It seems rather silly, really, to feel guilty about seeing our deep fondness for the Huawei Mate 9 dim quite easily as soon as we got our hands on the P10 Plus, the latest of the twin flagships of the Chinese multinational networking and telecommunications equipment and services company that now ranks among the top-three smartphone brands in the world. (The other twin is of course the P10, which has a 5.2-inch screen while the Plus bears a 5.5-incher.)
For one, the review unit sent over by the local office of Huawei is the Dazzling Blue variant, and we’ve always been deeply partial to blue, which is just about the only color we wear apart from black.
Beyond color, however, the Huawei P10 Plus is not only the best flagship that Huawei has released to date, but also one of the few truly great smartphones in the market. That’s no small accomplishment in a market crowded with the latest flagships from consumer electronics players as established as Huawei, some perhaps even more so. Fittingly enough, the company has tapped as its new ambassador 2015 Miss Universe Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach—after all, one outstanding beauty deserves another, yes?
Referring to the exceptional Leica-powered imaging features of the Huawei P10 twins, Wurtzbach says, “A portrait photo is really worth a thousand words because you can have so many interpretations on every subject; even how you take the photo tells a story. That’s why I think it’s very personal—each photo is a part of you and is something you can always look back on. You can look back on any portrait, and a wave of memories instantly return.”
True enough, powered by the latest and greatest version of Android, 7.0, also known as Nougat, the Huawei P10 Plus is as much a looker as its new ambassador. No, it doesn’t have such useless gimmicks as a screen that curves to the sides for no compelling purpose, nor does it drop features (the 3.5 mm headphone jack, for instance) just because the other big players are doing it. What Huawei has done with the P10 Plus is not only refine the aesthetics that have won its previous flagships critical and commercial success but also turn up the volume in both hardware and software features that really matter.
With dimensions measuring at 153.5 x 74.2 x 7 mm and weighing in at 165 g, the P10 Plus maintains the slim profile of its immediate predecessor, encased in a solid metal and glass unibody with the sides and corners smoothened and rounded out. It never feels flimsy in the hand, and the tactility is helped even further by the hyper diamond-cut finishing of the Dazzling Blue variant. On the right side of the P10 Plus is the power button and the volume rocker, while on the left is the hybrid dual SIM/microSD slot, which means you can bump up the 64GB user-storage standard if you work only one mobile number. (A single SIM/microSD slot configuration is also available.) On the top side is an IR blaster (an increasingly rare feature in smartphones), while the bottom has the 3.5-mm jack, the USB Type-C reversible connector, and a speaker that can blast your favorite songs with enough loudness to compensate for those occasions when you absently left your headphones at home.
Meanwhile, the P10 Plus’s IPS-NEO LCD capacitive touchscreen is a solid improvement over its predecessor, the P9 Plus, which offered a 1080 x 1920 pixels resolution with 401 ppi pixel density in a market already offering 4K screens on smartphones. This time around, the P10 Plus’s 5.5-inch display has a 1440 x 2560 pixel resolution with 540 ppi pixel density, showing off pictures and videos in gorgeous clarity, upping some more the sensory feasts to be enjoyed on this flagship.
The Huawei P10 Plus is propelled by the latest octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 960 CPU and Mali-G71 MP8 GPU, plus 6GB RAM, all of which come together to make this a speed demon dressed in knockout style, assuring the smoothest performance even for the user who likes to work his smartphone hard. Moreover, Huawei’s own Emotion UI 5.1 that lays on top of Android—typically a bone of contention in Huawei smartphone reviews—has been given a makeover, the skinning less heavy-handed while providing better ease-of-use in areas where other Android smartphones are cumbersome, such switching 4G networks in a dual SIM setup.
If there is one complaint we have about the Huawei P10 Plus, it’s the company’s decision to move the fingerprint sensor—which does more than wake up and unlock the phone—from the back, the placement that felt most natural, to the front, which may or may not be an attempt to attract Apple and Samsung users.
Since the launch of Huawei’s new twin flagships, the company has been hosting a series of photography workshops in and outside of Metro Manila—and with good reason. The P10 and P10 Plus pack a lot of excellent features—besides the ones we’ve already mentioned, they also make a great music device, beautifully capable of handling high-resolution audio (24-bit/192kHz) and even improving non high-resolution music files by upsampling the output sans obvious distortion—but what the company wants to really talk-up is the second-generation results of its continuing partnership with imaging legend Leica.
For this iteration, the Huawei-Leica partnership brings smartphone photography to levels that can readily rival the output of many dedicated point-and-shooters. The main rear configuration is a Dual 20MP plus 12MP affair, with f/1.8, OIS, Leica optics, face detection and laser autofocus, plus dual-LED (dual tone) flash, resulting in shots with excellent detail and minimal oversharpening, the latter the nadir of Samsung smartphones. The front-facing camera is an 8MP, f/1.9 shooter that takes fabulous selfies, and both shooters can capture video in high-definition. Meanwhile, the sublime bokeh effect the P10/P10 Plus offers—much improved from the already-solid Huawei P9 Plus and Mate 9—should give your snaps a heightened polish.
No doubt, Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach, shown here captured on the P10 Plus, will agree.
Certainly one of the most coveted flagship smartphones now in the market, the Huawei P10 and P10 Plus are being offered at zero-percent interest using any credit-card installment plan for six and 12 months, and zero percent installment via Home Credit for nine months. Meanwhile, leading mobile brand Globe Telecom is offering the P10 for free with Plan 1799, which includes 2 GB data, unlimited text to all networks, unlimited calls to Globe and TM, free Netflix access for six months, Spotify Premium access for three months, and HOOQ access for six months.
To know more about the Huawei P10 plus, check out https://goo.gl/uu7UdA.