Huawei launched Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro in October and sooner after the flagships were launched in Pakistan. Both of the smartphones target the high-end market with the price tag of PKR 70,000/- and PKR 88,000/- respectively. Huawei Pakistan launched a cheaper model along with the two, dubbed as Mate 10 Lite.
Surprisingly, the Mate 10 Lite is priced way too low than the original flagship Mates. The Lite model costs even less than half as much as Mate 10 – check review, with the price tag of PKR. 30,000/- No wonder, getting launched with Mate 10 lineup gets some major points, hence it may have attracted the customers. But now as it’s going under review, we want to tell you that with the Mate 10 Lite, you must have it in mind that it’s not a flagship but a mid-ranger that gives you the features like narrow-bezels and FullView display from the high-end siblings.
For extent, Huawei Mate 10 Lite is a regular mid-range package in slim and attractive design with bumped up RAM and internal storage, add some narrow bezels into it and the gimmicks of four cameras more importantly.
This phone is not related to the two big brothers but instead have been launched with several names in different regions. Honor 9i, Maimang 6 or even Nova 2i are the other names associated with the very smartphone and with some element shifts from one place to other. Huawei Pakistan chose to launch this smartphone with the name “Mate 10 Lite” and they actually did good when marketed along with the flagship Mate 10 lineup.
Referring this phone to a “best mid-range smartphone” is solely linked to what this phone actually delivers in its class and for what it costs. You will get what you pay for, even better in a lot with the brand trust. Checkout some key features of the phone below.
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The box is simple in a white color with a pop-out style. The retail package brings along everything you’ll usually look for when you buy a new smartphone. In addition, Huawei feels good to ship an added plastic screen protector which is already applied on the screen in perfect order. A hard plastic semi transparent back cover is also added. The package includes following items.
Huawei Mate 10 Lite is built with sturdy aluminium unibody. It sure does look more than a mid-ranger with rounded edges around the corners and flattened back. What’s appealing is the narrow bezels on the front. That’s what makes the Mate 10 Lite follow the limelight of the Mate 10 series. Huawei has did the right thing for this piece of smartphone in the affordable price range.
We have seen the Vivo V7+ though for some higher price and V7 for the similar price as Mate 10 Lite which also feature narrow bezels and have pretty much similar design but even the rounded corners around the display. Frankly, Mate 10 Lite has got metal, larger battery, and higher resolution as well.
On the front the Mate 10 Lite has a smooth 2.5D curved glass. Weighing only 164 grams, Huawei Mate 10 Lite is just 7.5mm thicker with curvy rounded frame around.
On the front, you can see that the lower bezel with the brand name “Huawei” while on the upper portion, there are standard components – an earpiece in the middle, and almost invisible proximity and ambient light sensors along with a soft LED flash.
There is a notification LED as well as the most prominent things on the upper bezel are the two cameras.
Other common components include the micro USB port on the bottom side of the phone along with the speaker grill. The mouthpiece or the primary mic is also along side as well as 3.5mm audio jack is also placed on the bottom.
The top side of the phone only hosts a secondary mic for noise cancellation and stereo recording.
On the right side of the phone, you will have the power button and the volume rocker. The hybrid SIM slot is available on the left side of the phone. Like many now, Mate 10 Lite also has dual-SIM support but when used with a microSD card, only one SIM can be used.
On the upper portion of the back panel, we have a set of dual camera – 16 megapixels primary and a 2 megapixel depth camera. The LED flash is placed above the camera module right into the plastic antenna stripe.
Right below the camera module, we have the fingerprint scanner. Down there on the back we have standard branding and labeling on the phone.
The 5.9-inch screen features an IPS LCD display with full HD+ resolution of 2160 x 1080 pixels which is quite attractive in this price range. Pixel density of 407ppi is way more than you need on a smartphone display. The screen size provides around 83% visual area of the front side – commonly referred as screen-to-body ratio, which is claimed by Huawei. 76.5% is what we calculated.
Mate 10 Lite has an impressive display for a mid-range device in this price range. the display is good its at its maximum brightness. It also performed better outdoors and sunlight readability is appreciable. Blacks are too great for this mid-ranger to provide an appealing contrast ratio.
Huawei Mate 10 Lite runs Android 7.0 Nougat operating system with the proprietary EMUI 5.1 software layer on top. As already noted, the Mate 10 Lite only shares the name from the Mate 10 series, it doesn’t even carry the latest EMUI 8 with the Android Oreo as did the high-end Mate 10 and 10 Pro.
Although the EMUI 5.1 had many improvements which worth noting, it seems odd when it could have the latest software but left behind. Again, the phone had to have some distance from the flagship devices, for now at least. There, however, is no hint if and when any software update is coming for Mate 10 Lite. It’s worth noting that Android 7.1.1 has been much common among mid-rangers, Huawei must have to ship the software update through.
Update: Mate 10 Lite is slated to be upgraded to Android Oreo soon, as confirmed by Huawei Pakistan
Talking about the user interface, there is no much difference than what we previously experienced with Huawei Y7 Prime. The default user interface of Huawei’s EMUI 5 is pretty much straight forward similar to previous iterations with absolutely no app launcher. Everything you install on it, appears on the home screen with its app icon. Multiple home screens, you can add. Organize apps into folders and add widgets to home screens. Huawei sticks to its own kind of interface out-of-the-box which most people have referred to as a clone Apple’s iOS on Android. But you can choose to have an app drawer interface if you want.
Software features like Eye Comfort with manual display temperature override has always been a plus point. Phone Manager is also good to have important things like system optimization, data and traffic management, harassment filter for restricting numbers to call you or send you text.
The software offers home screen customization and well managed notification system but now that we have experienced the EMUI 8’s very organised behavior of user experience, this deal is not acceptable. Huawei has to upgrade its recent mid-rangers to the latest software like they have planned for recent flagships devices.
Huawei’s fingerprint scanner is a wow factor which has been much better than the competition. I haven’t tried all of the budget and mid-range devices from Huawei with a fingerprint scanner. But as many as I have tried, they were impressively fast with scanning fingerprints.
The one on the Mate 10 Lite is no different. On the back, below the camera, the fingerprint scanner is positioned to suit your index finger which is already a best place for the fingerprint scanner than on the front below the screen.
Huawei Mate 10 Lite is powered by the proprietary mid-range system-on-chip HiSilicon Kirin 659. The phone is powered by an octa-core processor with four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 2.36GHz and four clocked at 1.7GHz. To handle graphics and gaming importantly on the phone, the chip features ARM Mali-T830 MP2 which is not any better than other mid-rangers. What’s good with Mate 10 Lite is that it keeps with other recent mid-range devices featuring 4GB of RAM and 64GB of extensive internal storage.
Considering regular usage, the performance was left no reservation for day to day use. Basic gaming and some mid-level 3D games were also good but don’t expect them to run fluently. You shouldn’t expect any thing better than other mid-range devices.
Benchmark scores can tell you where it stands among its class. Mate 10 Lite ran through Geekbench 4, AnTuTu 6, Vellamo, Basemark OS II and Basemark X. You can check the following scores in respective order.
It’s worth mentioning that NFC is not present as well as the Mate 10 Lite doesn’t have a gyroscope, so you won’t be able to use VR headsets with Mate 10 Lite.
Mate 10 Lite isn’t like the power pack of Y7 Prime but still its 3340mAh is capable enough to give you a full day of moderate usage. Calling, texting, socializing, full day data/WiFi, some camera use and a little bit of gaming. Huawei has long been offering ultra power saving as well which is great feature of support in the middle of nowhere.
Long gone the single rear and single front camera. Dual camera setups have been there for quite a while now. Some brands have offered the dual setup on front with a single camera on the back while a dual-camera configuration has been most common on the back side of a smartphone. Huawei Mate 10 has now been labeled as world’s first smartphone to carry a quad-camera setup. Both the rear and front units with dual-camera configurations.
Notable factor is that the mid-range lineup of Huawei with dual-camera setups have some different configuration than its flagship lineup. Mate 10 Lite features a primary 16 megapixel camera on the back with a secondary 2MP depth camera mainly used for background isolation or blurred background (aka bokeh effect)
In addition, the Mate 10 Lite has similar dual-cam setup on the front as well for similar bokeh effect in selfies. A primary 13 megapixel camera on the front as well pairs with the same 2-megapixel depth camera.
Additionally, there’s a “Selfie toning flash” to support front camera. 2-level brightness automatically adjusts brightness according to environmental conditions. A 120-degree lighting angle offers wider lighting coverage. And the “butterfly lighting” portrait technology, enhances facial features like a professional portrait. This paragraph was stated by Huawei though.
On the picture quality, Huawei Mate 10 Lite seems a good performer with quite low noise and better image detail. Foliage have nice detail in good light but it’s equally poor in a little low-light conditions. Noise levels are increased indoors and in low light. Dynamic range is also average where HDR function could be of any use.
Colors were perfectly rendered as they appeared in real. Blurred background or the bokeh effect was appealing, though not real like other smartphones.
Unlike, the two flagships with dedicated monochrome sensor, these are just software based filters applied which are not the actual sensor based monochrome shots. That’s because, instead of the monochrome sensor, Mate 10 Lite has a 2MP depth sensor which used only for the bokeh effect.
Low light shots have some noise and very less detail as compared to the shots taken in good lighting condition.
The depth camera works well to produce better bokeh effect with Mate 10 Lite.
Similarly, the front camera is also good at producing selfies with isolated background.
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Huawei Mate 10 Lite has been with us for over a week and it actually has many things to appreciate than some with objections. I can’t say as it’s something unique as we have recently seen the Huawei Y7 Prime and Vivo V7+ but it indeed as good with its narrow bezels. The FullView display looks good from its appearance with those narrow bezels but the 2:1 display aspect ratio still lacks support for various apps. The software however can tell the system to adjust a certain with the taller resolution but it mostly annoying when watching videos on the players which don’t adjust the frame to fit with height, hence you loose some frame-view at top and bottom. It’s mostly noticeable when you are having the subtitles enabled and the are cut half way through at bottom.
Other usability with the software and performance was also good but the EMUI 8 will be great updatewit for this mid-ranger. You must forget about some healthy gaming with smoother experience.
Four cameras on the other hand also play a part as a marketing gimmick. Bokeh on the selfies, however, is already being done without the secondary camera. Otherwise the camera result is not disappointing at this price tag.
Fast Charging could have been a plus point but unfortunately it’s not present, still Huawei claims a full charge in 150 minutes. That’s around some less than 3 hours. For the price of PKR 30,000/- The Mate 10 Lite, with everything it has, is good deal.
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Brilliant review for the amazingly affordable smartphone from Huawei. Thank you for providing extensive detail. I missed the software as it was not as extensive as other things.