Huawei Mate 10 Pro Review: Impressive Camera, Battery Life And A Funky UI
Huawei Mate 10 Pro Design And Build Quality
Hey look, no notch! It was the Essential Phone that first implemented a notch on the front of the display to house a camera, though Apple brought the funky design to a wider audience with the iPhone X. Since then, there have been several Android devices announced or rumored to adopt a similar styled notched display. Huawei chose not to with the Mate 10 Pro, and we have no complaints about that.
The 6-inch "FullView" screen on the Mate 10 Pro looms large, though the overall handset is not big or bulky. Next to an older generation iPhone 6S Plus, for example, the Mate 10 Pro offers up more screen real estate in a shorter frame that takes up a little less space in your pocket. Ah, progress!
Huawei went with organic light emitting diode (OLED) panel with a 2160x1080 resolution. That works out to 402 pixels per inch, with an 18:9 aspect ratio. Samsung's Super AMOLED panels are still the ones to beat in our opinion, though the display on the Mate 10 Pro is not a slouch by any means. It is capable of getting very bright and performing well in direct sunlight, offers up 112 percent coverage of the NTSC color spectrum, and supports the HDR10 (High Dynamic Range) specification.
We had a chance to look at two of the three color options the Mate 10 Pro comes in, including Titanium Gray shown in the video on the previous page and Midnight Blue as depicted here. There is also a Diamond Black model that Huawei conceived in partnership with Porsche Design, and we have no doubt that model looks fantastic as well. It also carriers a higher price tag—$1,225 on Amazon, at the time of this publication—and has few additional goodies, such as 256GB of onboard storage, versus 128GB in the standard model.
The Mate 10 Pro is a glossy and reflective handset made of glass. It's an attractive phone, though it comes at the cost of frequently collecting fingerprints. The included plastic case helps take care of this, but even though it is transparent, the case effectively dulls the shiny backside and all but eliminates reflections. Some people may prefer it that way, though most will probably find that it looks better without a case.
A lightly contrasted "signature stripe" sits near the top to highlight the dual cameras. It's a nice accent that adds to the overall premium design. It is within this stripe that Huawei brings attention to the Leica brand for the phone's camera lenses, which consist of a 20-megapixel monochrome shooter and a 12-megapixel RGB lens arranged vertically. There's also a dual LED flash. More on these later, along with the front-mounted 8-megapixel camera.
The fingerprint sensor is directly below the rear cameras and is easy to reach, especially since the chassis is not overly large (despite having a 6-inch display).
All three versions have a SIM card slot on the left side of the phone, though only the international model (BLA-L29) accepts dual SIM cards. Unfortunately, even though there is space for one, the Mate 10 Pro does not offer expandable storage by way of a microSD slot. That probably will not be a huge deal for most people since the phone has 128GB of storage baked in, but with higher resolution photos and 4K video now the norm, we'd have liked to seen an option to add more storage.
On other side of the phone is a volume rocker and power button. A microphone and IR blaster sit on top, and another microphone and speaker grill flank the USB-C port on the bottom. You'll notice we didn't mention a 3.5mm audio jack. Like it or not, this seems to be the direction device makers want to go, and it is not longer uncommon to see a 3.5mm jack left out of the equation. In its absence, the Mate 10 Pro comes with USB-C earbuds and a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter to plug in your existing wired earbuds.
Overall the Mate 10 Pro is a sleek handset, and is also a slippery little fella. Using the provided case helps with this, and obviously adds protection if it does happen to leap out of your hand in search of freedom.
