The P10 Plus is Huawei’s flagship device that has an eye-watering £680 price tag. Launched alongside the regular P10 at MWC 2017, the P10 Plus offers a larger 5.5in QHD display, an upgraded camera and a diamond-cut finish. But does that warrant it the extra £110 over the regular P10?
Huawei P10 Plus review: TL;DR
The LG G6 and Samsung Galaxy S8 both offer something different with their 18:9 display. Instead, Huawei has retained its 16:9 aspect ratio, and has opted to update its design, by making it look and feel different from any other smartphone in the market.
Its dual-lens 20- and 12-megapixel cameras are an upgrade over last year’s dual 12-megapixel P9 and the 5.1in P10. With an f/1.8 aperture, it draws in more light than any other Huawei device, making it better for low-light photography.
A Kiri 960 and 6GB of RAM make the phone fly and coupled with 128GB of internal storage, you’ll have plenty of space for all those images.
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Huawei P10 Plus review: Price and competition
The Chinese tech giant launched the P10 at a post-Brexit price of £550, a cool £100 more than the P9, which has since risen to £570. At £680, the Huawei P10 Plus is no cheap device.
For the same wallop of cash you can buy the 18:9 flagship Samsung Galaxy S8 and the LG G6. This also makes it more expensive than both the iPhone 7 at £579 and the best camera smartphone on the market, the Google Pixel at £600. In this review I’ll look to see if the P10 Plus does enough to compete with these flagship phones.
The P10 Plus is available in seven colours: Ceramic White, Graphite Black, Dazzling Gold, Rose Gold, Greenery, Dazzling Blue and Mystic Silver. I received the Dazzling Gold model.
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Huawei P10 Plus review: Build quality and design
Huawei has pulled out all the stops with the P10 Plus’ build quality and design. Thanks to its diamond-cut finish around the back, the phone is unique in both the way it looks and feels. This results in a slip-free design, preventing accidental slips.
Its gorgeous design doesn’t stop there, as the phone’s edges are smooth, making it even more comfortable to hold. The metal ring that links the front chassis with its rear plate adds that touch of class too. Huawei has even added a small red ring around the textured power button, to make it easier to distinguish. All these small things add up to make the Huawei P10 Plus the best looking phone I’ve ever seen.
As seen with the 5.1in P10, the P10 Plus has a front-facing fingerprint sensor. At first, I disapproved of its placement, as I still love using the rear fingerprint sensor on my Huawei P9. However, there is reason behind the madness; Huawei has integrated the onscreen buttons onto its fingerprint sensor, giving you back the bottom part of your screen.
After a week, I didn’t find myself missing the onscreen navigation keys. In fact, it was quite the opposite as I preferred using the phone solely through the single navigation button.
Tapping the button once goes back, tap and holding it takes you to your homescreen and a swipe to the left or right takes you to your recent tasks. You can even access the Google app by swiping upwards on the right-edge of the phone.
However, if like me you enjoyed swiping down on your fingerprint sensor to reveal your recent notifications, you’ll find it missing in the P10 Plus.
The P10 Plus comes with a dual-SIM card slot, which can also be used to expand your storage with an additional 256GB (a microSD card uses SIM-slot 2). This is, of course, if you need more than its 128GB of internal storage.
A 3.5mm jack, single-speaker and USB Type-C port are found at the bottom of the phone. An IR blaster is located at the top of the phone, which useful for controlling a TV and receiver through your phone.
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Huawei P10 Plus review: Display
At 5.5in, the P10 Plus is bigger than the 5.1in screen found on the regular P10, but that’s not the only difference between the two phones. The P10 Plus has a glorious QHD (1,440 x 2,560) IPS display resulting in a 540ppi pixel density, making it ideal for VR.
The P10 Plus’ display is bright, at a measured 587.1cd/m2 maximum brightness, I had no troubles using the phone under bright sunlight. Its screen is a marvel too, with a 98.5% sRGB colour gamut coverage colours are vivid.
Its contrast ratio is measured at 1326.9:1, which looks good, until you put it up against the LG G6’s HDR display that outputs an outstanding 1,678:1 average and 2,112:1 maximum contrast ratio. At this price point, I’d have expected a HDR screen, as with more HDR content becoming available in televisions and smartphones, the P10 Plus is at a disadvantage. Its tested 0.44cd/m2 black level is disappointingly average, as this makes dark scenes in movies a little lighter than they should be.
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Huawei P10 Plus review: Software
The P10 Plus ships with Android 7 Nougat and EMUI 5.1. The Huawei overlay, EMUI, provides a good level customisation and through low-level RAM and processor optimisations it results in a fluid experience.
By defragmenting RAM usage, helping memory recycling through a fast kernel and utilising advanced memory compression techniques, Huawei claims it avoids Android slowing down after a few months of usage.
Unfortunately, it’s too early for me to say if the benefits are felt, but I’ll be sure to update this review in a few months time.
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Huawei P10 Plus review: Performance
Huawei’s 2017 handsets house the impressive HiSilicon Kirin 960 chipset. Sporting an octa-core (4x2.4 GHz Cortex-A73 & 4x1.8 GHz Cortex-A53) processor and 6GB of RAM, the phone flies through intensive tasks. No matter what I threw at it, the P10 Plus was able to provide blistering performance. From heavy multi-tasking to graphically intense games, I was impressed by its fluid experience.
Put through Geekbench 4, its multi-core performance is impressive. Given its relatively low clocked processors, it doesn’t come as a surprise that its single-core performance isn’t spectacular. With a margin of error I found the same performance with the P10 and Honor 8 Pro, both of which have the same Kirin 960.
^Huawei P10 Plus review: Geekbench 4
Arguably, for a flagship device, I’d have expected a better gaming performance. I still felt gaming on the P10 Plus enjoyable, as with a respectable 26fps onscreen performance (bearing in mind it’s a QHD display), it’s smooth enough for my mobile gaming needs. Over last year’s P9 Plus, it delivered almost double the frames in its offscreen (1080p) benchmark.
^Huawei P10 Plus review: GFXBench Manhattan 3.0
Battery life is also important, and I was disappointed to find the P10 Plus achieving 12hrs 21mins in the Expert Reviews battery benchmark. It’s still a respectable result, but given it has a 3,750mAh battery, I’d expect it to do better than the P10’s 3,200mAh battery that achieved 13hrs 12mins. Nevertheless, it’ll get you through a day on a single charge if you don’t heavily use it.
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Huawei P10 Plus review: Camera
At MWC 2017, Huawei outlined the improvements it had made with the P10’s camera, as it maintains its partnership with Leica and carries two SUMMILUX-H lenses. From the Huawei P9, they’ve replaced the dual 12-megapixel sensors with 20- and 12-megapixel sensors, resulting in a higher resolution.
But, that’s not the only thing that’s improved, as the P10 Plus also performs better in low-light conditions. Thanks to its rear camera having an f/1.8 aperture, images are a lot brighter when there’s an abundance of light.
^Indoor shot in normal mode, f/1.8
Above, is an indoor shot using the P10 Plus. By comparison, you can see the difference below of the Huawei P9, which shares the same f/2.2 aperture as the regular P10.
^Huawei P9: Indoor shot in normal mode, f/2.2
The difference is noticeable, and if you’ll be shooting in low light, the P10 Plus offers a much better image over the P9-line and the regular P10.
I’m happy to see an improvement, but it is still no match to the Google Pixel and Pixel XL that offer ridiculously good post-image processing, resulting in sharper images in both low-light conditions and outdoor images.
There are very slight differences between outdoor images shot on the P10 Plus with and without HDR. I found with HDR enabled, images were slightly more colour accurate.
Image colours are life-like, its white point is accurate and finer details can be seen on buildings.
^Outdoor road shot in HDR mode, f/1.8
Its camera flash performance is slightly overpowering in close-ups, with colours losing their accuracy and shadows appearing harsh. If you are to take low-light photography with flash, make sure your subject is at distance.
The front-facing camera has also seen an improvement over the P9-line, with a Leica 8-megapixel camera that has an f/1.9 aperture. This draws in lots of light for your selfies and provides you with more accurate images.
I can’t say I was blown away by its camera, especially when it’s up against the Samsung Galaxy S7, S8 and Google Pixel, which all provide a better image. Still, the P10 Plus is impressive and is an improvement over last year’s model and even in comparison to its smaller sibling, the P10, the Plus performs better in low-light conditions.
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Huawei P10 Plus review: Verdict
The Huawei P10 Plus is a fantastic phone, that’s a marvel to look at, beautifully built, has a solid performance and an impressive camera. But, at £680 it is too expensive for what it offers. For the same price, you can get a LG G6 or Samsung Galaxy S8 with a rather unique 18:9 display. The Google Pixel or Pixel XL also offer image quality that are leagues above the P10 Plus too.
If I compare a phone with a similar spec, such as the £475 Honor 8 Pro. You’ll be paying an extra £205 for a slightly better camera and a more elegant design. In this respect, I don’t see the P10 Plus competing with better value phones, or ones that offer more for the same amount of money. Granted, it’s the most beautiful phone I’ve ever seen, but that doesn’t warrant its £680 price tag.
My colleague had the very same complaint about the Huawei P10. Both the P10 and P10 Plus are great phones, but they are £100 dearer than they should be. Once the P10 Plus drops in price, I can see myself recommending it, until then they’ll be other phones that I’ll be recommending.
| Hardware | |
|---|---|
| Processor | Octa-core (4x2.4 GHz Cortex-A73 & 4x1.8 GHz Cortex-A53) |
| RAM | 6GB |
| Screen size | 5.5in |
| Screen resolution | 1440 x 2560 |
| Screen type | IPS |
| Front camera | 8 megapixels |
| Rear camera | 20 megapixels |
| Flash | LED |
| GPS | Yes |
| Compass | Yes |
| Storage | 128GB |
| Memory card slot (supplied) | microSD (256GB) |
| Wi-Fi | 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac |
| Bluetooth | Bluetooth 4.2 |
| NFC | Yes |
| Wireless data | 3G, 4G |
| Dimensions | 153.5 x 74.2 x 7 mm |
| Weight | 165g |
| Features | |
| Operating system | Android 7.0 |
| Battery size | 3,750mAh |