Honor, a brand otherwise known for its more premium breadth of devices, has now turned towards making a niche for itself in the market, in the premium budget segment, offering great premium specifications and design on a budget handset. The company’s latest smartphone fits this segment perfectly.
The new phone, dubbed the View V10, takes its name from the screen that is attached to it. The phone is the company’s first to come with an 18:9 aspect ratio, which makes the phone narrower and easier to manoeuvre around. The bezels are also arguably close to the flagships that we have seen in Samsung’s and LG’s offerings. In terms of looks, it takes on the flagship mantle quite easily. The phone borrows a lot from its Huawei Mate 10 Pro cousin, which by itself, was a performer already.
Inside is the Kirin 970, a 6-inch display with a resolution of 1080×2060, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of internal storage and dual cameras on the back. What differentiates the phone with the Mateo 10 Pro, is its small quirks, such as the placement of the fingerprint sensor, the different sensors of cameras used at the back and the battery. Stereo speakers are also missing here. While minor, these trade-offs are worth the cost-cutting for buyers, since the specifications are essentially the same nevertheless, as the Mate 10 Pro, which ran with a price tag of $900.
Honor aims to take on Apple with its own Animoji-like interface. It’s called the 3D Facial Animation feature that is ditto copy of Apple’s own product. Like Animoji, the phone will map the user’s face and replace it with animal characters. As with Kirin’s 970 AI capabilities, Honor has taken advantage of the chip to provide superior intuitive features such as facial unlocking, intelligent display rotation (that activates so that the phone does not rotate orientation in situations, like when the user is in bed) as well as intelligent notifications lock. There is also the company’s take on Google Lens, which allows users to take a photo of a sign and have it translated to English.
The phone packs a much-appreciated 3,750mAh battery, which is lower than the Mate 10 Pro’s but comparably more than the rest of the competition. The phone releases with Android Oreo 8.0 on-board with the latest EMUI, and the rear camera combination consists of a 16MP RGB sensor with a 20MP monochrome one. The View V10 aims to take on OnePlus 5T directly, with the same pricing and the added advantage of a bigger battery and more storage space with the inclusion of the MicroSD card slot. It will go on sale in the US and UK along with some other regions, and will cost somewhere around the $500 mark. This is a true flagship contender that won’t shy away from staking its claim at the throne. For now.
COMMENTS