Huawei P10 Plus Review
13 min read
Huawei P10 Plus
RM 3099
Pros
- Excellent build quality
- Excellent accessories package
- Accurate & fast fingerprint scanner
- Great 5.5-inch Quad-HD 1440p IPS display
- Excellent rear camera
- Great front camera
- Excellent performance
- Great battery life
- Fast charging
Cons
- No IP-rated dust & water resistant
- Proprietary fast charge
- Buggy and battery drain machine learning algorithm*
Build Quality & Design
Build Quality & Design
The appearance of the P10 family has received a modest redesign. While maintaining the overall looks from the P9, the corners are now curvier, which makes the phone less “boxy” and felt a lot better in the hands.
The rounded corners with chamfered edges.
In fact, the most obvious and radical change of the phone is the placement of the fingerprint scanner. If you’re used to Huawei smartphones, their fingerprint scanner is usually placed at the back of the phone. The scanner is quick and accurate. If you previously used the P9 Plus or Mate 9, you would definitely tell that the new fingerprint scanner is noticeably faster than before.
The recessed capacitive home button as the name suggest responds to touch instead of having a mechanical switch underneath. Since it is touch sensitive, the capacitive button also supports gestures where you can totally replace it with the on-screen navigation buttons.
The home button gestures as follows:
- Long press for Home
- Single tap for Back
- Swipe left/right for Multitask
I am a big fan of on-screen navigation buttons because it offers endless customisation possibilities. Not to mention more and more OEMs start to offer the on-screen navigation buttons according to Android’s design standard. Therefore I had doubts when Huawei introduces the concept of a gesture-based home button, especially confusing to the end users. I gave it a try and to my surprise, after 1 week, I actually kind of like how easy to use the gesture button.
One thing to take note is that if you insist on using on-screen navigation button, the home capacitive button will only function as a fingerprint scanner. Tapping or long press will not be recognised for Home and Back. I think this is such a waste of resource because Huawei could’ve defaulted tapping action on the fingerprint scanner to be “Home” function. Otherwise, they could have allowed the users to determine the gesture actions on the home button for endless possibilities.
Above the display are the earpiece, front facing camera and the sensors. As you can see from the photo, the display has a factory-installed screen protector for out-of-the-box protection.
Exclusive to the Plus variant, the earpiece also doubles as the secondary speaker that responsible for outputting the higher frequency sounds. More onto the sound quality at the Audio section.
The main speaker resides at the bottom, where it acts as the main speaker that responsible at outputting mid and lower frequency sounds. The combined audio output from the pair of speakers has increased frequency range and it sounds a lot more interesting compared to monotonous single speaker setup.
Also found at the bottom of the phone is the USB-C port for data transfer and charging. While I personally prefer a pair of good Bluetooth earphones but, good to know that Huawei is still keeping the 3.5 mm audio jack as well.
Also exclusive to the Plus variant, the phone comes with an Infrared blaster. It allows your phone to work as a universal remote control for your home appliances.
The power button and the volume rocker on the right side. The power button has textured surface and red accent at its chamfered edges.
Meanwhile, the back of the phone is now a lot simple with the absence of the fingerprint scanner. The unit I have here is the graphite black version with powder coating finish. As you can see from the photo above, the powder coating is kind of sensitive to scratches as it leaves a noticeable trace. Therefore, it is advisable to use of protective casing.
Hyper Diamond Cut:
- Dazzling Gold
- Dazzling Blue
Matte:
- Greenery
- Graphite Black
- Rose Gold
- Mystic Silver
High Gloss:
- Ceramic White
However, as more and more smartphones now offer IP-rated dust and water resistant, the Huawei P10 family stands at a disadvantage here without any level of certified protection. It is not that I demand that all smartphones should have an ultra high level of IP-rated resistant, but having a basic level of dust & water resistant would be extremely helpful.
During my trip to Taipei Computex last week, there was this heavy downpour during the last few days over there. Due to the lack of water resistant, I have to be extremely cautious with the phone especially during the walking distance from the transit station to my destination.
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