The entry-level smartphone segment in India with smartphones priced under Rs. 15,000 is too competitive with each brand trying to get a slice of the market. Honor 10 Lite is one of the devices in this segment looking to make the mark. We at Androidpure has used the Honor 10 Lite as our primary device for more than two weeks and this review is based on our experience during that period. Check out the full detailed review to find out if it manages to make a mark and if it is worth the hype. This is the first smartphone from Huawei Honor that we are reviewing at AndroidPure.
Our review unit was the 6GB Variant of Honor 10 Lite though there are two other variants with 3GB RAM and 4GB RAM, are also available in the market. Check out the hardware specifications of the phone before we dive into the review of the device:
Honor 10 Lite Technical Specifications
- Display: 6.21-inch 2340 x 1080p FHD+, Dewdrop notch, 19:9 aspect ratio, 91% screen-to-body ratio
- Operating System: EMUI 9.0 based on Android 9 Pie
- Processor: Kirin 710 octa-core
- RAM: 4GB/6GB LPDDR4X
- Storage: 64GB + up to 512GB microSD
- Selfie Camera: 24MP AI front camera, f/2.0 aperture, AI recognition
- Rear Camera: 13MP + 2MP rear camera, f/1.8 + f/2.4 aperture LED Flash
- Battery: 3400 mAh
- Connectivity: 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, 2.4G/5G, Bluetooth BT4.2 + BLE, micro USB 2.0, GPS, GLONASS, AGPS, BeiDou
- Dimensions: 154.8 x 73.64 x 7.95 mm
- Weight: 162g
Honor 10 Lite Design and Build Quality
The first thing that you will notice with Honor 10 Lite is the shiny back panel which is made of plastic, yet looks great. The back panel comes with a style reflective pattern that shines with light if you move it across but is also a fingerprint & dust magnet. The Honor branding is at the bottom while the dual camera sensors are placed at the top left along with the LED flash. The fingerprint sensor is placed at the usual conventional place that is easily accessible with fingers. The edges are curved giving you a feel of the thin device plus helps you hold it well. It feels perfectly solid, sturdy & easy to hold.
On the front, there is the waterdrop or dewdrop display with no physical buttons at the bottom. There are minor bezels at the three sides except for the bottom, where its a bit wide. The tiny notch includes only the selfie camera while the earpiece is moved towards the frame and the notification LED is at the bottom bezel. Volume and Power buttons are on the left side while the SIM tray sits at the top side. On the bottom side, there is Micro-USB port, 3.5mm headphone jack, the primary mic, and speaker.
Honor 10 Lite Performance, Battery life
Honor10 Lite comes with 91% screen-to-body ratio (claimed) with a 6.21-inch 19.5:9 display having a full-HD+ resolution. There is no protection like Corning Gorilla glass or something similar, as we have seen in devices such as Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 (Read Review) which comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 6. The phone is powered by Huawei Kirin 710 octa-core processor clocked at 2.2GHz and can be considered as equivalent to Snapdragon 660. There is no dedicated MicroSD card slot though you can expand storage up to 512GB using the hybrid dual-SIM slot (can be used for two nano SIM cards).
Thanks to the 6GB RAM and Kirin 710, the phone managed to perform great with whatever we threw at it. In terms of performance, everything ran smoothly without any issues. There were no crashes or force closes for any app during our review. There was no lag or stutter, and it could multitask without any issues.
Coming to Benchmark scores, it scored ~128K+ on Antutu Benchmark which is almost the same as that we saw for Snapdragon 660 powered Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2.
The fingerprint sensor worked fine and managed to unlock the device quite well, though it does feel a bit slow. The Face unlock feature worked as hit & miss and still need to be perfected. We would recommend using the fingerprint sensor instead.
Coming to gaming performance, we managed to play PUBG without any issues with the graphics set at Balanced and frame rate set to Medium. PUBG did that as default setting based on the hardware when we first installed the game. As we are not such avid gamers, we played it for 15 minutes for few times without any issues or lag.
Honor 10 Lite Camera
The phone features a dual rear camera module having a 13MP primary sensor with f/1.8 aperture and a 2MP depth sensor having f/2.4 aperture. On the front, you get a 24MP shooter for selfies & video calls. The camera app includes modes such as Aperture, Night, Portrait, Panorama, Pro, and Time-lapse modes as well as usual photo and video modes. AI support is used to identify objects, translating text, and scanning QR codes. AI did manage to identify the scenes correctly and adjust the camera app accordingly.
The main rear camera managed to shoot some good pictures even under low light. Yet with AI enabled, you can clearly see that some of the images are over saturated or rich in colour compared to the actual. They did lack a bit of contrast and details in the images. The front selfie camera produced great selfies including the portrait mode selfies. The selfies with the 24MP shooter with f/2.0 aperture look much better than what we have seen in some devices in the same price bracket.
You can record Full HD videos from both the front and rear cameras, though there is no stabilisation support. Check out some of the camera samples shot using Honor 10 Lite under different lighting conditions.
Camera Samples
Honor 10 Lite Software
The phone runs on EMUI 9.0 based on Android 9.0 (Pie) operating system out of the box. Android 9.0 (Pie) is the latest Android Operating system and there are very few smartphones under Mid range segment running on it. It is the first smartphone from Honor that runs on Android 9.0 (Pie) and includes the Digital Balance app similar to Digital Wellbeing on stock Android that gives you a breakdown of time spent on the smartphone. You can limit the time spent on the apps and set your daily time spent on the phone.
It includes gesture-based navigation that can be enabled from settings, that hides the navigation bar and lets you use gestures instead. EMUI 9.0 offers many customisation options that can be used as per your needs. It includes a Ride Mode letting you use the phone while riding. It also comes with theme support. During our review, we received an OTA updated that added the ViLTE (Video over LTE) feature, though we were not able to test that feature.
Honor 10 Lite Battery life
The phone is powered by a 3400 mAh battery. In terms of battery life, it easily lasts for two days under average usage, while with moderate/aggressive usage the phone lasts for one to one & half days easily. We are impressed by the battery performance in spite of having just the 3400 mAh battery, it performed well. Yet, we expected the fast charger support with the device which isn’t there and the phone take more than 2 hours to charge fully. It does include Battery modes such as “Power Saving Mode” and “Ultra Power Saving Mode”.
Conclusion
Honor 10 Lite overall is a great smartphone that offers you Android Pie out of the box, great battery life, Good selfie Camera and great performance. Yet, thanks to the pricing and arrival of Redmi Note 7 Pro & price drop of Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2, Honor 10 Lite appears to be losing out to the competition and may not be the first choice.
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