Huawei P10 Lite Review – Lightweight found too light
At first glance, the Huawei P10 Lite is a great device with solid and well-designed casing. The high-contrast screen, which is even easy to read in the bright sun, also impresses for this price range. The device is also fairly smooth and it is therefore good to work with. The competitors in this price segment have certainly not been idle in terms of battery life, but Huawei unfortunately has and charging is also slow. If you don’t find that a problem and you don’t find bloatware insurmountable, then we can highly recommend this smartphone.
Pros
- Nice screen
- Excellent design and build quality
Cons
- Battery life could be better
- Charging is slow
Huawei releases a Lite version of its high-end smartphones every year. In reality, they are very different devices, but with a somewhat recognizable design. The Lite versions of Huawei do not have a dual camera, high-end soc or other gadgets, but are often focused on a sleek design and a good user experience. While they’re selling well, we’ve been unimpressed with the Lite smartphones so far. Can the P10 Lite change that?
Casing
The P10 Lite is very similar to the P9 Lite in terms of design. Yet it is a bit more luxurious, with a glass back instead of the plastic we saw last year. In combination with the metal frame, it therefore does not feel like a cheap smartphone. The corners are also more rounded, which gives the device a more modern look. Keep in mind that it is not Gorilla Glass on the back and that it may therefore break a bit more easily than if the back were made of plastic or metal. The casing is quite sturdy due to its metal frame, so it will probably survive if you sit on it. The buttons are also firmly in the casing and feel nice.
It would have been a plus if there had been a reversible USB-C connection on the device, also because it is generally a bit firmer, but that is not yet standard in this price range. The fingerprint scanner is on the back and fits better in the device than with the P9 Lite. The scanner itself responds fairly quickly, but the software is not always very fast. As a result, the scanner sometimes does not feel fast, because the image does not start immediately. It is certainly not slow, but we are now used to it faster in this price range.
The speaker has clearly improved compared to the P9 Lite. If you place the devices next to each other and play the same piece of music, you will notice that the high tones sound less shrill and that the sound generally sounds a bit fuller. The loudspeaker can also be quite loud, which is practical for hands-free calling.
Screen
The P10 Lite, like most similarly priced competitors, has a screen resolution of 1920×1080 pixels. On the 5.2 “LCD, this results in an excellent pixel density of 424ppi. The screen looks good to the naked eye, but we have of course also measured it.
The maximum brightness of the screen is a positive point. You’ll have little trouble reading the screen, even if you’re roasting in the bright sun. Furthermore, the minimum brightness is low enough to comfortably look at the phone while you are in a dark room.
The contrast is one of the most determining factors for how beautiful a screen looks. Especially for an LCD in this price category, this screen is very contrasty and it is therefore nice to look at. Unfortunately, the color accuracy of the screen is not too good and it is set very blue by default. Fortunately, you can change the color temperature in the settings to standard, warm and cold values, as well as manually. It is somewhat at the expense of the maximum brightness, but fortunately you have some leeway in that.
Battery life
We often see a battery with a capacity of 3,000mAh lately and the Huawei P10 Lite also has one. In practice, that does not say everything about how long a smartphone lasts, as we can see below.
Huawei phones in the cheaper classes are generally not high flyers and the P10 Lite does not bring any improvement over the P9 Lite. The fact that the smartphones cannot keep up with, for example, the Moto G5 Plus, which has an equally large battery capacity, will have to do with a combination of software and the type of soc. The Huawei Nova is the odd one out here, as the Snapdragon 625 is generally very frugal. Apparently, Huawei’s software does not handle the battery properly. In any case, if you’re looking for a phone that lasts a long time, it’s wise to look at alternatives. The Moto G5 Plus, for example, lasted much, much longer on a battery charge. The competition has made progress this year in the field of battery life, but Huawei is disappointing in this.
Although Huawei talks about the fast charging technology of the P10 Lite, this is hardly noticeable in practice with the supplied charger. In terms of charging, the device is even one of the slowest smartphones we’ve seen in recent times.
Hardware and performance
The Huawei P10 Lite runs on the proprietary octacore soc Kirin 655 from the subsidiary HiSilicon. There is also 4GB of RAM and that is sufficient. Still, with the P8 Lite (2017) you can also get a phone with Kirin 655 for a hundred euros less, although you will get 1GB less RAM and 16GB less storage memory. Fortunately, the P10 Lite does not miss any functions that you can now expect at this price level. It has nfc, a pedometer and, unlike the Moto G5 Plus, a compass.
In terms of raw processing power, the P10 Lite does well and in relation to the other devices, especially if only a single core is used. Of course, it cannot match the Huawei P9 and P10, which also have a high-end soc.
The PCMark test tries to mimic reality by simulating everyday actions. In addition, the P10 Lite has to leave phones with a Snapdragon 625 narrowly behind. It does beat the cheaper devices and the Lite version from last year.
The speed of the storage memory is also still important for the overall speed of a smartphone. The P10 Lite drops some stitches in the synthetic benchmark Androbench and the raw speed of the memory is therefore not very high compared to the competition. RL Benchmark is more hands-on and injects queries into an sql database, the kind Android apps often use. The P10 Lite scores well in this respect.
In practice, the P10 Lite is fairly smooth. There are a few more frame drops than, for example, with the Moto G5 Plus. Launching apps takes about the same amount of time, with the P10 Lite winning on one app and the Moto G5 Plus on the other.
In terms of graphics, you don’t have to expect much from the Huawei P10 Lite. Of course you can play a game on the device, but every other device in this list performs better in practice. That even applies to the cheap Wileyfox Swift 2, as it has a lower resolution. However, you probably don’t buy the P10 Lite for the games, or at least you shouldn’t, so we don’t weigh it too heavily in this price category.
Software
The interface of the Emui software skin has been improved a lot with version five. It’s still a heavy skin, at least in the sense that Android is quite customized. It is also a skin in which a lot can be set and which contains quite useful functions. By default there is no app drawer, but fortunately you can bring it back via the settings.
Quite a lot of apps are included with the P10 Lite. The Phone Manager app is useful. You can optimize your device with it, including tips to make the battery last longer, such as turning off Bluetooth when it is not necessary. Working memory is freed up by closing apps, among other things. In the Phone Manager app you can manage various parts of your smartphone, such as the permissions you have given apps, the virus scanner and your locked apps. You can also specify which apps are allowed to run in the background to limit data traffic and save battery juice.
However, most apps are not necessary and often duplicated if you already have a favorite app for a specific purpose. Do you use Google Calendar? Then the Huawei Calendar app is also on your device. Do you keep track of your notes with Google Keep? The Notepad app is still floating around somewhere on your phone. Many of the included apps are system apps, so you can’t remove them. You can, however, disable them, so that you no longer see them in any case.
The navigation buttons are software-based and, as usual, are located at the bottom of the screen. However, Huawei has made the buttons quite small. As a result, we sometimes mistyped in the beginning. Fortunately, we personally could get used to it.In short, Huawei’s software has an improved interface, a lot of functionality, but also a lot of bloatware.
Camera
The P10 Lite has a twelve-megapixel camera, where the sensor is 1/2.8″ in size and has pixels of 1.25μm. That is not excessively large and with a lens opening of f/2.2, not particularly bright either. The device records slow motion at 120fps, but with a resolution of only 640×480 pixels. The camera has quite a few modes, including a few interesting ones, such as Panorama, the Pro photo and video mode and Light painting. The latter is a kind of slow shutter speed mode, which can produce nice effects The camera app, like the rest of the software, is unfortunately quite slow, although focusing is quite fast.
The camera of the P10 Lite has, as is often the case in this price segment, no optical image stabilization or 4k video recording options. We have been on the road with the Huawei P10 Lite and the Moto G5 Plus, because the camera of the latter device distinguishes itself positively within this price range. Overall, the Moto G5 Plus delivers better results. That is probably due to the larger sensor, the better autofocus technology and the larger aperture.
The photo of the face of the Moto G5 Plus is a lot nicer, because of a higher contrast image and more accurate color reproduction. In the photo of the tree in the water you can clearly see that the dynamic range of the Moto G5 Plus is a lot larger, because the sky is still nicely in the picture and the rest of the photo is not underexposed. The P10 Lite clearly has more trouble with it.
What is surprising is the result of the mill in low light. The iso value of the Moto G5 Plus is, as you would expect, lower due to the higher brightness, but there is still more noise to be seen. We suspect this is due to the mediocre noise reduction on the Moto G5 Plus. The P10 Lite shows a better picture here. All in all, the P10 Lite’s camera isn’t bad, but it also fails to impress for its price point.
Specifications
| Product | Huawei P10 Lite |
| First price listing | Tuesday, February 28, 2017 |
| Mobile operating system | GoogleAndroid 7.0 |
| Screen diagonal | 5.2″ |
| Resolution | 1920×1080 |
| dots per inch | 424dpi |
| Relative screen size | 70.7% |
| Screen type | lcd |
| CPU/soc | HiSilicon Kirin 655 |
| Number of cores | 8 |
| Processor speed | 2.1GHz |
| Memory size | 4GB |
| Storage capacity | 32GB |
| Memory card (mobile) | Micro sd, micro sdhc, micro sdxc |
| Number of sims | Dual |
| SIM card slot 1 | Nanosim |
| SIM card slot 2 | Nanosim |
| Sim2 shared with micro sd | Yes |
| Camera resolution | 12Mp |
| Diaphragm | 2.2 |
| Camera resolution (front) | 8Mp |
| Camera autofocus | Yes |
| GSM flash type | Single LED |
| Supported video resolutions | 1920×1080 |
| Mobile networks | 2g – edge, 2g – gprs, 3g – hsdpa, 3g – hspa, 3g – hspa+, 3g – hsupa, 3g – umts, 4g – lte |
| Frequency range (mobile) | 850MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz, 1900MHz, 2100MHz, 2600MHz |
| Note lte/4g band | – Lte fdd band 1: 1920–1980 MHz (ul), 2110–2170 MHz (dl) – lte fdd band 3: 1710–1785 MHz (ul), 1805–1880 MHz (dl) – lte fdd band 7: 2500– 2570 MHz (ul), 2620–2690 MHz (dl) – ltw fdd band 8: 880–915 MHz (ul), 925–960 MHz (dl) – lte fdd band 20: 832–862 MHz (ul), 791– 821 MHz (dl) |
| Wifi 5GHz support | Yes |
| Connection (wlan) | 802.11ac, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n |
| Bluetooth version | Bluetooth 4.1 |
| Other wireless connections | Near field communication (nfc) |
| GSM connector | 3.5mm, micro USB |
| Miracast | no |
| gps | Yes |
| GSM functions | Motion sensor (g-sensor), compass, fast charging, fingerprint scanner, wifi direct |
| Standby time | 295h |
| Battery capacity (mAh) | 3,000mAh |
| Battery type | Li-ion |
| Battery interchangeable | no |
| Wireless charging | no |
| Length | 146.5mm |
| Width | 72mm |
| Height / depth | 7.2mm |
| Weight (grams) | 146g |
| Manufacturer specs | Product information from the manufacturer |
Conclusion
The P10 Lite is a great smartphone. The casing is sturdy, it is beautifully finished and looks luxurious. The screen is the showpiece, because it is rich in contrast and also easy to read in the sun. The speed of the device is also very reasonable. We’ve kept it next to the very successful and slightly cheaper Moto G5 Plus and it’s no less.
Competitors in this price range have made significant leaps in battery life, but unfortunately Huawei is not making any progress compared to last year. We had hoped for a little more from the camera, especially given the results that the cheaper Moto G5 Plus presents us with, with which we compared the P10 Lite. Although there are clear points for improvement, you can purchase the P10 Lite with confidence, especially when battery life is not the most important thing.