Honor 10 Lite review: Not a poser, but a performer in midrange segment

Priced at Rs 13,999 for base model with 4GB RAM, the Honor 10 Lite is primarily a camera phone with strengths across areas. Though its design is inspired from yesteryear phones, it doesn't look dated

Honor, a smartphone brand owned by Chinese technology giant Huawei, recently launched the Honor 10 Lite. Successor of the Honor 9 Lite, the phone has a dewdrop notch screen, dual rear cameras, and gradient glass like design. Being a midrange smartphone, it is powered by Kirin 710 system-on-chip, and features GPU Turbo technology for improved graphic performance.

The Honor 10 Lite seems to be a power packed proposition in the midrange segment. But how does it fare in real life scenarios? Let’s find out:

Design

The Honor 10 Lite has a glass like design that has been predominant in midrange smartphones. It looks impressive, but not different than most of the midrange devices such as the Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 (review). The phone’s back is made of laminated layers of polymer with a glossy finish, which looks like glass and has a gradient design. The gradient design on the back reflects different shades of phone’s colour when looked from angles.

On the front, there is a notch screen of a dewdrop design. Unlike the Oppo’s and Vivo’s iteration of waterdrop notch, which has a subtle V-shaped design, the Honor 10 Lite notch is prominent and has a U-shaped design. Like any other notch-based smartphone, the Honor 10 Lite has a bezel at the bottom that encloses an ambient light and proximity sensors.

Though the phone’s design is impressive, it looks close to yesteryear’s designs that might not please everyone’s taste.

Display

The Honor 10 Lite has a 6.21-inch fullHD+ screen, stretched in tall 19.5:9 aspect ratio. The screen renders sharp and vibrant colours. It also has decent brightness and satisfactory sunlight legibility. However, contrast seems to be out of calibration. The screen does not do well to render blacks properly and the whites look greyish with a blue tint in normal mode.

Camera

The Honor 10 Lite has a dual rear camera and a single front camera. The rear camera module shares a combination of 13-megapixel primary sensor of f/1.8 aperture and a 2MP depth sensor. The front camera has a 24MP sensor of f/2.0 aperture.

Both the camera modules feature artificial intelligence-based automatic scene recognition that adjusts camera settings automatically, based on the scene in the frame. While the front camera is capable of recognising up to eight different scenes, the rear camera module can detect from up to 22 scenes. The front camera also features AI-based facial recognition and light fusion technology for improved selfies.

In terms of output, the Honor 10 Lite does a decent job. It takes satisfactory shots in good light conditions. Focus is fast and the AI scene recognition sweeps in quickly to adjust the frame setting. However, not all AI assisted shots come out great. Some shots also show oversaturated colours that look fine on phone’s screen but shows up the loss of details when looked at bigger screens.

The bright f/1.8 aperture of the primary lens assists the phone in low light situations by capturing more light. Therefore, night shots come out satisfactory, if not excellent.

The front camera, on the other hand, is a mixed bag of hits and misses. It takes decent shots, especially portraits. However, the subject/object and background segmentation is improper.

Honor 10 Lite

Performance

The Honor 10 Lite is powered by Kirin 710 SoC. It boots Android Pie-based Huawei’s EMUI 9 user interface. Specifications aside, the user experience is smooth and the phone handles day to day jobs with ease. It also keeps thermals in control and the phone does not warm up unnecessarily. The phone’s graphic performance is good. It handles graphic intensive gaming titles like PUBG and Asphalt 9 Legends well, albeit at lower graphics render setting.

The phone has face and fingerprint recognition modules for screen unlock. While the face recognition is fast and accurate to unlock the device, the fingerprint sensor is relatively slow when we compare it with other phones in its segment.

Battery

The Honor 10 Lite is powered by a 3,400 mAh battery that lasts for up to a day. The phone has a micro USB port, not the USB type-C, for charging and data transfers. The phone lasts for almost a day with usual day-to-day activities that include browsing Internet, streaming videos, navigation and a bit of gaming.

Verdict

Priced at Rs 13,999 for the base model with 4GB RAM, the Honor 10 Lite is primarily a camera phone with strengths across areas. Though its design is inspired from yesteryear’s smartphones, it does not look dated. For that matter, the gradient design looks plush and the phone’s dewdrop notch adds to the overall aesthetics. Overall, the phone is a capable midrange device, competing against other all-rounders in the same segment such as the Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2, Realme 2 Pro, Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro and Nokia 6.1 Plus.