Huawei's sub-brand Honor has been killing it with some amazing Android smartphones at great prices. While both Huawei and Honor are launching phones in India, the later brand is more popular among the Indian youth. Current flagship model available in India is Honor 10 and i have been using it for a week now. Read on to know the things i like and disliked. Also, scroll down to see if it's a better buy than the OnePlus 6.
[ Upcoming Huawei / Honor devices : Honor Play with GPU Turbo , Huawei Nova 3, Nova 3i ]
Honor 10 performed really good so far. The Kirin 970 is quite fast, even though it's not as fast as the Snapdragon 845. Huawei is also bringing GPU Turbo update in a few days to Honor 10 which promises to make gaming and overall graphics processing on this much better. So performance-wise Honor 10 has no issues to talk about.
The Camera - Honor 10 has an AI Camera, is it any Good ? Thanks to the build in AI processor that comes with Kirin 970, it can detect scenes and objects in the frame instantly. However, the results were not always satisfactory. For taking photos of Food, it performs great in my opinion as it make the colors pop. When it comes to Landscapes, it's a mixed bag. I have noticed if you turn on the AI, the image detail is not that great due to the image processing it does to enhance the image.
The AI Camera can also detect human faces in the frame instantly. When it does that, it analyses the scene and apply portrait effect on the photo. It isolates the face and blurs the background. It also crops a bit to make the portrait look better. It works.
Portrait Mode and Wide Aperture modes are now common in almost all Huawei / Honor mobiles. Portrait mode works only for Human faces while Wide Aperture mode can be used for anything you like. How good is the portrait mode on this ? It is not as awesome as the Google Pixel 2 when it comes to edge detection, but the bokeh on this is more pleasing in my opinion. Aperture mode works quite well as well, but sometimes messes up the edges. Portrait mode is available for the Front camera as well.
Honor 10 also has a dedicated Pro mode which allows you to take photos at whatever manual settings you desire. In the mode, you get to shoot DNG RAW + Jpeg mode. I highly suggest you shoot DNG raw if you plan to edit your photos a lot afterwards. Jpegs are small, but when you edit them, they fall apart losing detail and adding noise. DNG Raw files are bigger files and have a lot more data in them. It can be edited much better than a jpeg without breaking apart.
So how good is the image quality ? If you are taking photos in the 24MP mode - the highest resolution possible on this camera - what the phone does is it mixes images from both Dual cameras and merge into one. Huawei claims this gives a better looking, sharper image. In my analysis, switching it back to 16MP mode gave better images overall.
Night Photography with Honor 10 is not that good. There is no optical image stabilization, which means in Auto mode, the shutter speed often go below 1/30s when the light is low, resulting in blurred images. However, since Huawei phones have a lot of long exposure modes available such light trails, silky water modes, star track etc, with the use of a tripod you can get some amazing images.
Honor 10 also has a dedicated Monochrome mode to make use of the secondary monochrome sensor on the back. It supports 3 modes - Regular, Portrait and Aperture modes. Unfortunately Huawei hasn't includes a Pro mode or ability to shoot raw images in Monochrome. The image quality out of this monochrome sensor is really good.
What about Video recording ? Honor 10 can take Full HD videos as well as higher quality 4K videos. The quality is good, however lack of Optical Image Stabilization ruins these videos. Huawei is pushing an update with EIS - Electronic Image Stabilization - but that works only for 1080P HD videos. 4K @ 60fps is not supported as well. 120fps Full HD slow mo is supported, however the quality is not outstanding.
Let's talk about Battery backup now. If you have purchased Honor 10 in India, chances are your device shipped with a Fast Charger instead of more powerful SuperCharge adapter. The 3400mAh battery holds up well. If you are on the move, and want the maximum usage time out of it, i would recommend you go to battery settings page and change the display resolution to HD+ from Full HD+. There are also some ultra power saving modes available which works quite good. In my usage, i got around 4 - 5 hours of screen on time with Honor 10 with Screen resolution set to smart and 4G data on. The upcoming GPU Turbo update will improve this a bit more as well.
The display on the Honor 10 is quite colorful and very good to look at even though it's NOT a Super AMOLED screen. The outdoor visibility is good, but not as good as Samsung flagships. There is a Notch up on the top which you would get used to it in a day or two. If you hate the cutout, you can hide the notch with a black bar in the display settings. By default, the display is set to Vivid mode which is a bit oversaturated in my opinion. I would highly recommend you switch to standard mode as soon as you boot the device up for the first time.
Honor 10 ships with Android 8.1 out of the box. As with other Huawei devices, this too has a custom UI on top. Huawei's EMUI is colorful in my opinion comparing to Stock Android and has a lot of additional tweaks to use the phone better and faster. However, it is not as snappy and quick as the stock Android 8.1 Oreo.
Reasons to buy OnePlus 6 over Honor 10
If you are a stock Android lover, OnePlus 6 is the one you should be going for. It also has a Super AMOLED screen, better Camera, can record 4K @ 60fps with EIS and has a great developer community to help you install custom roms. You can also install modded Google Camera app which instantly improves the image quality of any phone. With Honor 10, you get a Camera app with a lot of great features as well, but since this runs on Kirin processor, currently there is no way to install Google Camera aka Gcam app on to this.
Look Wise, i like the Honor 10 more. It is also easy to handle with one hand thanks to the 19:9 5.84 inch screen.
[ Upcoming Huawei / Honor devices : Honor Play with GPU Turbo , Huawei Nova 3, Nova 3i ]
Honor 10 performed really good so far. The Kirin 970 is quite fast, even though it's not as fast as the Snapdragon 845. Huawei is also bringing GPU Turbo update in a few days to Honor 10 which promises to make gaming and overall graphics processing on this much better. So performance-wise Honor 10 has no issues to talk about.
The Camera - Honor 10 has an AI Camera, is it any Good ? Thanks to the build in AI processor that comes with Kirin 970, it can detect scenes and objects in the frame instantly. However, the results were not always satisfactory. For taking photos of Food, it performs great in my opinion as it make the colors pop. When it comes to Landscapes, it's a mixed bag. I have noticed if you turn on the AI, the image detail is not that great due to the image processing it does to enhance the image.
The AI Camera can also detect human faces in the frame instantly. When it does that, it analyses the scene and apply portrait effect on the photo. It isolates the face and blurs the background. It also crops a bit to make the portrait look better. It works.
Portrait Mode and Wide Aperture modes are now common in almost all Huawei / Honor mobiles. Portrait mode works only for Human faces while Wide Aperture mode can be used for anything you like. How good is the portrait mode on this ? It is not as awesome as the Google Pixel 2 when it comes to edge detection, but the bokeh on this is more pleasing in my opinion. Aperture mode works quite well as well, but sometimes messes up the edges. Portrait mode is available for the Front camera as well.
Honor 10 also has a dedicated Pro mode which allows you to take photos at whatever manual settings you desire. In the mode, you get to shoot DNG RAW + Jpeg mode. I highly suggest you shoot DNG raw if you plan to edit your photos a lot afterwards. Jpegs are small, but when you edit them, they fall apart losing detail and adding noise. DNG Raw files are bigger files and have a lot more data in them. It can be edited much better than a jpeg without breaking apart.
So how good is the image quality ? If you are taking photos in the 24MP mode - the highest resolution possible on this camera - what the phone does is it mixes images from both Dual cameras and merge into one. Huawei claims this gives a better looking, sharper image. In my analysis, switching it back to 16MP mode gave better images overall.
Night Photography with Honor 10 is not that good. There is no optical image stabilization, which means in Auto mode, the shutter speed often go below 1/30s when the light is low, resulting in blurred images. However, since Huawei phones have a lot of long exposure modes available such light trails, silky water modes, star track etc, with the use of a tripod you can get some amazing images.
Honor 10 also has a dedicated Monochrome mode to make use of the secondary monochrome sensor on the back. It supports 3 modes - Regular, Portrait and Aperture modes. Unfortunately Huawei hasn't includes a Pro mode or ability to shoot raw images in Monochrome. The image quality out of this monochrome sensor is really good.
What about Video recording ? Honor 10 can take Full HD videos as well as higher quality 4K videos. The quality is good, however lack of Optical Image Stabilization ruins these videos. Huawei is pushing an update with EIS - Electronic Image Stabilization - but that works only for 1080P HD videos. 4K @ 60fps is not supported as well. 120fps Full HD slow mo is supported, however the quality is not outstanding.
Let's talk about Battery backup now. If you have purchased Honor 10 in India, chances are your device shipped with a Fast Charger instead of more powerful SuperCharge adapter. The 3400mAh battery holds up well. If you are on the move, and want the maximum usage time out of it, i would recommend you go to battery settings page and change the display resolution to HD+ from Full HD+. There are also some ultra power saving modes available which works quite good. In my usage, i got around 4 - 5 hours of screen on time with Honor 10 with Screen resolution set to smart and 4G data on. The upcoming GPU Turbo update will improve this a bit more as well.
The display on the Honor 10 is quite colorful and very good to look at even though it's NOT a Super AMOLED screen. The outdoor visibility is good, but not as good as Samsung flagships. There is a Notch up on the top which you would get used to it in a day or two. If you hate the cutout, you can hide the notch with a black bar in the display settings. By default, the display is set to Vivid mode which is a bit oversaturated in my opinion. I would highly recommend you switch to standard mode as soon as you boot the device up for the first time.
Honor 10 ships with Android 8.1 out of the box. As with other Huawei devices, this too has a custom UI on top. Huawei's EMUI is colorful in my opinion comparing to Stock Android and has a lot of additional tweaks to use the phone better and faster. However, it is not as snappy and quick as the stock Android 8.1 Oreo.
Reasons to buy OnePlus 6 over Honor 10
If you are a stock Android lover, OnePlus 6 is the one you should be going for. It also has a Super AMOLED screen, better Camera, can record 4K @ 60fps with EIS and has a great developer community to help you install custom roms. You can also install modded Google Camera app which instantly improves the image quality of any phone. With Honor 10, you get a Camera app with a lot of great features as well, but since this runs on Kirin processor, currently there is no way to install Google Camera aka Gcam app on to this.
Look Wise, i like the Honor 10 more. It is also easy to handle with one hand thanks to the 19:9 5.84 inch screen.
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