Inexpensive smartphones have always adopted flagship capabilities. What some time ago appeared in top devices, after a certain period of time, should appear in the middle and budget segments. Now this time is shortening. Not so long ago, ultra-wide-angle lenses were only on the list of flagship features, and today they can be found in much more affordable smartphones. One of them is the brand new Honor 10i. We will get acquainted with its cameras and all other features today.

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Equipment and first impressions

The delivery of Honor 10i is completely familiar: a smartphone, a power supply with a detachable cable and a paperclip. Initially, there is a factory protective film on the glass, which will be a nice bonus for many users. Moreover, with such a screen diagonal, this is a rather important gift from the manufacturer, because the larger the display, the easier it is to damage it.

An important detail at the beginning of work will be the opening of the SIM card tray and memory card. The fact is that right next to it there is a hole for an additional microphone and instead of an open tray, you can get a squashed microphone. Otherwise, setting up the device is practically no different from similar devices. Logically, everything looks like almost any Huawei smartphone.

Design and Usability

A noticeable distinguishing feature of Honor (and Huawei) smartphones is the color of the case. Iridescent gradient with bright colors really do not have many manufacturers. Color options include blue, red and regular black. It still looks good, but it quickly ceases to attract attention during use. It is also worth remembering that the back cover is plastic, with a glossy finish. It magnetizes dust, and handprints on it are not very noticeable. The lid will probably quickly pick up scratches and scuffs even from a careful user. There is also gloss on the sides, so it would be better to hide the case in a case.

The smartphone itself is of the expected size, as for such a screen diagonal – 154.8 × 73.64 × 7.95 mm, and weighs only 164 grams. Thanks to the rounded corners, the device is quite easy to use. But when driving with one hand, of course, the smartphone will have to be intercepted all the time. It is also better to do this with extra care, because glossy plastic has never been the most tenacious material. Again, the case will solve this problem, although it will make the case a little larger.

With the number and location of all buttons and connectors, the manufacturer has followed a long-proven path, so that everything is simple and accessible with ergonomics. Another thing is that saving on some components has led to the fact that the smartphone will have to be charged via micro USB, and not the more modern and convenient Type-C connector. But the device will be pleased with the presence of a headphone port and the usual fingerprint scanner.

Smartphones of the initial and middle price categories are becoming more and more similar to each other. We can say that Honor 10i is a typical representative of such gadgets, the design of which meets most of today’s unspoken standards. What really allows the company to make it unique among the competition is the color of the body, which looks more interesting than the usual monotonous options. But this does not particularly affect the practical side of use, and if you do not pay attention to color, then in everyday life this model is not much different from its rivals.

Display

Screens are the culprit for such sizes of smartphone cases. The Honor 10i has a 6.21-inch display that features the popular waterdrop notch for the camera. If it greatly interferes with the eyes, it can be masked with a black stripe. At the same time, there are no conflicts with full-screen applications (games, for example), and the system adheres well to the cutout border. The aspect ratio is, again, the usual value for an elongated screen – 19.5: 9. The corresponding resolution is 2340 × 1080 pixels.

The picture in this model is occupied by an IPS-matrix. As usual for Honor, there are two color profiles here: Vivid and Normal. Their coverage, of course, is different, but not fundamentally. The difference in color temperature is more noticeable, where Vivid turns out to be “colder” than the norm, and Normal is just “warmer”. At the same time, the pre-installed Vivid seemed more suitable in practice. In any case, the display is quite pleasant in everyday use.

Vivid profile measurements:

Normal profile measurements:

The smartphone is well able to control the backlight depending on the lighting. The maximum brightness level was 305 cd / m², which is not very much, but you can still see the picture on a sunny day. Since the screen initially has a protective film, fingerprints easily remain on the surface, but are also removed without much difficulty. Everything is fine with the sensor, but the software is not always able to recognize an accidental touch and false clicks happen somewhere near the frame. Still, like even the flagships of the parent company, Honor does not know how to turn on the Eye Comfort mode with reference to sunset and sunrise. I did not notice any other shortcomings during use, but in general I still liked using the screen.

Sound

Budget smartphones are usually equipped with not the most interesting speakers. And it’s actually easy to forgive. What you still really want is to hear how the conversational speaker helps the main speaker when playing video. The sound quality here is enough to accompany videos on the Internet, but I would like to hear it from both sides of the screen. For music, you still want to use headphones.

And this will not be a problem, because there was a place for the usual wired headphone jack. Unfortunately, such a smartphone will not be able to use the full potential of good headphones, but nevertheless, there are enough local opportunities to listen to music on a walk or in a long queue.

The speaker volume is enough to hear the interlocutor near the road. The microphone also transmits the voice of the owner well, and the noise reduction system will try to turn off the microphone when the user is silent.

Face and fingerprint scanning

For quick access to the system, here you can use the options that are popular today with scanning the face and / or fingerprints. For the first, the front camera is used. It will not work in the dark, as well as if the user is wearing sunglasses. And in general, this is not the most secure method of authentication, which is warned by all smartphones that use a camera, and not infrared sensors. But when there are no difficult conditions, it takes very little time to trigger. 

More reliable will be a capacitive fingerprint scanner on the “back” of the case. For me personally, it is conveniently located and you don’t need to get used to its position at all. With the accuracy of his work, too, everything is fine. The scanner works very quickly and almost instantly “opens” the smartphone. At the same time, it is not as fastidious as there are optical ones built under the screen.

Performance and Software

Inside the Honor 10i runs the eight-core Huawei Kirin 710, where the Mali-G51 is responsible for graphics processing. There are no memory options, only one is available, but a good option is 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of permanent memory. If for some reason the drive is not enough, you can additionally use a microSD memory card, but it will replace the second SIM card. They saved on communications, so the smartphone will not be able to connect to the 5 GHz Wi-Fi band, and Bluetooth is version 4.2 here. But not without NFC.

True, practically nothing prevents a smartphone from working well. In everyday use, this performance is quite enough. For example, PUBG Mobile can be played at medium graphics settings, while simple tasks like browsing, social networks, mail, and other things work without delays and other troubles. A slight lag is most likely to be encountered when the screen is rotated, but this is a common occurrence on Android. Despite this, during testing, the smartphone worked very sane.

With Android 9, which is supplemented by EMUI 9.0.1 and almost the same “stuffing”, we have already met on the example of Huawei P Smart 2019 . There are also no additions or changes to the interface.

autonomy

Another thing in common with the P Smart 2019 was the battery. Its capacity here is the same 3400 mAh. In the PCMark test, the smartphone worked for 7 hours and 41 minutes. At the same time, during the time spent with the smartphone at the end of the day, I never had less than 40% of the charge left, which subjectively turns out to be a pretty good result. You can obviously count on a day and a half, and those users who do not use their smartphone so actively will be able to charge the device once every couple of days.

The bundled power supply will fully charge the Honor 10i in two hours. Of course, there is no talk of supporting fast charging or induction stations. Well, when buying such a device, you still have to put up with a not-so-convenient charging connector.

cameras

Quite quickly, triple cameras began to appear in inexpensive devices. The Honor 10i has a main sensor with a resolution of 24 MP (ƒ / 1.8), which is assisted by another with a resolution of 2 MP (ƒ / 2.4) for depth detection. The third camera is ultra-wide with a resolution of 8 MP (ƒ / 2.4) and a capture angle of 120 °. The latter is becoming a trend and will soon be more common. Honor did not hesitate.

Initially, the main camera shoots at 12 MP. In this case, the snapshots are obtained corresponding to the class of the device. Often the camera does not have enough light in the room, there are misses with focusing. But there is artificial intelligence that makes the final photo better depending on the circumstances. And in general, under certain conditions, you can make quite a good shot. There were no surprises with the portrait shooting function – there are still problems with the boundaries of the object. At night, the camera is difficult to aim correctly and a lot of detail is lost, and Night Mode takes pictures with strong oversharp.

Video can be shot at a maximum resolution of 1080p, while there is no optical stabilization. And only the main camera can be used to record videos.

Separate emphasis is placed on the presence of an ultra-wide-angle camera. Since its resolution is lower, and the aperture ratio is not the same as that of the main one, the difference between the cameras is clearly visible. This one is worse with details and white balance, and with the amount of light it is noticeably more difficult. But in conditions convenient for her, an interesting frame with a fisheye effect is obtained, which not every smartphone can afford.

The front camera with a resolution of as much as 32 MP takes decent pictures. At the same time, she also knows how to “soap” the background and improve pictures using AI. Even in “warm” home lighting, the camera picks up the white balance well and renders colors well.

There hasn’t been anything radically new in the camera app yet. It is easy to use and basically similar to most others.