stabilisation is available when shooting FullHD video. There is a beauty mode which can be activated as well.
Value For Money
The Honor 10 offers fantastic value for money considering the processing power behind it and 4GB/128GB RAM and storage. It's available for £399 from Amazon UK. It's also available in several countries via the Honor website.
It is, in essence, the same phone as the Huawei P20 underneath the skin, with slightly different camera specs and of course without the Leica brand on the lenses, and without optical image stabilisation. The Huawei P20, however, has a heftier price tag of £549.
This phone is a bargain - it has a reasonable price but specs to rival the premium offerings currently on the market. A close rival in terms of specs is the OnePlus 6, which was announced in May 2018 and also features dual rear cameras with a wide aperture.
For those that want a premium phone, the Samsung Galaxy S8 has now dropped to a reasonably priced £438 in the wake of the Samsung Galaxy S9 being released. This phone is waterproof, dust resistant and has the capacity for a microSD card, unlike the Honor 10. If the lack of these features doesn't bother you, then The Honor 10 is definitely an extremely capable phone for photographers.
Have a look at more smartphones in our Top 10 Best Smartphones for Photography or have a look at the Best Smartphones under £300 for Photography.
Honor 10 Verdict
Overall, the Honor 10 offers good specifications, a good camera with AI capability to recognise scenes, fast processing power and plenty of storage space. This makes the phone very desirable, especially for those that love to take photos on the go. There are a good amount of filters and editing capability within the phone for your images. However, the lack of optical image stabilisation (OIS) is a shame and will put this phone at a disadvantage for video recording. Noise would also be lower if the camera used a 12mp main camera, rather than 16mp.
However, the excellent pricing can't be overlooked. Yes, the camera doesn't carry the hallowed Leica branding, but it does offer similar features, with 2 rear cameras, one of these being a 24mp monochrome camera, and there's also a 24mp selfie camera.
The Honor 10 is a stunning looking phone, with the iridescent back being a real eye-catcher. Slim, well made and offering high-performance capability, the only things it's missing are waterproof / dustproofing and the ability to insert a MicroSD card if you wanted to. Other than this, it's definitely a more budget-friendly rival to many premium offerings.
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The Honor 10 is a very capable smartphone available at a very good price point. |