Huawei P10 Review UK

Huawei P10 Review: Overview & Price

The Huawei P10 was released back in March 2017, in this review we will be looking at what makes the phone unique and some of the best Huawei P10 contract deals in the UK.

The P10 is an updated version of the P9, offering a new fingerprint scanner making it easier to navigate around your phone, a rounded design and a better camera too.

When the Huawei P10 launched in the UK it was priced at a steep £569.99, in 2019 though we are now available to buy the Huawei P10 for around £450.

This phone can be a great alternative to the Huawei P10 Lite, as it is more powerful yet has a very similar design and other features.

Check out the best Huawei P10 deals:

4GB of RAM, a 3200mAh battery life and the Kirin 960 CPU are all some of the specs you can expect from this phone.

You may be thinking this all sounds great, but is the Huawei P10 waterproof? Find out shortly in the next part of this review.

Let’s take a look and see why it’s been doing the rounds in China…

Huawei P10 Review: Design & Display

So when it comes to the design of the Huawei P10, we were delighted to find that it’s extremely attractive.

The phone looks extremely similar to an iPhone 7, and to the untrained eye, you may think that you’ve accidentally been given an Apple phone.

However, there is some Huawei and Leica branding which will set the record straight when taking a closer look.

The Huawei P10 has rounded edges that make the device comfortable to hold in your hand, the glass design is also coated in Gorilla Glass 5, which means it is scratch-resistant, that being said we don’t recommend placing the phone in your toolbox.

The Huawei P10 weighs in at a measly 142g and is 7mm thick, this is rather light for a smartphone and we found it was easy to hold and wouldn’t pull our jeans down when placing it in our back pocket.

On the right-hand side of the phone is where you will find the slightly indented power button, just above this is where the volume rockers are placed.

Both buttons feel nice to the touch and have a clicky feel to them. On the front of the phone, you will see the fingerprint sensor towards the bottom, the selfie-camera at the top next to the earpiece.

We would have liked to have seen the fingerprint around the back of the phone, as this is a more natural position for us and we found it a lot easier to unlock the phone without lots of fidgeting around.

You may be wondering if the Huawei P10 is waterproof? Unfortunately not, so be sure not to drop this device in any water.

Then down towards the base of the phone sits the single firing speaker, its neighbour to the USB-C port and the headphone jack.

We were delighted to find a headphone jack on this phone as most of the competition has scrapped this off now and relies solely on wireless headphones or purchasing an adapter that of course costs the user more money.

Across to the left-hand side of the phone you will find the microSD card slot, allowing the already big 64GB of internal storage to be increased right up to 256GB.

We were lucky enough to be able to review the Mystic Silver colour phone, if this is not your thing then you have; Rose Gold, Graphite Black, Dazzling Gold, Dazzling Blue and Greenery to choose from, all looking as beautiful as each other.

The Huawei P10 has a 5.1-inch 1080p IPS LCD display, which is rather small for most smartphones nowadays, perfectly suited to those who have smaller hands.

The phone offers a solid all-round display that has great viewing angles and plenty of colour accuracy.

Huawei has also kindly included a free screen protector in the box, giving users that extra peace of mind if you do happen to find it in your toolbox.

The display of the P10 is actually very similar to the one we seen in the Huawei P9, just a little smaller which means it’s easy to reach all of the corners of the display especially if you’re on the shorter side.

The phone has 432ppi that means text looks extremely sharp and there is no Minecraft looking pixels on this thing, there is an eye-comfort mode built into the settings too which allows you to turn on which helps the strain on your eyes.

Again in the settings, you can adjust the colour temperature so you can customise how bright the colours are on the screen.

All in all we had no real concerns with the Huawei P10 display, it was great for watching videos and browsing the web, although if you’re looking for something a little better and bigger you may want to look at the Huawei P10 Plus.

Huawei P10 Review: Performance

The Huawei P10 comes out of the box with Android 7.0 Nougat that is laid over the top of Huawei’s EMUI 5.1.

The lack of an app drawer is pretty annoying but you can now add that feature in if you really want through the settings.

See Related:

*Huawei P20 Lite Review*
*Huawei Mate 20 Lite Review*
*Huawei P10 Lite Review*

We really didn’t like the cluttered look of the home screen without an app drawer and it is so much more manageable having all your apps neatly in one place.

The Huawei P10 offers features like ‘HiCare’, which is a professional customer services app which is on hand 24/7 to help you out with your Huawei device.

Another feature called ‘HiGame’, which is an Android game platform provided by Huawei which co-operates with some great game developers in order to give you the freshest most up to date games on your Huawei P10.

‘Ultra Memory’ is also a feature you will find on the Huawei P10, this essentially runs in the background and helps the phone to recycle memory faster resulting in smoother overall performance.

When it comes to the actually specifications of the phone, the Huawei P10 is pretty packed. It has the Kirin 960 processor that is the same used in the Huawei Mate 9 phablet, also coupled with the Mali G71 MP8 CPU and 4GB of RAM.

Regular use on the Huawei P10 is a dream; it glides through the UI effortlessly and really cuts through most of what you throw at it without any hiccups.

Don’t get me wrong the Huawei P10 doesn’t have as much horsepower as some of Huawei’s more premium flagship devices such as the Mate 20 Pro or P20 Pro.

That being said the phone really does handle everyday tasks easily, social media is a breeze, reading and more is all effortless for the phone.

When it comes to actual gaming on the phone, we tested out a couple of our favourite games, the first being ‘Runescape’.

We found that it did take slightly longer for the game to load and it wouldn’t play smoothly in high graphics, but on medium settings, the game would run fine.

However, if you are a serious gamer and are going to be using the phone for intense gaming sessions, you may want to opt for a more premium Huawei device, check out the Huawei Mate 20 Lite or Huawei P Smart 2019.

As a whole, though the performance was decent, we had no real complaints, as the phone isn’t really designed for graphically intense games but it did handle them very well.

The sound quality on the phone is decent too, we watched multiple YouTube videos on the device and we were pleased with the sound clarity and loudness, it really does enhance the overall experience.

Huawei P10 Review: Camera

The Huawei P10 camera is definitely one of the highlights of this phone, as it is with most Huawei phones.

The P10 boasts the Leica branding on it camera, it has a dual-lens 20MP monochrome coupled with a 12MP RGB sensor.

Huawei claims that because of the dual-lens setup, it offers its users better low light performance and a better bokeh performance.

In reality, we found this to be true as low light shots performed decently and the bokeh was strong too.

Optical image stabilisation is present here too, making images come out less blurred and smoother overall.

There are plenty of different modes to play around with on the Huawei P10’s camera too, we have Panorama, Night Shot, Slow-Mo and more.

We loved the ability to be able to swap between auto-more and pro-mode, also the wide-aperture mode is great too as it makes for easy group photos with friends.

This mode also allows the user to adjust the amount of background blur on the phone, which results in higher detailed shots, which are already perfect for Instagram.

Now as mentioned previously the shots produced in low light are decent, the reason we say this is the fact that when there is even a small amount of ambient light from street lamps or in a club, the images produced are generally a little noisy.

Also, the fact that phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S8 or iPhone 7 do produce far better low light shots than the P10.

We loved that the camera application is super quick to load, we didn’t notice any shutter lag on the Huawei P10 camera either which is great as it means you can quickly draw your phone out and immediately start snapping without missing the target.

Portrait mode comes with some insane new software that uses around 200 points on the human face to detect exactly where your facial features are, in order for the camera to produce the best shot.

The Huawei P10 also has an 8MP selfie camera with an f/1.9 aperture, this is more than capable of taking some fantastic looking selfies. We found that selfies looked clear with plenty of quality and good dynamic range.

The main attraction for the Huawei P10 is the fact that it has Leica integrated into its portrait mode, resulting in some fantastic all-around looking photos.

We really had very little to complain about when it comes to the camera department of the Huawei P10.

Video recording is also pretty strong on this phone too; the P10 can record in up to 4K resolution at 30fps or standard FHD at 60fps, resulting in some awesome video footage.

However, the footage can be a little shaky if you don’t have an extremely steady hand of a tripod to attach to the phone.

Huawei P10 Review: Battery Life

The Huawei P10 battery life is impressive, it has a 3200mAh battery inside of it, which you can expect to last you the full day depending on your individual usage.

We did, however, find that the phone would be on its last 5% on most days when we had it for review, but we were really pushing the phone to its limits.

For the most part, we think that this phone will get average users through a full day, you will find yourself reaching for the charger if you’re a gamer on really using the phone hard.

We found the phone to be rather conservative when in standby, so if you’re not using the phone for a long period all day then this is great, as it will definitely get you through.

Huawei has implemented fast charging on the Honor P10, allowing you to get a speedy 50% if you’re in a hurry, although there is no wireless charging here which would have been the icing on the cake for the battery.

Overall the Huawei P10 battery life is decent, allowing you to get through a full day of use when using the phone normally without seriously intense usage.

Huawei P10 Review: Summary

So is the Huawei P10 really worth your hard-earned cash?

Well, the phone is primarily focused on the younger generation who are fashion conscious, with the design being very similar to an iPhone 6S or iPhone 7.

The phone does offer some cool features; it has a decent battery life with strong performance too, more than enough firepower to keep the average user happy.

The Huawei P10 to buy is a fair price, offering high specs and a solid camera. The P10 offers some serious value for money and is a great alternative to some of the more expensive Huawei phones.

Although if you are a gamer or someone who is going to be using the phone for long periods throughout the day, for around £70 more you could opt for the plus version of the phone which has a better camera and more storage.

The Huawei P10 battery life is decent, however it certainly will not win any gold medals, it will get you through a full day of average use.

Unfortunately, the Huawei P10 is not waterproof, meaning you will need to be very careful when using the device around a pool or in the tub.

Huawei P10 SIM-Free Smartphone - Black 

All in all, we were impressed with the Huawei P10, but we think that before you make any decisions you should check out our Huawei Mate 20 Lite review and Huawei P Smart 2019 as these offer better value for money for a cheaper price.

We would also recommend the Huawei P10 Lite as it is slightly cheaper than the Huawei P10, and has a lot of the same features just for a cheaper price tag.

You can also check out the best Huawei P10 contract deals in the UK at the top of this post.

Huawei P10 Review: Full Specification

Launch: 2017. February

Body:

• Dimension: 145.3 x 69.3 x 7mm (5.72 c 2.73 x 0.28 inches)
• Weight: 145g (5.11 oz)
• Build: Front glass, aluminium body
• Sim: Single SIM (Nano-SIM) or Hybrid Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by)

Display:

• Type: IPS-NEO LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colours
• Size: 5.1 inches, 71.1 cm² (-71.2% screen-to-body-ratio)
• Resolution: 1080 x 1920 pixels, 16:9 ratio (-432 PPI density)
• Protection: Corning Gorilla Glass 5

Platform:

• OS: Android 7.0 (Nougat), upgradable to Android 9.0 (Pie); EMUI 9
• Chipset: HiSilicon Kirin 960 (16nm)
• CPU: Octa-core (4×2.4GHz Cortex-A73 & 4×1.8GHz Cortex-A53)
• GPU: Mali-G71 MP8

Memory:

• Card slot: microSD, up to 256GB (uses SIM 2 slot)
• Internal: 32/64GB, 4GB RAM

Camera:

• Primary:
  – 12MP, f/2.2, 28mm (wide), OIS, PDAF & laser AF
  – 20MP B/W, f/1.8, 2x lossless zoom, PDAF & laser AF
• Features:  Leica optics, dual-LED dual-tone flash, HDR, panorama
• Video: 2160p@30fps, 1080p@60fps
• Secondary:
  – 8MP, f/1.9
• Video: 1080p@30fps

Sound:

• Loudspeaker: Yes
• 3.5mm Jack: Yes
  – 24-bit/192kHz audio
  – Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic

Comms:

• WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, DLNA, WiFi Direct, hotspot
• Bluetooth: 4.2, A2DP, LE, aptX
• GPS: Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO
• NFC: Yes
• Radio: No
• USB: 2.0, Type-C 1.0 reversible connector

Features:

• Sensors: Fingerprint (front-mounted), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass

Battery:

• Non-removable Li-Ion 3200 mAh battery
• Charging: Fast battery charging 5V/4.5A 22.5W

Misc:

• Colours: Mystic Silver, Rose Gold, Graphite Black, Dazzling Gold, Dazzling Blue, Greenery
• Price: As seen in the above post

Tests:

• Performance: Basemark OS ||: 3393 / Basemark OS || 2.0: 2910 / Basemark X: 39433
• Display: Contrast ratio: 1423:1 (nominal), 3.379 (sunlight)
• Camera: Photo / Video
• Loudspeaker: Voice 67dB / Noise 70dB / Ring 83dB
• Audi Quality:  Noise -93.0dB / Crosstalk -93.5dB
• Battery life: Endurance rating 75h