Honor 10 tested: More beautiful, better, faster than the Huawei P20?
Honor imitates Huawei again. The Honor 10 and the Huawei P20 could be twins. But which phone is better and what can the Honor 10 do? I tested both phones and have the answers.
"Your new phone is green," Dominik Bärlocher writes to me after the launch of the Honor 10 in London. A green phone? Eh, I think to myself. Couldn't Dominik have brought me a nicer colour?
When I hold the Honor 10 in my hands for the first time, I am all the more surprised. Honor's phone isn't just green. The phone changes colour depending on the light. From green to blue to a light purple. It looks remarkably beautiful.
The Honor 10 also feels good in the hand. The edges are rounded and with a screen size of less than six inches, the phone is still compact enough that you can use it with one hand without any weird finger contortions.
The special colour effects on the phone fascinate me. Honor calls the colour effect Aurora, which is inspired by the Northern Lights. It has something. If the phone is to my left, it's purple, if it's in front of me, it's green and if I slide it to the right, it's dark blue. It shines and individual stripes are lighter in colour. Very fancy, very pretty.
Maybe the whole colour changing thing sounds familiar too? The Huwei P20 Pro comes in the colour Twilight with the same colour gradient. The only difference is that it runs horizontally. On the Honor 10, the colour gradient is vertical and the colours change more.
The phone is also available in three other colours. However, only the green and blue phones have the chameleon effect. [[productlist:8586326,8748052,8586327]]
Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V Huawei
Honor is copying from Huawei. Again and again. But Honor is not infringing any copyrights - Honor is a subsidiary of Huawei. However, it is not entirely clear to me why the company makes cheaper copies of its own phones.
The Honor 10 is a dead ringer for the Huawei P20. But be careful, the P20 is not to be confused with the P20 Pro. Senior Editor Dominik Bärlocher is still raving about the P20 Pro. The Pro version of the P20 has three cameras, is bigger and sets new standards. Here you can find the spec comparison of the P20 and P20 Pro.
Last December, Honor unveiled the View 10, which was modelled on the Huawei Mate 10 Pro. However, these two phones are mainly similar on the inside, but different on the outside.
If you go further back in time, it becomes clear that Honor's business model consists of copying Huawei's devices and selling them more cheaply via the online channel. The predecessor of the Honor 10, the Honor 9, was inspired by the Huawei P10. The Honor 8 was modelled on the Huawei P9
.
This is the same for the Honor 10 and Huawei P20
The similarity is even more obvious with Honor's latest copycat prank. Outside and inside. This is the same for the Honor 10 and Huawei P20:
- Notch
- Home button on the front
- Kirin 970 system-on-a-chip
- 3400 mAh battery with fast charging function
- LCD display
- LED flash
- 4GB RAM (on the Swiss market)
- No IP certification
- Memory is not expandable
- Back made of glass
Both phones come with a notch and home button on the front. However, the notches can be switched off in the software. The home buttons on both phones are located on the front. Honor has also incorporated a new fingerprint technology. More about Honor's fingerprint later in the text.
The inner workings of the two phones are almost identical: both use Huawei's second latest chip, the Kirin 970. The graphics processor is the same, it is a Mali-G72. On the Swiss market, both devices have 4 GB of RAM. The Honor 10 is also available on the Asian market with 6 GB. We will probably not be able to offer this version.
In my everyday test, both phones are fast and reliable. I tested the Huawei for over a month and used the Honor 10 for ten days. During this time, I had no crashes or other system problems with either phone. Apps open immediately and without stuttering, data processing is smooth.
The battery in both phones is 3400 mAh and both phones have a quick charge function. One charge lasts me a good day with both phones. Even if I listen to music and surf a lot. However, I had the feeling that I would have had more battery left in the evening with the P20.
Both phones come with an LCD, i.e. liquid crystal display. Most phones today have an LCD. Better than LCD would be an Amoled display, such as the one in the Pro version of the Huawei P20.
LCDs produce slightly less contrast because, unlike Amoled, the display needs a backlight. I noticed the lack of contrast on Honors Phone. In the picture above you can see both phones at maximum brightness and with identical background images. The pink on the P20 is stronger and has more contrast than on the Honor 10, where the pink looks paler.
Unfortunately, neither phone has IP certification. This means they are not water-resistant, or to put it correctly: they have not been tested and certified for water resistance. Unfortunately, this is standard for Honor, the phones are never IP-certified. At Huawei, only the Pro version has certification.
This is where the Honor 10 and Huawei P20 differ
The Honor 10 and the normal Huawei P20 are not completely identical. Honor hasn't copied everything: A few things are better, a few things are worse. These are the most important differences:
- The cameras
- Honor's ultrasonic fingerprint
- Honor's headphone jack
- Honor only has mono sound, Huawei stereo
- Honor's phone is slightly larger, but lighter
Honor has two cameras with 16 megapixels (colour) and 24 megapixels (monochrome), while Huawei relies on a Leica dual camera with 12 megapixels (colour) and 20 megapixels (monochrome). I found Huawei's camera significantly better. You can see why in the camera test below.
People who like their wired headphones can rejoice: The Honor 10 has a jack plug. With Huawei, you have to listen to music with a dongle, but at least it's included. Unfortunately, Honor's phone only comes with a mono speaker. The P20 has a stereo speaker. The difference is audible. Huawei's sound is fuller and more natural. With Honor, the music sounds muffled, especially at higher volumes.
The Honor 10 is twelve grams lighter than the P20. Sounds like nothing, but you'll notice it when you hold both phones in your hands. Honor's phone is about half a millimetre wider. But you don't notice that. Honor's edge is a little wider. I didn't think it was bad and it could even be an advantage if the phone were to fall to the ground.
In general, I have the feeling that Honor's phone would withstand a drop better than Huawei's P20.
Honor's fingerprint scanner in the glass
Honor is also presenting the new fingerprint scanner at the presentation in London. It is not copied from Huawei and works with ultrasound. Honor has integrated the scanner into the glass, so you can't feel it. But thanks to the foil that comes attached to the phone, you know where the fingerprint is. Without the foil, you'll be groping next to the sensor a lot, especially at the beginning. Honor says the scanner also works with wet fingers. That didn't work for me.
The new recognition is more error-prone and also slower than the scanner on the Huawei P20. It often takes several attempts for the Honor to recognise my finger. Even re-registering the finger doesn't help. But at least the sensor for navigation works flawlessly. You can use the finger scanner to control both phones. This means that the virtual navigation bars no longer take up any space on the screen. However, fingerprint navigation is not preset. You can switch off the virtual navigation: Settings > System > System navigation > External navigation button.
The camera test
Honour has installed a larger main camera with 16 megapixels. The 12-megapixel main camera on the P20 is again typical for Huawai from Leica.
The cameras also differ on the software side. With Honor, the artificial intelligence, also known as AI, can be switched on and off directly at the top of the camera. With Huawei, you have to go to the camera menu, the item is called Master AI and is activated by default. If you don't like a picture with AI on Honor, you can remove the enhancement afterwards without having to go into editing mode. Honor has built a few tricks into the camera for this purpose. Thanks to face recognition, you can place your face in other backgrounds or put on cat ears. Well.
In portrait mode, you can take selfies with 24 megapixels on both phones. The 3D mode available on both phones allows you to set a different exposure or, as with iOS, take a selfie in stage lighting. The selfies are still somewhat blurred with the portrait mode, even if you switch off the beauty filter completely. Selfies work best for me in normal photo mode and then also look natural.
Photos with Huawei's phone (right) come out with more contrast and more details. The test photos were all taken with the AI assistant activated. The photos from Honor (left) look brighter and slightly more saturated to me. The green in the picture from Honor looks a little too bright and the fluffy animal is shown to better advantage in the Huawei photo.
Here for Honor and here for Huawei you can find the images in large.
With both phones, you can take photos with a bokeh effect, i.e. shallow depth of field. This works better with the Huawei P20. With Honour's phone, hair, the edges of glasses and other fine details are often blurred, which is unattractive. Huawei's bokeh looks more natural in my eyes.
Here for Honor and here for Huawei you can find the images in large.
Unfortunately, neither phone has an optical image stabiliser. However, both use their AI technology for image stabilisation. When taking photos at night, we found that Huawei's stabilisation works better. The night photos from Honor, taken without a tripod, are not usable.
The two pictures below were taken by hand. That's why the details are not quite the same. In my opinion, Huawei's picture on the right has a nicer colour scheme. You can see this especially in the clouds at the top, the orange fence at the bottom and the orange house.
Here for Honor and here for Huawei you can find the image larger.
Surprisingly, the Honors Phone shows the finer details quite nicely. You can see this by clicking on the links above and looking at the images in large size. Honor has built a feature into its brand's camera called semantic image splitting. The phone uses it to artificially sharpen objects. You can see this quite well in the image section of the crane scaffolding, for example.
Honor's artificial sharpening, however, results in bright double contours - easy to see in the outlines of the cranes. With the P20, the fine details are not quite sharp, but it looks natural.
Similarities with the Honor View 10?
How does the Honor 10 compare to the previous phone from Honor, the View 10? I was asked this question by office colleagues and acquaintances during the test. I had tested the View 10 for a month before the Huawei P20
.
Attention, now it's getting a bit complicated. The only difference between the names of the two phones is the "View". But the phones themselves are different: Compared to the Honor 10, the View 10 is significantly larger and it is no longer as easy to use with one hand. The View 10 is from V-Series Honors, but is also a copy of a Huawei phone - namely the Huawei Mate 10 Pro.
Like the Honor 10, the View 10 also comes with a headphone jack and the display technology is the same. The View 10 has a larger RAM of six gigabytes. The camera has 16 megapixels - the same as the Honor 10. The View 10 has more memory and the memory is expandable thanks to the hybrid slot. At 3750 mAh, the battery is slightly larger than that of the Honor 10, but I didn't notice much of a difference in my tests.
The back of the View 10 is made of matt metal and is therefore not as spectacular as that of the Honor 10. The dual cameras on the View 10 are mounted separately and protrude from the back. This is a better solution on the Honor 10 and the P20; although the cameras also protrude around two millimetres from the phone, they are rounded, which gives a softer impression.
Conclusion: Not better, but more exciting
The Honor 10 is no better than the Huawei P20. The P20's camera is better, the sound is better, the fingerprint and facial recognition work much more reliably. The Huawei P20 is a good, high-quality and solid phone. But it doesn't stand out from the competition. It works great. But it's not exceptional.
The Honor 10 is more exciting. And the price is much better. You get more phone for your money. But not everything always works perfectly and sometimes the phone needs more patience.
The Honor 10 impresses me with its unusual colours, speed and special features such as the headphone jack. In my opinion, Honor has done almost everything right. They copied the best from Huawei, made small changes and invested boldly in colour. Honor could just release security updates a little faster.
The Honor 10 is a phone that is a joy to use and that I would have liked to keep for longer.
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Testing devices and gadgets is my thing. Some experiments lead to interesting insights, others to demolished phones. I’m hooked on series and can’t imagine life without Netflix. In summer, you’ll find me soaking up the sun by the lake or at a music festival.
