Lite in the name of a smartphone usually means that something is missing. It is worth seeing it, and the desire to buy this device immediately drops by about 90%. It seemed that the same would be the case with the new budget device Honor 10 Lite. Reviewers braced themselves for disappointment.
However, they were wrong. Honor 10 Lite managed to leave a favorable impression after several days of working with it as an experimental smartphone. However, the abilities of Honor 10 Lite did not come as a surprise as Honor 9 Lite was also quite good. However, the new device has taken a step forward in terms of design. Below I will describe my impressions of working with him.
Appearance
This smartphone is very beautiful. The body is made of plastic, as opposed to glass Honor 10. This review deals with the sky blue version of the device, where shades shimmer from deep blue at the bottom to chrome silver at the top. It resembles the chic look Honor Magic 2, which is a great compliment. There are also black and red color options.
The device weighs only 162 g, so it is almost invisible in your pocket. Its compact size makes it comfortable to hold in your hand. The screen here is IPS LCD with a diagonal of 6.2 inches. At the top there is a small cutout in the shape of a water drop. The screen occupies 83% of the body surface. Not so long ago, only expensive flagships had a similar ratio. Now you can find a smartphone at a reasonable price with the same modern look.
The case is 8mm thick, but it seems even thinner due to the gently curved edges and the screen protruding from the top. The fingerprint scanner is centered on the back of the case and responds very quickly. The bottom bezel is quite large, but there is a 3.5mm headphone jack on the bottom edge.
Honor 10 Lite contains many of the great design elements of previous smartphones. This is a fingerprint scanner on the back, great colors, a large screen. That being said, he has a modern style that doesn't look too experimental. There is no scanner inside the screen or a pop-up camera.
As a result, the device can be used immediately without the need to get used to and adjust. The developers made a compromise only in the choice of materials, and even plastic looks no worse than glass.
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Cameras
Honor 10 Lite has a dual rear camera. It consists of a 13 megapixel sensor with an f / 1.8 aperture and a 2 megapixel secondary camera. This is a fairly standard combination for modern mid-range smartphones. The photos are solid, more than sufficient for social media. The f / 1.8 aperture provides decent quality footage even in low light. Honor 10 Lite stands out for its ability to shoot in the dark, outpacing some even more expensive devices.
In the dark, the Huawei Night Mode, which first appeared in the Huawei P20 Pro, helps. The shutter is open longer than usual here, and artificial intelligence is used to improve the clarity of the photo. If you look closely, you can see digital noise, but not too much. The brightness and contrast levels are impressive. There is also a portrait mode and an aperture mode for the bokeh effect.
The front camera has many megapixels, aggressive beautification mode, and artificial intelligence support. Most of this can be turned off, but the camera continues to smooth out the skin and change images anyway. As a result, the face may look unnatural. Portraits also do not always work as intended, and there is a problem with recognizing the edges of the subject. Selfie lovers should love the numerous shooting modes available here.
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Performance
Here you understand that we have an inexpensive smartphone in our hands. It is powered by the Huawei Kirin 710 processor. It is an 8-core chip with a clock speed of 2.2 / 1.7 GHz. There is a version with 3 and 6 GB of RAM. This review deals with the 3/64 GB variant, the other model is 6/128 GB. Naturally, the more memory you have, the more applications you can run simultaneously.
The 3GB version is far from the fastest. Sometimes there are slowdowns, and the device briefly thinks when opening or switching between applications. It takes a couple of seconds to start Twitter or Instagram.
Naturally, performance problems are most evident in games. Honor 10 Lite supports GPU Turbo software to improve the display quality of games, but is there any benefit? The 3DMark Sling Shot Extreme benchmark aimed at games returned 1139 (Vulkan) and 823 (OpenGL) results. This beats the Moto G6 and Nokia 6, which can be described as direct competitors of the device Honor. In Reckless Racing 3, the graphics were smooth and fast enough. True, the sound from the speakers is rather plain.
On top of Android 9.0.1 is installed the EMUI 9 shell. Thus, those familiar with other smartphones Huawei and Honor will feel at home. There is even support for the latest gesture controls from the device Huawei of the Mate 20 Pro. It takes patience to set up EMUI correctly, as it's easy to get confused by the numerous menus. If you are patient and experiment with the settings, the system will work more stable and faster.
Another advantage of the smartphone is the support for two SIM cards. Both work in 4G mode, the speed of the mobile Internet is impressive.
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Battery
Very frustrating with the old microUSB port on the 2019 smartphone. True, the demand for a more modern USB-C connector in China and other developing countries is not as high as in Europe. However, even in budget smartphones, a more modern interface is already required.
However, the phone's battery life is good. The battery capacity is 3400 mAh, which provides a full day of use even under heavy load. Of course, every night the smartphone needs to be recharged so as not to worry about it the next day.
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Price and availability
The device was announced in China at the end of November 2018. It will also appear in India, the Middle East, European countries and some other parts of the world. In China, the cheapest version costs about $ 200 (13,600r.), The expensive $ 275 (18,700r.) This is less than the Motorola Moto G6 and is about on par with the 2018 Nokia 6.