Huawei may not be the biggest name in the West, but it recently surpassed Apple as the world’s second biggest smartphone manufacturer. Now it’s announcing two new flagships, the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, its first real entry into the bezel-less design trend that’s made 2017 a wonderful year for smartphone design.
I had the chance to go hands on with the devices at a small preview event in New York, and there’s a lot to like about both models. Which brings me to an interesting point: the Mate 10 and 10 Pro aren’t your usual pairing of spec configurations. In some ways, it seems they don’t belong in the same series.
The basic specs and features are the same. You can read more about them in our announcement post , but both have Huawei’s new designed-for-AI Kirin 970, they both have dual rear cameras, they both come with 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage by default, and they both have huge 4,000 mAh batteries. Oh and they come with IR blasters too, which is surprising but hey, I’ll take it.
But it’s how the devices differ that’s more more interesting:
The Mate 10 comes with a 5.9-inch LCD screen and a QHD+ resolution, while the Pro has an 18:9, OLED display with 2160×1080 resolution.
Both devices have tiny bezels, but the Mate 10 has its fingerprint reader on the front (arguably more convenient placement).
The Mate 10 has an SD card reader, the Pro does not.
The Mate 10 has a headphone jack, the Pro does not.
Both models come with 4 GB of RAM, but the Pro can be had with 6GB.
The Pro is IP67 water resistant, the regular Mate is not.
I don’t know about you, but I as someone who would normally opt for a ‘Pro’ model, the higher resolution, headphone jack, and SD card reader of the regular Mate 10 might make it the more appealing device.
But the Pro does feel a little more premium, thanks to smoother edges and a even smaller bezels. The 18:9 aspect ratio also means the device is a little narrower than 16:9 Mate 10, making it significantly easier to hold in one hand. The OLED display on the Pro popped more, while the LCD on the 10 was a little bit sharper, although both are HDR10-compatible. I hate that the Pro has the Huawei logo on the front. On a bezel this small, it just feels obnoxious.
Otherwise, both devices use an attractive all-glass design, and I’m a fan of the horizontal stripe on the rear. It’s been a polarizing element in leaks, but I think it looks better in person. That said, I’m disappointed in the move to glass because there’s no functional benefit to it – there’s no wireless charging on board.
Huawei says wireless charging is too slow for a 4,000 mAh battery, which is a fair point, but I’d rather they’d stuck with the more durable, and less fingerprint-y metal. On the other hand, Huawei claims its fast charging can give you a “full day of use” in just 20 minutes. The company is making some crazy battery life claims on the whole, such as 20 hours of mixed usage. The Mate 9 already had very good battery life though, so it’s not a stretch to imagine the more efficient processor is helping out.
I was only able to use the devices for a few minutes each, but navigating their Oreo-powered UIs seemed perfectly smooth. EMUI is as aesthetically questionable as ever, but after using the Mate 9 for nearly a year, I’ve been impressed with Huawei’s AI-powered optimization.
EMUI also has some genuinely useful additions. My favorite feature is a small but clever one: notifications come with a split screen button so you can automatically jump into multi-tasking. It genius, and I can’t believe no ones thought of it before.
I also like that, as with the Galaxy S8, the Mate 10 can connect to a display and use a desktop-like UI. Better yet, you only need an HDMI cable not an entire dock. It seemed to run smoothly when demoed to me, although I wasn’t able to try it myself.
I did get to play around briefly with the camera and it’s nice to see how Huawei leveraged AI to automatically detect when I was shooting an image of food or other scenes, but as with many aspects of the phones I’ll have to spend more time with the device before I can say whether they’re worth your time and money. So far, Huawei is holding its own in a year full of excellent smartphones. The Mate 10 will cost €699 and the Pro will be €799 when they arrive next month in parts of Europe, Asia, and other markets. US Pricing and availability is set to be announced at a later date.
Unannounced Amazon Tablet reportedly to ship in second half of 2011
Rumours suggesting Amazon will be launching an own-brand Android tablet have been given a fresh boost after sources close to Taiwan-based component makers have indicated that the Internet retail giant has already placed OEM orders for the device, which could ship as soon as the second half of 2011.
Digitimes reports that Taiwanese notebook maker Quanta Computer has received orders to manufacture the Amazon tablet, working with electrophoretic display (EPD) maker E Ink Holdings (EIH) which will supply touch panels for the device as well as its Fringe Field Switching (FFS) technology.
Despite the fact that Amazon has yet to announce a tablet PC, orders for the device are already expected to reach between 700,000 and 800,000 units in the peak season. Orders will reportedly be filled by the second half of 2011, suggesting the device could launch within a number of weeks.
Last month, Peter Rojas, co-founder of popular gadget website Gdgt , reignited rumours of an Amazon tablet release, suggesting the retail giant had partnered with Samsung to release a device later this year .
Rumours of an Amazon Android tablet have been circulating over the past few weeks, gaining momentum after the company created and unveiled its own Android Appstore application and Cloud Drive digital music locker, services that would perfectly suit an Amazon-branded device should one ever exist.
Digitimes’ sources have also suggesting Amazon will attempt to reverse the lack of adoption of its Kindle e-reader by reducing its price in markets outside of North America and Europe, increasing consumer demand, subsequently increasing sales of its tablet PC.
Review: Huawei’s MateBook X is more than a MacBook clone
Windows may have just gotten its best answer to the MacBook yet, and it hails from a relative newcomer. Huawei’s MateBook X is not just an impressive first attempt at a laptop by Huawei, it might just be one of the best traditional laptops you can buy right now. I’ve used the device for nearly two months, and my experience has been painless – and that’s all your really want from a laptop anyway.
Though Huawei has struggled to break into the US market, the company just passed Apple in worldwide sales. It’s made a name through design chops and build quality, and that quality shows with the MateBook X.
First things first – yes, it looks and feels like a MacBook. But other than Huawei’s staid logo, I actually like it a bit more. The unit I tested came in a sleek dark blue aluminum (Disclaimer: I’m a sucker for blue gadgets), and the design is both technically impressive and remarkably tasteful, especially considering it’s Huawei’s first laptop.
It’s super thin, for one, at just 12.5mm thick, and weighs a tiny 1.05kg (2.32 lb). The metal chassis has virtually no flex, and they keyboard and trackpad are both excellent. The keyboard has noticeably more travel than any of Apple’s recent laptops, and is all around one of the better keyboards I’ve tried this year. The most clever touch is the fingerprint reader integrated into the power button. It’s by far my favorite implementation of Windows Hello, and everyone should copy it. So long as your hands aren’t grubby, it’s much more reliable than the infrared cameras seen on Surface devices, and it saves you a step compared to devices with separate fingerprint readers.
The highlight of the design, however, is the display. It’s gorgeous, and it’s huge. Huawei managed to fit a 13 inch screen into the form factor of an 11 or 12-inch laptop thanks to tiny bezels that are arguably better than Dell’s InfinityEdge. That’s because, unlike Dell, Huawei managed to fit a webcam above the display – bless the tech gods – even if it takes a couple more millimeters to do so.
It also happens to be a very good screen, reaching about 350 nits of brightness, displaying accurate color (100% sRGB), and handling reflections better than many. I was glad to see Huawei opted to use a 3:2 screen (2160×1440), a taller aspect ratio that is more pleasant for reading and content creation, while still filling about as much horizontal space as possible for video. It’s not touch sensitive, but hey at least your screen will stay clean a little longer.
It would be easy to assume a device this small would have tinny speakers – because most do – but again, the MateBook impressed with some of the best speakers I’ve heard in a laptop of any size. They feature Dolby Atmos tuning, and manage to pack both a discernible stereo image and a refreshingly decent low end. They also fire upwards, meaning they won’t be affected by the surface you place the laptop like so many other ultraportables.
My main pet peeves with the hardware is the USB-C implementation. Having two ports is great, but you can only charge laptop out of one of them, while you can only stream video through the other. On the other hand, Huawei includes a full-fledged USB-C dock (well, technically, a dongle) in the box, including a USB-A, HDMI, and VGA Port, as well as a USB-C passthrough.
Performance on the i5 Kaby Lake model I tested was smooth throughout. Unlike the company’s extensive Android skins, it’s done virtually nothing to stock Windows 10, aside from a couple of utility apps. I didn’t experience any hiccups running my typical workload of apps, including web browsing with a myriad of tabs and doing a bit of Photoshop and Lightroom work. 4K video streamed without any dropped frames. Gaming, as you’d imagine, is best reserved for very low settings and/or older titles.
That said, there’s no word on whether Huawei is planning on updating the laptop to the new Kaby Lake R processors (Intel’s 8th gen chips), which offer four cores instead of two for better multi-threaded performance. We’ve contacted Huawei for more information and will update this review if we hear back, but regular Kaby Lake should serve most people just fine.
On a device this size, battery life is generally the Achilles heel. On the MateBook, it’s decidedly ‘decent,’ regularly netting me about 5 hours of real use. Not up to snuff compared to devices like the XPS 13 or Surface Laptop, but my thirst for longevity is a bit different since the advent of USB-C.
The MateBook comes with a charger that’s only slightly larger than your average adapter for a smartphone , able to deliver quick charge speeds on any device I tested it on (the Nintendo Switch too). I usually carry a phone charger in my laptop bag anyway; the MateBook’s small charger means I need just one for both my phone and laptop. Moreover, USB-C also means I just need a decent portable battery to extend battery life on the go – again, something I’m probably already carrying in my bag.
The MateBook X certainly isn’t a perfect laptop, but it gets a whole lot more right than it gets wrong. More importantly, the price is right. The Core i5 model with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage costs $1,099 . An identically spec’d MacBook would cost you $1,400. You’d get better battery life on the MacBook, but the MateBook’s screen and audio are arguably more impressive. Also, the MateBook comes in blue, which makes it a default win over Apple.
On the Windows side, a similar configuration on a Surface Laptop would cost $1,300 for a chassis that weighs more and is larger, although the Surface Laptop comes with a touchscreen and also better battery life. Dell’s XPS 13 can be configured similarly for $1,099 and again, has better battery life, but the FullHD screen and audio are noticeably worse, and I much prefer the MateBook’s 3:2 aspect ratio.
Of course, street prices vary, but on the whole it’s hard to find its combination of specs, build quality, display, and sound at that price – not to mention the included dock. If you can live without a touchscreen or potentially having to carry around a charger – a tiny one that can charge your phone too – it’s one of the easiest Windows laptops to recommend right now.
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