Huawei Mate 10 Lite – review

The Huawei Mate range saw the light of day no less than 5 years ago, through the Ascend Mate model. Then followed, in the fall of 2014, Ascend Mate 7, and more recently Mate 8 and 9. The latest arrival in the series, Huawei Mate 10, introduced in October last year, also brings a Pro version, as well as a Lite version.

We will analyze the little one further, and we will see together how many items he borrowed from his older brothers and where compromises were needed to keep the price in the mid-range area.

Huawei Mate 10 Lite Specifications:

Design

In the box in which I received the Huawei Mate 10 Lite I also found a USB charger, a microUSB cable - USB 2.0, headphones and a clip for access to the sim slots. A user manual with a warranty certificate will definitely arrive in the retail package.

We notice from the beginning the similarities with Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro. The main culprit for this is the 18: 9 aspect ratio screen and the narrow edges in each direction. That's why for a smartphone with a 5.9-inch display, Huawei Mate 10 Lite manages to keep relatively compact dimensions. However, it remains quite long and wide, and this makes the thickness seem even smaller than the 7.5 mm officially announced.

The perfectly flat back, which bends only to the edges, and the metal construction fail to provide a good grip. Not infrequently you feel that it will slip out of your hand, although this did not happen to me during use. A silicone cover will definitely get rid of this problem.

Another feature common to serial brothers is certainly the construction. Absolutely nothing makes you think of a mid-range product, the materials and finishes are among the best, there is no reason for dissatisfaction. If I were looking for a knot in the rush, I would just tie it to the plastic part around the screen, the one that makes the transition from the metal case to the glass that covers the display, slightly curved towards the ends. If it had been possible without that plastic, it would have been really remarkable in this price area.

Otherwise, just the dual camera lens on the back can ruin the design. Or maybe it affects the practical side and not so much the look of the phone, because once seated on the back, Huawei Mate 10 Lite will rest on the lenses of the main camera, and over time there may be some scratches there. Again, a protective cover is welcome.

The specimen we received for the test is blue - Aurora Blue, a shade that offers interesting reflections depending on the light. The case is metallic, making it even more pleasing to the eye.

The three capacitive buttons specific to the Android operating system have no longer found a place at the bottom of the screen, so they have been integrated into the EMUI 5.1 interface. However, under the display it seems that there was enough space for the manufacturer's name, which we still find, less intrusive, and on the back of the device, somewhere towards the base.

Huawei Mate 10 Lite is a phone that through design, finishes and materials takes a step forward in the mid-range area. Really worthy of the title Mate from this point of view.

Screen and sound

Like the other members of the Mate 10 family, the Lite version also adopts the 18: 9 aspect ratio for the screen. The diagonal is 5.9 inches and the resolution is Full HD + (2160 x 1080 pixels). The pixel density thus formed is 409 ppi, enough for the demands of any user, except for those who use the smartphone in VR glasses.

The panel is a good one. Just good and that's it. Nothing impressive, although, I repeat, there are no reasons for dissatisfaction. The colors are rendered correctly, only they are not the brightest, vivid. The contrast is high, as is the brightness, but the readability in direct sunlight is only average. All good enough to put it all together, but nothing to really turn your back on. However, this is not the case in the area where Huawei Mate 10 Lite competes.

The screen fits perfectly in the mid-range area, but I do not consider it to be one of the elements that will attract you at first sight.

The external sound is played by the Huawei Mate 10 Lite from behind the grille on the bottom side of the smartphone. From there we get a really high maximum volume, among the best we've come across lately. I said the same about the Allview X4 Soul Vision, so the most careful of you might say I'm starting to repeat myself. This is not the case at all, but the Huawei Mate 10 Lite also does a great job when it comes to maximum intensity. The quality is only average, on the other hand, fortunately at high volume there are no distortions.

With the 3.5 mm jack the situation changes. We have very good sound quality, but not at all impressive volume. Many may use the equalizer in the audio settings menu to get a little more output power.

The headphones in the package are really mediocre. I don't think there will be a user who is satisfied with this accessory and does not use another pair. I did not find any advantage, a pity that Huawei chose to put these headphones with a smartphone like Mate 10 Lite.

Hardware, operating system and applications

Competing in the mid-range, the Huawei Mate 10 Lite received a chipset ready for this fierce battle. We are talking about HiSilicon Kirin 659, a chipset developed entirely by the Chinese company. It uses an octa-core processor, with 4 cores clocked at 2.36 GHz, on the Cortex-A53, and another 4 cores running at 1.7 GHz, also on the Cortex-A53.

On the graphics side, the processor is aided by a Mali-T830 MP2 GPU, which manages to cope brilliantly in any game. The more complex ones will display a lower frame rate and details at a medium level.

Memory is enough in both directions, here Huawei Mate 10 Lite may look like a high-end smartphone. We have 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage space, which can be supplemented with up to 256 GB via a microSD card, which occupies the slot of one of the two sim cards.

Screenshots from the CPU-Z application with data about Huawei Mate 10 Lite:

The operating system over which Huawei has applied its own EMUI 5.1 interface (rather a custom ROM) is Android 7.0 Nougat. However, nothing reminds you of Android, as EMUI intervenes strongly in every aspect of the operating system made by Google.

From the unlock screen, to the notification area, quick settings or general settings, to icons, everything is changed by EMUI. It seems that the only one that was not intrusively affected was the area with recent applications.

If initially EMUI arranged all the applications on the home screens, now the user has the possibility to activate a button that gives you access to the drawer with all the applications.

The interface moves smoothly all the time, really sprinting, the only moments when small problems appear are when you want to put it to the test, by multitasking, with updates or installations in the background.

What I can't appreciate about any phone manufacturer is when they choose to bring a lot of pre-installed applications. So I can't praise Huawei Mate 10 Lite here, which burdens the internal memory with far too much bloatware, being over 50 applications since the first opening of the smartphone.

If all the pre-installed applications on Huawei Mate 10 Lite were passed, I would fill in the correct lines. So I will say that we have a lot from Google, which is not very unusual, but also more from Huawei and others. Why put in the factory software like Booking, eBay or Instagram or games like Asphalt Nitro, Kingdoms and Spider-Man: Ultimate Power, which are free in the Play Store anyway and you can install them if you want. Indeed, you can uninstall them without any problems, but why put them there in the first phase?

Let's say that tools like Flashlight, Mirror, Compass, Backup, etc. would be useful, but there are many others ready to offer Huawei Mate 10 Lite without which you can easily handle. I repeat, you can uninstall most of them in just one step, but why not leave it to the user to choose if he wants them installed and not if he wants to delete them.

Anyway, there are too many and I hope that Huawei will listen and act like Samsung or ASUS, which now leaves it to the user to choose whether to install certain programs in dedicated stores.

Screenshot gallery of Huawei Mate 10 Lite menu:

Performance

After Huawei Mate 10 Lite went through several benchmark tests, I gathered all the results and passed them in the table below:

Connectivity

Huawei Mate 10 Lite arrives in Europe in the dual sim version, which supports either two nano sim cards or one with a microSD card. It knows all the 4G LTE bands from all the operators operating in our country, and the maximum download / upload speeds are 300/50 Mbps.

On Wi-Fi it is limited only to 802.11 b / g / n standards, we have Bluetooth 4.2 with A2DP and LE, positioning via A-GPS, GLONASS and BDS, FM radio.

I would say that Huawei Mate 10 Lite lags behind in connectivity. We don't have a standard Wi-Fi needle, we don't have NFC, and only a microUSB connector instead of the more modern USB Type-C.

The microUSB port is positioned next to the 3.5mm jack on the bottom side. On the left we have the sim slots, on the top is only the secondary microphone, to attenuate the background noise, and on the right are the buttons for adjusting the volume and the power.

The fingerprint sensor is located on the back, just below the dual camera. It is extremely fast, among the best in this respect, and recognizes 360 degrees in more than 90% of cases.

The Huawei Mate 10 Lite voice calls work well, I didn't encounter any problems with the GSM signal or the volume or sound quality of the speaker.

Photo and video camera

Now we come to the part where we talk about the middle ground that Huawei Mate 10 Lite wants to impress. With two sensors for each camera, the phone may seem ready to deliver the best results.

We have a 16 Megapixel sensor with a 2 MP on the back and a 13 Megapixel with a 2 MP on the front. None impress with the opening offered, only f / 2.2 for the main camera and f / 2.0 for the secondary. Both can record videos at full HD Full 1080p resolution at 30 fps.

The camera interface is quite airy, settings or shooting modes are accessible by swiping left or right. We have several capture modes, some filters and interesting effects.

Screenshots from the Huawei Mate 10 Lite Camera interface:

Unfortunately, the whole set of 4 sensors fails to impress. If in sufficient light we have good results, with full details, natural colors and a high dynamic range, in low light the situation changes completely. There is a lot of image noise, the processing algorithm raises the sharpness to a much higher level, the colors are blurred, and the contrast is low.

HDR mode once activated makes no noticeable difference. However, the dynamic range is good in pictures without HDR on, so it didn't have much to do. Here are some examples of HDR On / Off:

Moreover, although we have two sensors for each room, I could not say that on the artistic side we see spectacular results. Bokeh does not seem very natural, but rather processed from software, as can many other cameras that use only one sensor.

On the video side, Huawei Mate 10 Lite remains at the same level. It doesn't impress with details, the colors are fading, and the overall quality is just satisfactory.

Full HD 1080p video clip with Huawei Mate 10 Lite

Photo gallery taken with Huawei Mate 10 Lite (many examples are with Bokeh mode on / off), the first ones captured with the front camera:

Autonomy

I had high expectations from the 3340 mAh battery. On the one hand, they were fulfilled, on the other, they were deceived. How's that coming? Quite simply, the culprit is not the battery capacity, but the processor. It is effective only when it is not taken seriously.

In ordinary tasks the autonomy is above average, one day from morning to evening is not difficult to achieve. It's just that forced a little harder will draw more and more of the energy stored in the battery. That's why in the case of Huawei Mate 10 Lite I came across one of the fastest downloads after running all the benchmark tests. In about 40 minutes of testing, almost 30 percent of the battery was lost. This means that in about 2 hours I would have completely emptied the battery.

In our specific test, when we continuously play the Unboxing Playlist on the Gadget.ro channel on YouTube, with the screen brightness at maximum, via Wi-Fi internet connection, Huawei Mate 10 Lite lasted 6 hours and 12 minutes from a full battery up to 10% capacity.

Price

Huawei Mate 10 Lite - 1,500 lei on eMAG.ro

conclusions

Although it is offered at about half the price of a Mate 10, the Lite version still seems a bit higher in price. Yeah Al that sounds pretty crap to me, Looks like BT aint for me either.

If we think that the price has already dropped by more than 10% from the initial one, then we can't help but wonder what the cost will be after another few months.

By no means do I want to convey that I recommend for the mother to be inactive. Huawei Mate 10 Lite is far from a bad smartphone, only it has made a lot of compromises compared to the flagship variants from which it says it is derived.

In vain you bring 4 photo sensors if the results are not up to par. It is useless to put a battery with an above-average capacity if the processor is not energy efficient enough and, moreover, you do not add even a fast charge. Do you choose not to offer standard Wi-Fi needle or USB Type-C port in this price range? An uninspired decision again, I say.

On the other hand, Huawei Mate 10 Lite is a good looking phone, extremely well built, powerful enough to run optimally any application or game, has a smooth moving interface and even with a lot of blotware, most pre-installed applications can be deleted without problems.

As a fully analyzed package, Huawei Mate 10 Lite is not a bad phone. Not at all. It could only be a really good one if you tried a little harder.

The most important pros and cons for Huawei Mate 10 Lite:

PRO

VERSUS

Categories: hardwarehuaweirecomandarireviewstelefonos-mobile

Tags: battery lifeHuaweiHuawei Mate 10 Liteimpressionsreview reviewsviewtests benchmark

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