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S**N
A surprisingly good value package
I'm the sort of person that likes to get the most value out of a phone. I'd had my Samsung Galaxy S5, that was falling to bits but still going, for some 3.5 years before I replaced it with this phone. I was half tempted in to upgrading to an S8/S9, but even the previous gen still seemed somewhat pricier than I would like. Then, on Black Friday, I loaded up Amazon and saw the Honor View 10 in the deals. I then saw the £280 price tag, browsed through some other reviews, and decided it was worth taking a punt on. My thinking was that it was even a mild improvement on my old phone then I'd be pretty happy.I wasn't prepared for just how good it is.Straight out of the box, the build quality felt decent, and good in the hand. The screen, whist not boasting Gorilla glass, seems fine enough, and hasn't had any noticeable problems in the first couple of weeks I've been using it. Obviously I can't vouch for long term use. But how many reviews are carried out 2 years in to a products' life?Setup was nice and easy (mainly thanks to Android). My apps from my old phone were installed on to the new phone and, as I use Nova Launcher, it felt like using my S5 pretty quickly, after restoring Nova's settings.In use, the UI is quick and responsive, with no noticeable lag. Apps load up extremely quickly. It feels like a premium phone. It supports fast charging, so it can be up to a full charge, from dead, in about 90 minutes.Let's get on to the major pluses about this product.128GB storage space. 8X times what I had in my S5, and twice as much as S9. For today's types of usage, that's plenty, and negates the need for an extra SD card (but this phone will still let you add one, should you want more).6GB RAM. Three times as much as my S5, and an extra 2GB more than the S9. In short, more RAM means a smoother experience.8 Core ARM Kortex CPU. The horsepower of the phone, and plenty for day to day.Battery life. Very good. On my first charge I got some 48 hours usage out of it (I'm not a heavy video watcher... I prefer to listen to music). When it's idling it barely uses up the battery at all. You can't replace the battery yourself easily, like you could with older phones, but that seems to be the way the entire industry has gone now. So I can't hold it against the HV10. Long term, may be another story, as batteries always degrade over time.Active Dual SIM. This was a nice surprise. You can pop a second SIM card in the phone and use both at the same time for calls and data. Very useful if you go abroad and buy a SIM for you holidays, or you don't want to also carry a phone for work. The second SIM slot also takes up the room used by the SD card, so you can't have dual SIM and extra storage space at the same time, but that's hardly a big issue, with the 128GB space it already comes with.A headphone jack! I can use my own headphones! Not the awful cheap rubbish they normally provide with phones.Sound quality is fine. I did notice it seemed a little muddy, with the default player, but once I fired up PowerAmp it seemed as clear as my S5 did, which was a very competent player.The built in speaker isn't much to write home about, but it does the job. If I want to watch anything properly I'll use headphones anyway, so not a deal breaker for me.Fingerprint scanner. Works very well. I've tried my main prints from various angles and it picks it up most of the time.Camera is decent, with not much noise on the background details. I'm not much of a picture expert but I did some comparison shots between my S5 and HV10 and the latter was noticeably cleaner, and far more detail on background items. Whilst it may not be up to the standard of top-end phones, like the S9, it's good enough for me.The bad.I don't have much bad things to say about this phone. The negative thing is that it doesn't have water resistance. I don't know quite what that translates to, in real world terms, and I'm not about to start flicking water at it, in order to find out. But I guess no more ideal browsing when in the bath. I would hope it can handle a few raindrops on the screen at least.I guess the 2 camera lenses, popping out from the back, also are a bit strange. I ordered a protective case, at the same time, which makes them look a lot flusher, so I don't notice them now. But they do look like goggles. Again, not a huge negative, really.Summary:Okay, so it's not quite as high end, or shiny, as the the latest and greatest from the top dogs. But is the difference really worth stumping 2 or 3 times the price? It's not, in my view. If you're in need of a great value upgrade, that doesn't break the bank, and is actually quite a capable phone, give this a go. I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised.
S**.
Flagship performance and desirable features at a very reasonable price
Having had one of HTC's almost flag-ship phones (16GB HTC 1 m8) for almost 4 years, it was time for something new.On my list was:1:Full HD resolution with a decent quality screen. Nothing higher required because on such a small screen it isn't really necessary in my view.2: (Hopefully) Reasonable sound quality through a headphone socket, Not top of the range necessarily but has to be acceptable. I didn't want to have to worry about USB C adapters, and wanted to use my existing phones.3: SD card slot, for storing extra information, music and videos. It's one thing I wouldn't give up on,4: Infra Red blaster. I used the one on the HTC to control things and at times it was jolly useful. Fewer and fewer models on the ultra flagship ranges have these nowadays, along with the SD card slot, and the headphone sockets. All these are getting rarer. Why are these devices so expensive when so much has been taken away from them ?5: Lots of on board storage memory, for apps, and stuff. the HTC's 16GB got very very restrictive! The 128GB of the View 10, ticks that box very nicely.6: The latest version of Android available to it, so at least we start off up to date.Other things such as Wi-Fi and 4G are of course standard nowadays.So I looked around at the Samsungs, and the HTCs and none of the new ones ticked all these boxes, the top of the range Huawei "Mate Pro" did not thought their P10 plus did, and I was seriously considering that model as well. The one on Amazon at a good price, only had 64GB of memory however. Then I came across the Honor View 10 made by the same company, and I decided that this would be the one. For the money - It's absolutely great!Screen performance: Much has been said about this not having an Amoled screen, but for this is possibly one of the BEST LCD screens I've ever seen on anyone's phone, and it's certainly better than the HTC ever was. Very vibrant vivid colours, can be VERY bright, to the point of being almost blinding! I've looked at this phone in the dead of night in a dark room, and there's virtually no backlight bleed through at all. The blacks are the blackest I've seen on an LCD panel. Black things look well, black! Jet black in fact. Even in the dark. I was very pleasantly surprised by this. I do have a 4K OLED TV so I know what such a screen can and should look like. One thing that I was really impressed by (being an ex TV engineer before becoming a software developer) is that the grey scale seemed perfect without any colour bias at all. Good for those black and white photos, and essential to be assured of colour accuracy when colour is added to the picture. The panel is almost edge to edge with the cabinet. I measured the border size to the edge of the case (left to right) to be well under 0.5 mmSound quality - There's some talk that this phone has no DAC, which I don't understand. In order to get sound out of the headphones it MUST have some kind of DAC inside there somewhere, so the headphones can be driven via the socket. In some comparisons using my "Power Amp" music player software, with DVC enabled, I couldn't tell any difference between the Honor and HTC phone, with my Sennheiser in ear phones. I admit I am getting older, so might not be able to hear very slight differences, but I couldn't discern any degradation in sound quality at all.Fingerprint reading: Very fast, very accurate. Tried it on a few other folks I know, all were rejected.Face recognition, Works fine in daylight and a well lit room. Not so good in the dark, have to put my finger on it instead.Internet and WiFi - No problems as yet. WiFi works really well, 4G performance is significantly better than the HTC was. Chrome is the default web browser, and couldn't be faulted.Concerns:Well it's not waterproof, or water resistant. I hope time doesn't show that to be a major concern. I won't put it in the bathtub to double check though!It seems there's no Gorilla glass protecting the screen, virtually a standard for smartphones at all level. However I saw a YouTube video of someone bashing hell out of this device's screen with all kinds of metal things and the screen remained untouched. It can be found easily by looking for Honor View 10.Reviews for this device are very very positive. But I think if Samsung or HTC had made this the reviews would have been outstanding. I welcome the competition of this highly spec'd device, especially at its modest price and I think it, and I will hopefully spend a long time together.
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