Honor 10 Lite review: bets everything on design and battery

The Honor 10 Lite (Check on Amazon.com) came to light on November 21, just four months after the Honor 10, with a simple mission: attract the younger audience. The 10 Lite is a full-fledged mid-ranger that seeks to compete in a really complicated price range in which we already find very strong contenders. Does it stand out?

Honor 10 Lite – A design that still works

The Honor 10 Lite is made of plastic, although it looks similar to glass. It is beautiful, attractive and pleasing to the eye, but it has the same problem as all devices with a glass-like finish: it attracts fingerprints. Thankfully there is a cover included in the package.

On the right edge, we have the volume rocker and the power button, while the left one is completely empty. The bottom edge houses the micro USB port, the mono speaker, the microphone and the headphone jack. In the upper edge we find the secondary microphone and the dual hybrid SIM tray (nano SIM + nano SIM or nano SIM + microSD card).

Moving to the rear, we find the very characteristic design of Honor/Huawei, with the two separate lenses in the upper right corner and the flash LED just below them.

A screen for all

The Honor 10 Lite’s IPS display features a 6.21-inch screen with Full HD+ resolution. Although it doesn’t get very bright (around 400 cd/m²) but I never experienced any problems with it outdoors.

A good speaker

The Honor 10 Lite has a good sound and although there is only one speaker it is able to maintain a correct level of sharpness when the volume is high. Even so, in songs with a lot of treble (Bohemian Rhapsody) tends to sound somewhat strident.

Honor 10 Lite – Cameras

The Honor 10 Lite mounts a dual rear camera of 13 and 2 megapixels, the later being a depth sensor used for portrait mode. The selfie camera instead uses a big 24 megapixels sensor. Both offer Portrait Mode and are enhanced with Artificial Intelligence.

During the day, the 10 Lite achieves a well-exposed scene, with a correct white balance and real-life colors. However, it lacks in terms of sharpness and level of detail. At night, most photos are garbage.

Luckily the 10 Lite also comes with a Night Mode, which enables for longer exposure. The end result is a photo with much more detail, contrast, and no apparent noise.

The selfie camera, on the other hand, is able to capture a good level of detail but the problem here is that the photos look artificial, to the point that they seem edited with Photoshop. The funny thing is that Portrait Mode works so well that it looks less artificial compared to normal selfies.

Before moving on to video, we have to make one remark regarding Artificial Intelligence: leave it deactivated!

The Honor 10 Lite can record video in Full HD resolution at 60 frames per second and does not have an optical stabilizer. The results are OK but it’s not its strong point either.

Honor 10 Lite – Performance

The Honor 10 Lite mounts the Kirin 710 eight-core processor with the Mali-G51 graphics card and pairs it with 3, 4 or 6GB of RAM and 32, 64 or 128GB of memory.

The overall feeling is very smooth, everything opens up quickly and there is no noticeable slowdown during multitasking. In general, the experience is very satisfactory and the phone feels very responsive.

As far as games go, the 10 Lite has managed to save face. In 3D and fast-moving titles like PUBG Mobile, it shows its price, with some tears and a low frame rate. It also gets slightly warm in the back, but it cools off immediately after you close the game.

Now let’s talk about the fingerprint sensor and face recognition. The scanner is very fast and dependable. It is placed in a good position and reacts very quickly as soon as you touch it.

Face unlock also works surprisingly well, even in low light conditions. I prefer to use the fingerprint reader anyway but it is a matter of taste.

Android 9 and EMUI 9

Here we find a pleasant surprise: Android 9 Pie (with the EMUI 9.0.1 skin on top), and although EMUI is a fairly heavy skin, the interface is very responsive and smooth and the overall user experience is very pleasant. If it wasn’t for the ton of bloatware apps from Huawei (resulting in duplicate apps) we would have liked it better.

Solid autonomy

The Honor 10 Lite sports a 3400mAh battery which sounds fairly modest… nevertheless this phone has a very good autonomy and will easily last a full day.

As for the 10W wall adapter supplied in the box, it can charge it from 10 to 100% in just over an hour and a half (41% after 30 minutes, 72% after 1 hour).

Honor 10 Lite – Verdict

The Honor 10 Lite can be purchased for (Check on Amazon.com) and this is the only figure that matters. If it costs less than its direct rivals [Moto G7 Power (Check on Amazon.com), Redmi Note 7 (Check on Amazon.com) and Huawei P Smart 2019 (Check on Amazon.com)] then go ahead and buy it, if it costs more then choose one of the others. It’s that simple really!

Read more:

• Redmi Note 7 review
• Moto G7 Power review: beyond the battery
• Huawei P Smart 2019 review: larger, smarter and more beautiful