By Will Goodbody, Science & Technology Correspondent
It’s big, it’s powerful and it is packed full of features.
The Huawei Mate 10 Pro is the Chinese manufacturer’s latest flagship offering and it is a solid effort with lots to entice.
And although it isn’t quite perfect, it is the latest example of how the rise of the Chinese smartphone is no bad thing at all.
DESIGN
The Mate 10 Pro is an attractive looking handset.
With glass front and rear and a metal frame, the device has a simple, clean premium look that wouldn’t be out of place alongside more established brands.
The complicated looking curved Gorilla Glass clad rear houses the centred dual camera lenses and flash, as well as the round shaped finger-print sensor.
I’m not a great fan of rear finger-print sensors but this one seems to be more naturally placed for my long fingers and is very fast and accurate.
It is also recessed which makes it easier to find.
With all that glass, you’ll have to be careful to avoid drops, and you will find it something of a fingerprint smudge magnet.
Luckily though, Huawei bundles a rubber cover in the box with the device.
There’s a USB Type-C charging socket on the smartphone’s underside, but no sign of a 3.5mm audio socket.
Despite its size, the phone isn’t overly heavy or awkward to hold.
DISPLAY
The screen on the Huawei Mate 10 Pro is impressive and very big!
6 inches in size, in fact, the OLED FullView Display takes up much, but not all of the front of the device.
There is a definite bezel there, so it doesn’t quite reach the bezeless design heights of some of its competitors.
But nonetheless, when you are using it, the effect is virtually the same – plenty of screen real estate laid out in an 18:9 format.
A slight disappointment is that the screen isn’t 4K, settling instead for full-HD.
The introduction of OLED technology though, combined with colour saturation of 112% and a contrast ration of 70000:1 means the picture quality is excellent.
Colours are bright and strong, blacks deep and white’s brilliant.
The issue of screen resolution is often overblown.
The lack of accessible 4K content means there is no great need for 4K screens yet and often a decent full-HD model, like you find on the Huawei Mate 10 Pro is an ample alternative.
CAMERA
As you would now expect, the Huawei Mate 10 Pro has a dual main camera, made up of a 20MP monochrome sensor and a 12MP RGB unit, both from Leica.
That means it can manage a 2X hybrid zoom, which is standard on a device of this level,
The RGB sensor also has optical image stabilisation.
There is also a battery of software effects, including object tracking and a clever mode which takes photos automatically when smiles are detected.
It all makes for solid, but perhaps not class leading picture quality in normal conditions.
Because it has a considerably wide aperture (f/1.6) low light performance is excellent though.
And there is also the attractive feature of 4K video recording, even though you can’t play that back at full resolution on the device.
The front facing camera has an 8MP sensor and can record 1080p video – standard enough stuff, but executed to good effect.
PERFORMANCE
Because it is so large, the Huawei Mate 10 Pro is clearly capable of accommodating the technology necessary to make it class leading when it comes to performance.
It is powered by the Kirin 970 octa-core chip and i7 co-processor with a separate neural network processing unit for its artificial intelligence based features.
The handset is also loaded with either 4GB or 6GB of RAM, depending on which size of storage is chosen.
The setup is more than capable of propelling the device along at lightning speed, taking on challenging processing tasks with ease.
There are two choices of storage capacity – an entry level with 64GB which is twice what many other manufacturers offer as an opening option, as well as a 128GB alternative.
One definite downside is the absence of a microSD expansion slot – so be careful which memory size you opt for, because once you have it, that’s it!
The big frame also allowed Huawei to pack in a whopping 4,000mAh battery – plenty to help you make it through the day without a top-up provided you don’t go overboard.
In fact the Mate 10 Pro is something of the Duracell bunny of the smartphone world, likely to outlast most if not all of the opposition.
There is fast-charging if you do need to top-up, but no wireless charging, which is a pity seeing as it is quickly becoming a standard for the high end of the market.
OTHER FEATURES
The handset is water and dust resistant, with an IP67 rating.
The stereo speakers pump out pretty good sound and the in-box ear-buds aren’t bad either.
The device runs on the latest version of Android right out of the box.
Sitting on top of that is the Huawei Emui 8.0 interface.
It, like a fine wine, seems to improve with age, and although it mightn’t be to everyone’s taste, it does come with a small enough number of unnecessary apps installed, which is good.
If you delve below the top-level settings, there’s a huge amount of customisation that can be done to the UI, although for most people the out of the box setup will be fine.
SUMMARY
Huawei’s smartphone offerings are improving all the time, and this is probably the best it has released to date.
The excellent screen, super battery life and high-performance camera mean it has plenty to rival far more established brands with heftier price tags.
There are a few niggles there too though – the lack of an option to expand memory, no headphone jack and the EMUI interface might dissuade some would-be purchasers.
The price tag, however, at €749.99 SIM free, will be this handset’s biggest asset, making it look extremely good value compared to alternatives like the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and S8, as well as the iPhone 8 Plus and X.
There are though other models which one might consider closer to the Mate 10 Pro’s price tag, like the LG V30 and Google Pixel 2XL, both of which have plenty to offer too.
But if you opt for the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, at this price you are unlikely to be disappointed.
Comments welcome via Twitter to @willgoodbody
