Huawei has launched their latest flagships Huawei Mate 10 and Huawei Mate 10 Pro aiming straight at Samsung, Google and Apple. The new Huawei flagships have the potential to go up against the best flagships out there.
Both, Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, will sport the new Huawei Kirin 970 10nm processor which will come coupled with a Neural Processing Unit that will handle AI in these smartphones. The Neural Processing Unit will fuel the machine-learning features on both these smartphones.
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A Smarter Smartphone?
The new Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro will have their own intelligent behavior, which e.g. will be able to do offline translations between different languages. If you point the camera at text written in some language you can’t read, the smartphone will translate it to a language you can read. Over time, it will keep learning things with more and more usage. From adjusting the camera for capturing the best possible picture, to managing notifications, the new AI from Huawei is as good as it gets.
Huawei Mate 10 & Mate 10 Pro – Specifications & Features
Both these smartphones, Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, sport a similar design language. But they vary in actual design.
Design
The devices sport a unibody all-glass design. The Mate 10 sports an 81.79% screen-to-body ratio and Mate 10 Pro manages an 81.61% screen-to-body ratio. Both have managed to beat Apple’s new iPhone X which has an 81.36% screen-to-body ratio. The Mate 10 Pro has its fingerprint sensor on the back, while the one on Mate 10 resides in the home button.
Display
The Mate 10 comes with a 5.9 inch Quad-HD LCD display with a 16:9 aspect ratio. The Mate 10 Pro sports a 6 inch Full-HD OLED display with an 18:9 aspect ratio. The displays on both these smartphones feature HDR10 support.
Software
Huawei Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro run Android Oreo out of the box, with the all new EMUI 8.0 on top. Both these smartphones will optimize their performance over time, by learning your usage pattern and will optimize these apps for a better performance.
Hardware
Huawei Mate 10 and the Mate 10 Pro will be powered by Huawei’s own HiSilicon Kirin 970 SoC. They are claiming this to be the first SOC in an Android smartphone to carry a neural-network processor unit (NPU). Apple’s new A11 Bionic already features its own dual-core ‘neural engine’.
RAM And Storage
The Mate 10 will come with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage, and on the other hand the Huawei Mate 10 Pro will come in two combinations – 4GB RAM and 64GB storage and the other one with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage. The storage on the Mate 10 can be further expanded up to 256GB, unlike on the Mate 10 Pro.
The AI
The new chipset from Huawei will support AI features like taking better selfies and pictures, Bokeh effect adjustment in images, recognizing objects and more. Huawei calls the entire implementation of AI into their mobiles as Huawei MobileAI.
Camera
Both, Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, feature a dual set of cameras at the back. A 20MP monochrome sensor and a 12MP RGB sensor coupled with Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), BSI CMOS Sensor, PDAF, CAF, Laser Autofocus, Depth Autofocus and a dual LED flash. Up front, there is an 8 megapixel fixed focus sensor for clicking selfies.
Connectivity
Both these smartphones will come with dual SIM support and will support NFC. The Huawei Mate 10 will sport a 3.5mm headphone jack, but the Mate 10 Pro will give it a miss. Both smartphones will come with a Type C USB 2.0 port.
Battery
Both these smartphones pack in the same 4,000 mAh battery and both will support fast charging. They can charge up to 58% within 30 minutes.
Price
The Huawei Mate 10 has been priced at EUR 699 (around Rs. 53,500/-) and the Huawei Mate 10 Pro has been priced at EUR 799 (around Rs. 61,000/-).
Availability
The devices will go on sale from November in Australia, China, Egypt, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain and UAE. They might make it to India by the end of this year or early 2018.
So, Better than Apple and Google?
The NPU from Huawei can handle AI tasks like a real-time computer vision and image recognition & sorting. Huawei’s AI approach is more subtle than the AI assistants like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa or Google’s Assistant. Apparently, Huawei is not interested in building an AI assistant. Instead, they are trying to leverage the AI hardware and software to make their smartphones more powerful and smarter over a period of time, with machine learning.
Huawei has also launched a special Porsche Designed Huawei Mate 10 as a special variant, which will carry specifications of the Huawei Mate 10 Pro in a more premium design.
Will the latest Huawei twins be better than Apple’s or Google’s smartphones? You tell us! Sound off in the comments below.