Huawei Mate 10 Pro

Huawei Mate 10 Pro

What is the Huawei Mate 10 Pro?

If you’re on the market for a new phablet, but don’t want to spend the small fortune required to get a Galaxy Note 8 or iPhone X, then the Huawei Mate 10 Pro may well be your next phone.

The Mate 10 Pro is the only phablet the company’s currently selling in the UK, with Huawei having chosen not to range its slightly more affordable, regular Huawei Mate 10.

The Pro offers fantastic hardware, with highlights including a Mobile HDR-ready OLED screen, super-fast CPU, more memory than you can shake a stick at, and excellent battery life.

This plus its wallet-friendly (relatively speaking) £699 price tag make it a compelling choice for any fan of big-screen phones. My only minor quibble is that the Mate 10 Pro’s EMUI Android skin still comes with a load of annoying, niggling flaws.

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Huawei Mate 10 Pro – Design

The Huawei Mate 10 Pro has a close-to-identical design to the regular Mate 10, which is no bad thing.

The design takes the same mixed metal-and-glass approach as the Galaxy Note 8 or iPhone X. The slightly curved glass back, coupled with the sturdy metal sides and near-bezel-less front, makes the Pro one of the prettiest phablets on the market. The slim bezel also means the Pro doesn’t feel terribly unwieldy, despite packing a 6-inch screen.

Outside of this you’ll find all the trimmings expected of a 2017 flagship. On the back, just below the dual Leica-branded cameras, you’ll find a fingerprint scanner, which during my tests proved fast and reliable.

At the bottom you’ll see the increasingly common USB-C charging port and a speaker which, while not the loudest around, is more than good enough for video calling.

Build quality is also excellent. Unlike on cheaper phones the glass back here offers next to no flex and is surprisingly scratch-resistant. After accidentally throwing it in a pocket alongside loose change, the Pro emerged unscathed. The IP67 certification also rang true, with the Pro surviving my attempt to drown it in a kitchen. I still wouldn’t trust the glass back to survive a drop onto a hard surface, however.

The 128GB of inbuilt storage is also more than big enough for most users, and means the absence of a microSD card slot isn’t that big of a deal.

My only minor quibble with the phone’s design is that, unlike its sibling the Mate 10, the Pro doesn’t have a 3.5mm headphone jack. I know I’m fighting a losing battle, as everyone has already jumped on Apple’s ‘no 3.5mm’ bandwagon, but for me and many music fans, the port’s absence is still a sticking point.

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