Honor's View 10 Is the New Flagship Killer

LAS VEGAS—Will Huawei or Award make it to the United states with their flagship outset? Honor, the spunky sibling make of global No. 3 smartphone maker Huawei, showed off its astonishing View 10 smartphone at the CES trade testify today.

CES 2022 bug art The sub-$500 category crusher volition come up to the United states unlocked market within the next few months. With a six-inch, quad-Hard disk screen, dual rear cameras, and a flagship-quality processor, the View ten seriously upsets the $529 OnePlus 5T, and could pose a threat to Samsung and LG, if only it was sold by a carrier.

That'south where Huawei might be able to fight back in this sibling warfare. Huawei CEO Richard Yu is expected to announce a partnership tomorrow with AT&T to sell its Mate 10 Pro phone. The Mate 10 Pro works a lot similar the View 10, although it too costs a lot more—simply that carrier distribution could brand the departure.

Tonight belongs to the View 10, though. Outset shown off in early December and launched in India this calendar week, the View 10 may have the all-time specs of a sub-$500 phone currently available. Allow's take a closer look.

Category Crusher

In India, the View 10 costs $474; the Mate 10 Pro costs double that. Merely the 2 phones' specs are often on par.

Honor View 10 Just like the Mate 10 Pro, the View 10 has a 6-inch, ii,160-past-1,080 display—although it's LCD to the Mate 10 Pro'due south AMOLED. It runs Android Oreo with Huawei'due south EMUI 8.0 skin on Huawei'south Kirin 970 processor, and has 128GB of storage and a MicroSD carte du jour slot. On the back are 16MP colour and 20MP monochrome cameras, and there's a 13MP front camera. Unlike the Mate ten Pro, information technology has a headphone jack.

You lot have to enquire, since it costs double, are there ways the Mate x Pro is much better? The View 10 takes the Mate 10's screen from OLED back to LCD, its metal unibody doesn't look quite as premium, and it isn't water resistant. Just it's also priced at a level where it might actually sell in the US every bit an unlocked phone, then those seem similar reasonable corners to cut.

The most mysterious part of the View 10 is the "AI." Honor's making a large deal of its neural processing unit, which is similar to the "Bionic" component of Apple tree's A11 and to the way Qualcomm uses digital betoken processors in its Snapdragon 845.

Honor gave a few examples of how the AI is being used. When you're taking photos, it tries to identify the type of scene and modify photo settings to fit. It likewise speeds upward the included Microsoft Translator app, a locally based translation app that can translate spoken communication, text, and pictures. Honor says it'southward 5 times equally fast as it would be on competing phones.

The View 10's one major downside, every bit we saw on the Honour 7X, may exist Huawei's EMUI Android skin. It's useful, but it heavily alters the visual look of Android, and US buyers tend to prefer stock Android.

If the View 10 comes to the US with the price we've seen for it overseas, it's going to brand a major splash in the US unlocked market. Now absolutely, that'south a pretty pocket-size pool in which to make a splash. But the value nosotros're seeing here beats midrange leaders like the Moto X4 and OnePlus 5T handily.

The unlocked, $500 infinite has been called the "unbuying valley" by pundits in the The states, because people here who tend to want to spend that much oftentimes go more expensive phones on payment plans instead. OnePlus has built a faithful following hither based on flagship specs at a midrange cost point. Laurels will have to sell itself difficult to practise the same, simply it looks similar it has a groovy phone to sell.