Review of the Honor 10 smartphone: almost a flagship that has grown from a budget line

Introduction

Not long ago, Huawei released the Honor 8 Pro model, the successor to the popular and attractive Honor 8. Unlike the previous gadget, the new product received a metal body rather than glass, a larger screen diagonal and higher matrix resolution, a more powerful processor, and etc. Considering all the changes, I can’t even call it just the Pro version — this is a completely new smartphone that deserves a different name, for example, Honor 9.

The device was fully upgraded, so that it partially eclipsed the flagship Huawei P10 Plus. Judge for yourself: the P10 Plus has a slightly smaller diagonal, a slightly weaker battery, less RAM, and the price is exactly 10,000 rubles higher! Yes, there are nuances, for example, in the P10 Plus the lens has high-aperture optics, there is optical stabilization, LTE Cat 12 versus 6. However, objectively, Huawei’s camera is similar to the Honor camera, but the speed of Cat 12 still needs to be achieved…

I can say in advance that the 8 Pro is the best device for its price (if we consider certified devices).

At the moment, Honor 8 Pro can be purchased for 34,990 rubles.

Appearance and ease of use

Honor 20 Pro turned out to be more strict and solid than most of its relatives in the Honor family, which now, due to their bright gradient rear panel, sparkle in the sun like Christmas tree decorations. Honor 20 Pro also has a gradient transition in color, but here everything is somehow calmer, more balanced and not so flashy.

Review of the Honor 10 smartphone: almost a flagship that has grown from a budget line

Quite the contrary: the Honor 20 Pro is worth a look for those users who want their mobile assistant to look serious, strict, expensive and fit their respectable image. Moreover, this is one of those rare cases when the most technically equipped flagship has not become larger in size than the simpler models in the series.

And it is precisely for these convenient dimensions that the graceful Honor 20 Pro can be forgiven a lot. But, in general, there is nothing to forgive. Even in the design of its forms, it outperforms the same Huawei P30 Pro with its pointed sides that rotate in the palm of your hand. Here the edges are wide and less convex, so the small device is held much more securely in the hand.

The manufacturer also did a good job of ensuring that the smartphone does not slip in your fingers: neither the side frame nor the glass of the back panel can be called slippery. The high-quality oleophobic coating behind the glass does not become covered with fingerprints too quickly and is easily wiped off. As a result, a glossy smartphone never looks sloppy.

There are certain complaints about the strongly protruding module with cameras. Due to it, a smartphone lying on a hard surface sways whenever you touch the screen, like a paperweight. Thus, it is absolutely impossible to work with the Honor 20 Pro lying on the table.

However, this is just an annoying detail compared to the endlessly convenient fingerprint scanner integrated directly into the side power button. With it you can truly take a break from the sluggish, newfangled under-screen sensors that, as if on cue, began to be installed in all mobile devices worth the slightest bit of money. Everything is logical here: the power button activates the smartphone and simultaneously authenticates the owner. What else is needed?

It’s also very impressive that they didn’t make retractable modules with cameras here, which waste battery energy to operate an additional motor. In Honor 20 Pro, the front camera looks through a 4.5 mm hole cut directly into the display matrix. Perhaps this is the best option we have come up with.

Thanks to the absence of any “notch” and a thin frame around it, the screen occupies 91.7% of the front surface of the body.

The Nano-SIM dual card tray is not hybrid and does not support microSD memory cards. However, to our surprise, it does not support Huawei’s own NM (Nano Memory) cards, which is strange for the flagship of the company that developed this format.

All other elements are installed at the bottom end of the case: speaker, USB Type-C connector and microphone. It’s a shame, but the smartphone does not have a 3.5 mm audio output. Obviously, this can be considered a kind of “measure of coolness” that the manufacturer is guided by: flagships are automatically deprived of a minijack, simply “because they can.”

For Honor 20 Pro, there are only two color options: black and blue (Phantom Blue, Phantom Black). In the company pictures, everything is slightly exaggerated, but “black” really has a lilac tint, and “blue” has a green tint. The smartphone did not receive full protection from water and dust.

Screen

Honor 10 features an IPS display with 2.5D protective glass. The screen dimensions are approximately 64×134 mm, with a diagonal of 5.84″, and a resolution of 2280×1080 (aspect ratio 19:9, pixel density about 432 ppi). The width of the frame around the screen on the sides is about 3 mm, the indentation at the bottom is about 1 cm high, and at the top it is only 5 mm (not counting the “bangs”).

You can adjust the display brightness manually or use automatic settings based on the ambient light sensor. Multi-touch tests diagnose support for 10 simultaneous touches.

A detailed examination using measuring instruments was carried out by the editor of the “Monitors” and “Projectors and TV” sections, Alexey Kudryavtsev. Here is his expert opinion on the screen of the sample under study.

The front surface of the screen is made in the form of a glass plate with a mirror-smooth surface that is scratch-resistant. Judging by the reflection of objects, the anti-glare properties of the screen are approximately the same as those of the Google Nexus 7 (2020) screen (hereinafter simply Nexus 7). For clarity, here is a photo in which the white surface is reflected in the switched off screens (on the left — Nexus 7, on the right — Honor 10, then they can be distinguished by size):

The screen on the Honor 10 is a little brighter (brightness according to photographs is 129 versus 120 for the Nexus 7). The ghosting of reflected objects in the Honor 10 screen is very weak, this indicates that there is no air gap between the layers of the screen (more specifically, between the outer glass and the surface of the LCD matrix) (OGS — One Glass Solution type screen).

Due to the smaller number of boundaries (glass/air type) with very different refractive indices, such screens look better in conditions of intense external illumination, but their repair in the case of cracked external glass is much more expensive, since the entire screen has to be replaced. On the outer surface of the screen there is a special oleophobic (grease-repellent) coating, which is noticeably better in efficiency than that of the Nexus 7, so fingerprints are removed much more easily and appear at a lower speed than in the case of regular glass.

When manually controlling the brightness and displaying the white field in full screen, the maximum brightness value was about 490 cd/m², the minimum was 2.3 cd/m². The maximum brightness is high, so, given the good anti-glare properties, screen readability even on a sunny day outdoors should be at an acceptable level.

In complete darkness, the brightness can be reduced to a comfortable value. There is automatic brightness adjustment based on the light sensor (it is located to the right of the front speaker grille). In automatic mode, as external lighting conditions change, the screen brightness both increases and decreases.

The operation of this function depends on the brightness control position, with it the user can try to set the desired brightness level in the current conditions. If you do not interfere, then in complete darkness the auto-brightness function reduces the brightness to 4.8 cd/m² (very dark), in an office illuminated by artificial light (approximately 550 lux) it sets it to 170 cd/m² (normal), in a very bright environment ( corresponds to lighting on a clear day outdoors, but without direct sunlight — 20,000 lux or a little more)

increases to 490 cd/m² (to the maximum, as needed). The backlight brightness level depends on the position of the slider in dark and average conditions, and in very bright environments it is always set to maximum. We weren’t happy with the default result, so we moved the slider a little to the right in complete darkness and for the three conditions above, we got 20, 200 and 490 cd/m² (the perfect combination).

This smartphone uses an IPS type matrix. However, in micrographs the subpixel structure typical of IPS cannot be seen:

For comparison, you can see the gallery of microphotographs of screens used in mobile technology.

The screen has good viewing angles without significant color shift even when viewing large deviations from perpendicular to the screen and without inverting shades. For comparison, here are photographs in which the same images are displayed on the screens of Honor 10 and Nexus 7, while the screen brightness is initially set to approximately 200 cd/m², and the color balance on the camera is forcibly switched to 6500 K.

White field perpendicular to the screens:

Note the good uniformity of brightness and color tone of the white field.

And test picture:

The colors on the Honor 10 screen are clearly oversaturated, and the color balance varies between screens.

Now at an angle of approximately 45 degrees to the plane and to the side of the screen:

It can be seen that the colors have not changed much on both screens, but on Honor 10 the contrast has decreased to a greater extent due to the greater brightening of blacks.

And white field:

The brightness at an angle of the screens has decreased (at least 5 times, based on the difference in shutter speed), but the Honor 10 screen is still a little darker. When deviated diagonally, the black field brightens greatly and acquires a red-violet hue. The photographs below demonstrate this (the brightness of the white areas in the direction perpendicular to the plane of the screens is the same!):

And from another angle:

When viewed perpendicularly, the uniformity of the black field is excellent:

The contrast (approximately in the center of the screen) is high — about 1500:1. Black-white-black response time is 19.5 ms (10.5 ms on, 9.0 ms off). The transition between halftones of gray 25% and 75% (based on the numerical value of the color) and back takes a total of 33 ms. The gamma curve, constructed using 32 points with equal intervals based on the numerical value of the shade of gray, did not reveal any blockage in either the highlights or the shadows.

This device has a dynamic adjustment of the backlight brightness with an unobvious dependence on time and on the nature of the displayed image. As a result, the resulting dependence of brightness on hue (gamma curve) may not correspond to the gamma curve of a static image, since the measurements were carried out with sequential display of shades of gray on almost the entire screen.

For this reason, we carried out a number of tests — determining contrast and response time, comparing black illumination at angles — (however, as always) when displaying special templates with a constant average brightness, and not monochromatic fields in the entire screen. In general, such non-disabled brightness correction does nothing but harm, since constantly changing the screen brightness can at least cause some discomfort.

Color gamut is wider than sRGB and almost equal to DCI:

Let’s look at the spectra:

The spectra of the components are well separated, which results in a wide color gamut. We have already seen this in the case, for example, of the Sony Xperia Z2 and other mobile devices. Sony indicates that these screens use LEDs with a blue emitter and green and red phosphors (usually a blue emitter and a yellow phosphor), which, in combination with special matrix filters, allows for a wide color gamut.

Yes, and red phosphor apparently uses so-called quantum dots. For a consumer device, a wide color gamut is not an advantage, but a significant disadvantage, since as a result, the colors of images — drawings, photographs and films — oriented to the sRGB space (and the vast majority of them) have an unnatural saturation. This is especially noticeable on recognizable shades, such as skin tones. The result is shown in the photographs above.

However, not everything is so bad: when you select the Normal profile, the coverage is compressed to the sRGB boundaries.

Colors in images become less saturated (and color balance changes slightly):

The balance of shades on the scale is a compromise, since the color temperature is significantly higher than the standard 6500 K, but the deviation from the blackbody spectrum (ΔE) is below 10, which is considered an acceptable indicator for a consumer device. At the same time, color temperature and ΔE change little from hue to hue — this has a positive effect on the visual assessment of color balance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shyQTnEDT7U

This device has the ability to adjust the color balance by adjusting the hue on the color wheel.

On the graphs above, the curves are Without corr. correspond to the results without any color balance correction (Vivid profile), and the curves Corr. — data obtained after selecting the Normal profile and shifting the point on the circle to the position indicated in the image above. It can be seen that the change in balance corresponds to the expected result, since the color temperature approached the standard value and ΔE decreased.

There is a fashionable setting that allows you to reduce the intensity of the blue component.

Marketers tried to intimidate the user in order to show the level of care of the manufacturer. Of course, there is no harmful UV radiation (see spectrum above), and there is no eye fatigue caused specifically by blue light. In principle, bright light can lead to disruption of the circadian rhythm (see the article about the iPad Pro with a 9.7-inch display), but everything can be solved by adjusting the brightness to a comfortable level, and there is absolutely no way to distort the color balance, reducing the contribution of blue sense.

To summarize: the screen has a high maximum brightness and has good anti-glare properties, so the device can be used outdoors even on a sunny summer day without any problems. In complete darkness, the brightness can be reduced to a comfortable level. It is also possible to use a mode with automatic brightness adjustment, which works adequately.

Also, the advantages of the screen include an effective oleophobic coating, the absence of air gaps in the layers of the screen and flickering, high contrast, excellent uniformity of the black field, sRGB color gamut (when choosing the right profile) and good (after correction) color balance. The disadvantages are the low stability of black to the deviation of the gaze from perpendicular to the screen plane. Taking into account the importance of characteristics for this particular class of devices, the quality of the screen can be considered high.

Conclusion

The vibration signal of Honor 8 Pro is powerful, you can feel it in the pocket of a spring jacket. The quality of signal reception did not raise any questions, there are also no complaints about Wi-Fi and Bluetooth — everything is excellent.

I thought that I would write “many letters” in conclusion, but decided that I would limit myself to a short sentence: one of the few smartphones in recent times that I was 99% satisfied with. Nothing is perfect.

I repeat once again that Honor 8 Pro costs 35,000 rubles. I tried to find fault, but I couldn’t find any cons. However, about the wish: I would like two stereo speakers, a dedicated audio chip.

Pros