Chip Chick
In the world of Android smartphones, Huawei is pretty interesting. They used to make mainly budget smartphones, but over the past few years they’ve created some very powerful premium devices. They’ve come to excel in battery life in particular — despite being high-end, very fast phones, devices in their Mate line regularly last a whole day, and sometimes two. Their latest, the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, are in the same category as their predecessors, but like Huawei phones past, we’re not sure if they’ll come to the United States. The Huawei Mate 9 did get a U.S. launch, so there’s hope.
With the Mate 10 and especially the 6.0″ Mate 10 Pro this year, Huawei wants to carve out another niche for themselves — AI. Like always with AI, we need to use a good amount of caution when using the term — this phone is far from being able to think for itself. But, in some situations, it can use the data the phone collects along with contextual information to help make pictures look a little better or translation a little easier.
Unlike most other Android smartphone makers, Huawei using their own chips under the Kirin name. New this year is an NPU, a chip made specifically to tackle AI features, making them faster and more efficient. It also allows Huawei to add AI features that don’t require a data connection — if you happen to still be on a limited data plan or if you’re in an area without good reception, you can still use those features!
So what features are we talking about? We’ll dive into some of those AI features before letting you know what we think of Huawei’s latest and greatest in detail!
Huawei – $900 – $1000 (converted from price abroad)
The Good: Excellent battery life, OLED display looks beautiful, excellent camera in all conditions, very fast, great fingerprint sensor, has HDR support, runs Android Oreo out of the box
The Bad: No headphone jack, no microSD card slot, weak single speaker on the bottom, lower resolution display than other premium phones, glass back makes it very fragile
Who it’s for: Anyone looking for a high-end alternative to Samsung Galaxy phones, smartphone photography enthusiasts, people who value battery life above all else
The Gear: Huawei gave us a Mate 10 Pro review unit.
Next page: Camera
