With all the buzz going around with Huawei you may or may not of heard their sub-brand called Honor. Like Huawei, Honor has been making some strides over the years offering pretty impressive specs on mid-range or lower-end devices at a fraction of the cost of its competitors. Honor gears more towards the younger market as well that is mostly interested in social media, taking some photos and music. With the View 10, Honor is going for that sweet $500 market that has been occupied by OnePlus as of late. How does it hold up?
Style
At first glance the Honor View 10 looks eerie similar to its more expensive cousin the Mate 10 Pro but it does differ. The Honor View 10 back and sides are coated in aluminum with a IR blaster on top. Sides feature power button and volume toggle on right side while the left utilizes a DualSim tray. Bottom has a headphone jack, Type C port and speaker grill. Build wise the View 10 feels well manufactured and Huawei has usually been good in making devices feel worth their pricing.
Display
The View 10’s front showcases a 5.99” 1080p display with a 18:9 ratio. The display is practically edge to edge left and right which looks terrific for a phone at its price point. Viewing content isn’t bad and also playing games looks good and it’s very responsive to the touch with this being necessary as Honor pushing the View 10 as a device to do mobile gaming on.
Hardware
So surprisingly the Honor View 10 is using the same processor as the Mate 10 with that being a Kirin 970 chipset. Also being shared is the Arm Mali-G72 GPU and 6GB RAM. View 10 comes with 128GB onboard storage as well as expansion thanks to microSD card usability. Battery wise it has a 3,750mAh battery which I always like to say is bigger than batteries in the more expensive flagships on the market. I have gone on long usual periods with the View 10 without charge and even so can get it back to speeds with its Supercharge functionality.
Fingerprint scanner on the front is pretty snappy and wake the phone instantly. I think I gotten used to fingerprint sensors on the back and this reminds me of older phones that have passed on. Interestingly the Honor 6X last year had its sensor on the back that came out last year.
The Honor View 10 is GSM unlocked as I have used it with T-Mobile and should also work with ATT here in the states.
Software
Honor continues to use their EMUI software which is of now is on 8.1 and also running Android Oreo also at 8.1. As I usually mention EMUI is reminiscent of iOS as far as its look and feel with Android wrapped around it. They have made strides with the OS compared to me using it last year on the 6X and I enjoy it more. Its full of features you might have to dig into to utilize but it’s there. If you want to use two instances of Snapchat or a few other apps Dual Twin is on the View 10 and supports it.
Camera
With the View 10 you are getting dual lens on the back with one lens being a 20MP monochrome(B/W) lens while the other is a 16MP(RGB) lens. Using the camera on the View 10 took some decent shots with outdoor shots coming out good and darker shots I may have had to tweak around with the settings or take a few shots to get that perfect one I was looking for. This can linked to the lack of OIS or even EIS. On the front is a 13MP lens which I had to give a minute to focus and sometimes adjust the lighting. I don’t take a deal of selfies but at times would come out too bright and hence the adjusting.
Video wise the View 10 shoots up to 4K if you are interested in capturing some footage on it.
Verdict
If you are in the market for a phone that won’t bring the wallet and give you a decent amount of specs the Honor View 10 might catch your eye. It runs smooth thanks to its great processor and battery life is superb on top of that thanks to its decent display that won’t drain it out. Camera can take some quality shots if you mess around with it. Realistically it’s only competition at this price was the OnePlus 5T which is $500 but has also been discontinued making it unreachable unless looking at 3rd party sellers. For the price Honor offers a lot of what you would get from flagships at a fraction of the cost even compared to its own similar featured Mate 10 Pro.
