Huawei Mate 10 Pro review: The gap between Huawei and Samsung has never been closer

Overview

Huawei has been hot on the heels of Samsung for years now, and has firmly cemented itself as the world's number two Android smartphone brand, thanks in large part due to its flagship Mate product line, which consistently delivers great specs and a premium design, at a price point generally much lower than Samsung's S and Note offerings. 

The latest Mate comes in two flavors: the Mate 10 and the Mate 10 Pro. The Pro model features a 6-inch 18:9 Full View OLED bezel-less Mobile HDR-certified display, an IP67 build, an octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 970 processor, 6GB RAM, a dual rear camera system engineered by Leica, and a massive 4,000mAh battery, all for just $1,098. But how does it compare to more expensive phablets like the Samsung Galaxy Note8 and Apple iPhone X? Let's find out.

Design

Huawei has moved away from the all metal design of previous Mate smartphones, and like most 2017 flagships, the new Mate 10 Pro now sports a glass back with an aluminum frame running around the sides. It actually reminds me a lot of the Samsung Galaxy Note8 (only without the curved display).

Similarities to other phones aside, I like the updated look, as it gives the Mate 10 Pro a more modern, refined finish, but I was surprised to find out that, despite the change to a glass back, the Mate 10 Pro still doesn't offer wireless charging.

Jumping on the bezel-less bandwagon, the Mate 10 Pro, like many other 2017 smartphones boasts an extra tall 18:9 display. The screen doesn't curve around the sides like the Samsung Galaxy Note8, but its side bezels are still impressively slim. In fact, the Mate 10 Pro boasts a screen-to-body ratio of around 81 percent, which puts it ahead of the likes of the Google Pixel 2 XL and LG G6, and only slightly behind the Note8 and iPhone X (both 83 percent).

Having said that, the bezels at the top and bottom of the device do stand out a bit. The top bezel holds the front camera, flash and top speaker, while the bottom one has the Huawei logo on it. On most bezel-less phablets like the Galaxy Note8 and Google Pixel 2 XL the front bezels are black, which lets them blend in a bit, but on the Mate 10 Pro they're the same color as the rest of the phone.

The rear of the phone is curved at the edges, which gives it a nice, comfortable feel in hand.

The dual rear camera setup is vertically orientated at the top of the device, sitting on a stylish strip of color that's slightly different from the rest of the phone to make it stand out. There's a tiny camera bump on both lenses, but it's not too bad. Just below the camera modules is a fingerprint scanner that's easy to reach and works fairly well.

The volume rocker and power button are both on the right-hand side and in easy reach.

There's an IR blaster and mic on the top, and at the bottom there’s a second downward firing speaker, another mic and a USB-C port. Unfortunately, unlike the regular Mate 10, there’s no headphone jack - so you’ll need to go wireless or use an adaptor, which Huawei supplies in the box.

It's worth noting that despite being dual-SIM, there is no MicroSD card slot on the Mate 10 Pro, so you're stuck with 128GB internal storage.

In a first for Huawei, the Mate 10 Pro is IP67 dust and water resistant, which is always a welcome feature.

The Mate 10 Pro comes in two colors: Mocha Brown, which has tones of gold and pink in it, and Midnight Blue, which reminds me a lot of the bluish Amazing Silver color on the HTC U11.

Display & Audio

While every other Huawei phone (including the regular Mate 10) uses an LCD display, the Mate 10 Pro has a gorgeous OLED display, made by BOE Display. The 6-inch Full HD+ display has a 2,160 x 1,080 pixels resolution (~402ppi) which actually gives it a lower pixel density than the QHD 5.8-inch LCD panel found on the regular Mate 10 (~498ppi).

Despite this, the difference in clarity is negligible and the rest of the display is fantastic. Colors are slightly on the warm side, but are vibrant and punchy, without being too oversaturated. Contrast is deep, with dark blacks, and it's only at extreme off angle viewing where you start to notice a slightly blue color shift, but it's nowhere near as bad as what I reported with the Google Pixel 2 XL. The display is also reasonably bright for an OLED, offering about 440 nits at maximum brightness in manual mode, but up to 620 nits in automatic mode under bright sunlight.  

Like all extra tall displays, the 18:9 aspect ratio means that 16:9 aspect ratio content will display with black borders on the sides. When watching 16:9 content on the Mate 10 Pro, the amount of screen displayed is roughly equivalent to a 5.5-inch smartphone.

The display also offers an always-on mode, although strangely it's off by default, and turning it on requires you to go deep into the settings menu. To enable it, go to Settings > Security & Privacy > Screen Lock & Passwords > Always Display Information. Once turned on, it looks and operates similar to Samsung's always on display, showing the time, date, battery percentage and what music is playing, as well as app notifications — although these notifications only seem to work with Huawei's own apps.

The display is HDR10 certified, but for some reason I couldn’t get Netflix or YouTube to display HDR content on it. There is a pre-installed HDR video on the phone, so I can confirm that it does indeed have an HDR display, but I'm not sure why Netflix and YouTube don't recognize it. Hopefully this will be fixed soon. 

Like many phones with stereo speakers (including the iPhone 8, iPhone X, and HTC U11), the Mate 10 Pro uses one front-facing speaker (which is also the earpiece speaker), and one downward-firing speaker at the bottom of the phone. The speakers are pretty loud, but at max volume there's some noticeable distortion. Audio is always a little tinny, especially from the earpiece speaker, but it gets worse once you go past about 75 percent volume. Unfortunately, at all volumes, there's hardly any bass.

UI

Somewhat to my surprise, the Mate 10 Pro is running on the latest version of Android 8.0 Oreo. It's almost impossible to tell though, due to Huawei's continued insistence on completely overhauling the UI with its own EMUI skin. EMUI is back again on the Mate 10 Pro, and for some reason has jumped from version 5.1 on the P10 Plus, to EMUI 8.0 on the Mate 10 Pro (presumably to match the version of Android it's running on). 

While Huawei has cut back on a lot of the bloatware that used to come pre-loaded on its phones, EMUI still needlessly reworks several Android features, including the Settings menu, of all things, which makes it frustrating to find exactly what you're looking for. As with most Chinese UIs, it also removes the app drawer from the main menu, favoring instead an iOS-like layout of pages and pages of apps. Fortunately, you can restore the app drawer by going to Settings > Display > Home screen style, then selecting Drawer style.

EMUI 8.0 does have some nice features though: there's a Desktop Mode, which doesn't even need a dock like the Samsung Dex, and instead functions simply by connecting a USB-C cable to any monitor. You will need to buy a USB-C to HDMI/DVI/VGA cable though, as one isn't supplied with the phone. Once you’re connected, you’ll see a desktop screen that looks a lot like Windows. And unlike the Samsung S8 and Note8, when you connect your Mate 10 Pro to an external monitor, your phone’s display can be used as a makeshift trackpad. 

App Twin is an interesting feature that I really like. If you have multiple Twitter or Facebook accounts (I have one for personal use, and one for work) App Twin lets you create multiple instances of the same app on your phone. You can then stay signed in to a different account on each instance. App Twin, like a lot of the Mate 10 Pro’s best features, is hidden deep in the settings. To enable it, go to Settings > Apps & Notifications > App Twin. Only apps that are compatible with App Twin will be listed here.

Huawei's bizarre Knuckle Sense feature is once again present on the Mate 10 Pro. As before, you can knock on the screen twice with your knuckle to quickly capture a screenshot, or you can capture just part of the screen by drawing around the area with your knuckle. Knuckle Sense also has a new split screen launcher to take advantage of the Mate 10 Pro's new extra tall screen. Simply drag your knuckle across the screen to enable split screen mode.

One final feature worth mentioning is the Mate 10 Pro's modem. The 4.5G modem supports LTE Cat.18 D data speeds, which means it can theoretically provide download speeds of up to 1.2Gbps. Unfortunately, no Singapore telco currently supports Cat18 modems - Cat16, which provides 800Mbps download speeds is the fastest right now - but it should only be a matter of time until Cat18 is supported.

Performance Benchmarks

Huawei (along with Samsung and Apple) are one of the few brands not using a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor in its flagship smartphone. Instead the Mate 10 Pro runs on Huawei's own HiSilicon Kirin 970 SoC paired with 6GB RAM. 

The Kirin 970 is a 10nm octa-core processor that uses 4x ARM Cortex-A73 cores clocked at 2.4GHz, with 4x ARM Cortex-53 cores at 1.8GHz. It's also the first commercial chipset to use a Mali-G72 MP12 GPU.

What makes the Kirin 970 special is that it has a dedicated ‘Neural Processing Unit’ that handles all ‘AI’ features. This frees up the main CPU for other tasks.

Having said that, despite the special AI processor, AI features on the Mate 10 Pro don't seem that different from other phones with AI capabilities: The Mate 10 Pro will learn and eventually predict your usage patterns to pre-emptively launch or tweak applications to meet your needs, as well as shut down unnecessary processes to save battery, or alert you if it knows you're going to need more battery life later in the day, although in my ten days reviewing the phone I haven't noticed any changes so far. The NPU also powers the AI image recognition system found in the Mate 10 Pro's camera (more on that later).

For more info on the Kirin 970 and its Neural Processing Unit, check out this feature.

Sunspider Javascript

SunSpider JavaScript measures the browsing performance of a device when processing JavaScript. It not only takes into consideration the underlying hardware performance, but also assesses how optimized a particular platform is at delivering a high-speed web browsing experience. 

The Mate 10 Pro performed quite well here, and was better than both of our Snapdragon 835-powered phones. However, it lost to both the Note8 and iPhone X. Actual browsing performance was snappy and lag free, without any lag or stuttering, even with multiple tabs open.

Quadrant

Quadrant is an Android benchmark that evaluates a device's CPU, memory, I/O and 3D graphics performances. The Mate 10 Pro performed reasonably well in this benchmark, beating the Google Pixel 2 XL but losing to both the OnePlus 5 and to the untouchable Galaxy Note8.

3DMark Sling Shot

3DMark Sling Shot is an advanced 3D graphics benchmark that tests the full range of OpenGL ES 3.1 and ES 3.0 API features including multiple render targets, instanced rendering, uniform buffers and transform feedback. The test also includes impressive volumetric lighting and post-processing effects. We're running this benchmark in Unlimited mode, which ignores screen resolutions.

While its new G72 GPU showed great improvement over the P10 Plus, the Mate 10 Pro still trailed both the Snapdragon 835-powered phones and Galaxy Note8.

Imaging

Like the last few Huawei phones, the rear of the Mate 10 Pro houses a Leica-engineered dual camera system comprising of a 12-megapixel RGB sensor paired with a dedicated 20-megapixel monochrome camera. It's worth noting that while you will generally use both sensors together, only the RGB sensor has OIS.

Unlike most dual camera systems that pair a telephoto and wide angle lens, Huawei's system uses one sensor to capture color data, and the other to capture monochrome information. Combined together, they deliver richer colors and finer details. You can use the monochrome sensor independently, but unless you really like black and white photography, it's generally better to use both together.

Because the monochrome lens has a higher resolution than the color one, Huawei says the Mate 10 Pro can do “hybrid zoom" but really this is just digital sensor cropping, where a photo is taken at a higher resolution and then cropped, and the results aren't as good as true optical zoom like you'll find on other dual camera systems. There's also a background-blurring bokeh mode called 'Wide Aperture' which aims to replicate the Portrait modes found on other dual camera systems but the results aren't that convincing and the algorithm is bad at distinguishing edges, often blurring out the wrong part of the photo.

What's special about the Mate 10 Pro's camera system is that it uses the Kirin 970's NPU for image recognition. Basically, this lets the camera change the settings automatically depending on what you’re pointing it at. There are 13 scenes the phone can recognize, ranging from food and pets to flowers and buildings, and the camera will automatically adjust settings like ISO, shutter speed and saturation to best fit the scene. A little icon in the corner of the screen will show if the camera has recognized the image.

While this sounds really impressive, in actual usage I didn't find it to be that useful. The difference in settings weren't that noticeable, and while the AI is generally quite accurate at identifying images, the settings it applied weren't always suitable. From what I can tell, the settings always seem to be the same once the image has been recognized, and ignore other factors like environmental light, so you're often better just manually adjusting the settings yourself. 

Image performance was generally good, and photos taken in good light look sharp across the entire frame, with good color production, high contrast and low noise. Low-light images could be better, and the autofocus isn't the best in tricky lighting situations. Contrast in low light could also be better, and I sometimes encountered distorted color rendering in low-light situations.

Battery Life

Our standard battery test for mobile phones has the following parameters:

• Looping a 720p video with screen brightness and volume at 100%
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on
• Constant data streaming through email and Twitter

The Mate series has always been known for its massive battery capacity and the Mate 10 Pro is no different with a huge 4,000mAh battery. In addition, it now has a more power efficient OLED display.

In our video looping battery benchmark, we saw the effects of the new OLED display, as the Mate 10 Pro lasted just over twelve hours, which puts it on par with the iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy Note8.

The Mate 10 Pro uses Huawei's own SuperCharge fast charging technology, which will get you to about 60 percent in 30 minutes. The last 40 percent then takes about 45 minutes to charge.

Conclusion

The Mate 10 Pro is Huawei's best phone yet, with a beautiful metal and glass design, a stunning OLED display, an IP67 build and great battery life. Is it the best Android smartphone out there? No, probably not. For now, that distinction still goes to the Samsung Galaxy Note8, but the gap between Samsung and Huawei has never been closer.

While Huawei continues to show massive improvement, there are still a few things holding it back. Its HiSilicon Kirin processors are getting better and better, but they still trail Samsung's Exynos processors and Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors in benchmark performance. Huawei's EMUI is much improved too, but there are still some puzzling design decisions that make it frustrating to use. Honestly, all Huawei needs to do is tone it down - the less it messes around with stock Android, the better. On the plus side, the Chinese company seems to be heading in that direction by cutting back on the amount of bloatware pre-loaded onto the Mate 10 Pro, but it needs to go a step further and stop trying to force its own take on meaningless things like the Settings menu. 

The lack of expandable storage is also frustrating, and while 128GB is plenty of internal space, a Micro SD card slot is always good to have.

Those objections aside though, the Mate 10 Pro is still a great phone, and at just S$1,098 it should certainly be one of the first phones you consider if you're not willing to fork out the S$1,398 required for the Note8.

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