Image: Charles McLellan/ZDNet
Having been unveiled in China on 19 April, the Honor 10[1] offered few surprises for the assembled smartphone cognoscenti at its launch event in London on 15 May. Replacing the well-received Honor 9[2], which will sell for £299.99 (down from £379.99) until the end of May[3], Honor's new flagship will cost £399.99 SIM-free from a variety of outlets, or from £31 a month on Three.
Honor's parent company Huawei is now the third-placed smartphone company in terms of global market share, reaching a new high of 11 percent in Q1 2018 on shipments of 39.3 million handsets, according to IDC[4]. Honor handsets tend to offer similar functionality to their Huawei counterparts at a lower price point and with more of a 'youth' focus; the Honor 10 is in many ways the affordable version of Huawei P20[5].
The 5.84-inch Honor 10 features a striking curved glass back in iridescent colours, and an iPhone X-style notch. Images: Honor
The headline specs for the Honor 10 are: a 5.84-inch IPS LCD screen with 1,080 by 2,280 resolution (19:9 aspect ratio, 432ppi); octa-core Kirin 970[6] chipset with 4GB or 6GB of RAM (4GB in the UK) and 64GB or 128GB of internal storage; Android 8.1 (Oreo)[7] overlain with EMUI 8.1[8]; dual 24MP and 16MP cameras at the rear and a 24MP front-facing selfie camera. The handset measures 71.2mm wide by 149.6mm deep by 7.7mm thick, offering a minimal-bezel 79.9 percent screen-to-body ratio, and weighs 153g. The battery capacity is 3,400mAh. Here's how it matches up to its predecessor and to the Huawei P20:
| Honor 10 | Honor 9 | Huawei P20 | |