Huawei Mate 10 review: Plans | Pricing | Specs

Where to buy

While Huawei produces a significant quantity of budget and mid-range phones, it has two primary "premium" phone lines in the form of the fashion-led P series, typically announced at or around Mobile World Congress and the more phablet-formed Mate series, usually announced in the October/November timeframe.

Huawei also produces a Porsche Design version of the Mate 9, but that phone was not officially sold in Australia.

Design

• Simple, stylish design.
• Lacks water resistance.

• Read more on the Huawei Mate 10 design

  The Mate 10 is a 5.9-inch handset, although it's not the largest Mate 10 this year, as it's ever so slightly smaller than the Huawei Mate 10 Pro. That puts it in the company of contemporary handsets such as the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.

  The one feature that Huawei has never particularly pushed with its premium handsets has been the question of outright water resistance.

  

  It has become more and more of a feature of premium phones and we did note on a recent tour of Huawei's device testing labs (as shown above) that it's something Huawei can test for. However, the Mate 10 lacks specific water resistance, even though it's a feature on the Mate 10 Pro.

Camera

• Dual Leica lenses plus AI.

• Read more on the Huawei Mate 10 camera

  Huawei has made considerable progress in the camera space thanks to its tie-up with Leica for the Huawei P9, Mate 9, P10 and P10 Plus and it certainly didn't slow down for the Huawei Mate 10.

  The Mate 10 sports dual cameras, specifically 20MP monochrome/12MP Dual f/1.6 lenses at the rear. The Mate 10's party piece is the inclusion of scene detection thanks to the Neural Processing Unit (NPU), with 13 automatically detected scenes including dog, cat and food photography settings.

  In our tests with the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, we found the AI settings produced generally pleasing results, although without a doubt photo pros will prefer to use the Mate 10's manual settings rather than let the handset decide.

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Performance

• Kirin 970 delivers solid application performance.
• Few apps take full advantage of the NPU.

• Read more on the Huawei Mate 10 performance

  Where most other vendors opt for a processor solution from providers such as Qualcomm or MediaTek, Huawei produces its own premium silicon for its own phones. For the Mate 10 and its sibling phones, Huawei produced the tantalising sounding Kirin 970.

  At the IFA 2017 conference in Berlin, Huawei CEO Richard Yu unveiled the Kirin 970 with a particular focus on artificial intelligence. Kirin 970 packs in a 12-core CPU alongside a 12-core CPU using a 10nm process, with the NPU to handle AI tasks.

  Huawei wants to pitch the Kirin 970 as an "open" AI platform leveraging the power of the chipset itself as well as cloud-based AI to more efficiently operate and the overall claim, according to Huawei, is that it will outclass every other phone on the market.

  The short version is that Huawei's Mate phones have always delivered plenty of power for performance users. On the software side, the Mate 10 will run on Android 8.0 ("Oreo") with an updated version of Huawei's "Emotion UI" launcher on top.

  In benchmark terms, here's how the Kirin 970 found in the Huawei Mate 10 Pro compared against contemporary handsets of its time.

  Handset	Geekbench 4 CPU Single Core (higher is better)	Geekbench 4 CPU Multi Core (higher is better)
  Apple iPhone X	4185	10319
  Apple iPhone 8	4270	10272
  Apple iPhone 8 Plus	4113	10221
  Huawei Mate 10	1888	6787
  Samsung Galaxy S8+	2020	6690
  Samsung Galaxy S8	1989	6628
  Huawei P10 Plus	1863	6544
  Nokia 8	1932	6529
  OnePlus 5	1976	6506
  Samsung Galaxy Note 8	2024	6490
  HTC U11	1919	6362
  Sony Xperia XZ Premium	1908	6324
  Google Pixel 2 XL	1914	6254

  Here's where it stands using 3DMark's Ice Storm Unlimited test:

  Handset	3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited Result
  Apple iPhone 8	64461
  Apple iPhone X	61256
  Apple iPhone 8 Plus	59205
  HTC U11	40239
  Sony Xperia XZ Premium	40086
  Google Pixel 2 XL	39551
  OnePlus 5	39497
  Samsung Galaxy Note 8	32277
  Huawei Mate 10	30765

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Battery life

• 4,000mAh battery.

• Read more on the Huawei Mate 10 battery life

  The Mate 10 charges its 4,000mAh battery via USB-C.

  Huawei has its own standard for fast charging, dubbed "SuperCharge". Huawei recently announced a partnership with TÜV Rheinland for safety checking of its SuperCharge technology, including safety, low temperature and thermal shock tests.

  Charging and battery safety has been something of a sore point for larger phones in the light of the Samsung Note 7 fiasco and while that wasn't a phone of Huawei's making, it's clearly taking phone charging seriously.

  That being said, testing with the Mate 10 Pro showed that its battery life was only mid-range for a premium 2017 handset.

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Verdict

• Worthwhile if you can get it at a bargain price.

• Read our full Huawei Mate 10 verdict

  Huawei has been pushing the value equation hard in recent years with its premium smartphones and while the Mate 10 does have its limitations, it's a fine handset for the most part. Huawei itself has produced newer handsets in the meantime, such as the Huawei P20 and Huawei P20 Pro and that does mean that if you're Huawei Mate 10 shopping, you should definitely be chasing a bargain price on it. At its full original retail price you're way too close to newer and more powerful handsets.

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Pricing and availability

• Price: RRP $899
• Where to buy: Kogan | eBay

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