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HONOR 10 Lite Review — The Selfie Phone For You?
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HONOR 10 Lite Review — The Selfie Phone For You?

by January 8, 2019
Positives

+ Dewdrop design gives more display
+ 'Night Mode' really does the job in photos
+ Speakers are loud
+ 3.5mm port available
+ Front camera is quite decent

Negatives

- Poor EMUI experience
- Not enough RAM with only 3GB
- AI features doesn't really help with main camera
- Uses microUSB instead of Type-C
- Overall camera performance could be better
- Slow shutter speed

Pokde Scoreboard
Pokde Rating
Appearance
7.0
Features
6.0
Materials
7.0
Performance
7.0
Portability
8.0
Value
6.0
Bottom Line

Offers a decent display with a good selfie camera but performance wise, definitely needs an upgrade.

6.8
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Introduction

In this review, we are taking a look at HONOR’s brand new HONOR 10 Lite smartphone. It is the first device under them to come with a dewdrop display. The one that’s in our hands is the 3GB RAM that’s coupled with 32GB internal storage variant. Based on the specifications, the phone is part of the lower mid-range market. How does it performs? Let’s find out.

Unboxing

HONOR 10 Lite Review — The Selfie Phone For You? 21

For the unboxing, you have your standard light blue box. Open it and you’ll find the 10 Lite itself, a SIM ejector pin, your charging brick as well as the phone’s microUSB cable. It’s nice to see that they’ve also provided a soft case for the phone.

Appearance

HONOR 10 Lite Review — The Selfie Phone For You? 22

On the front, in terms of looks, it looks pretty much like what you’d expect from a mid-range device. However it’s a special case as the HONOR 10 Lite is the first from the company to offer a dewdrop notch on top. The speaker grill sits just on top of it. Meanwhile at the bottom of it, lies the LED notification lights that’s situated at the rather slim notch.

HONOR 10 Lite Review — The Selfie Phone For You? 23

On the right hand side of the phone is where you’ll find the volume rockers as well as the power button. Over to the left side, it’s completely naked with nothing to be found.

HONOR 10 Lite Review — The Selfie Phone For You? 24

Down below, you’ve got the phone’s speaker at right most, the microUSB port down in the middle, a microphone hole, and finally the 3.5mm port for your headphones.

HONOR 10 Lite Review — The Selfie Phone For You? 25

You can find the SIM/microSD tray at the top, where a secondary microphone hole accompanies it.

Specifications

CPU/Chipset: Kirin 710 ( 4x 2.2 GHz Cortex-A73 & 4 x 1.7 GHz Cortex-A53), 12nm FinFET
GPU: Mali-G51 MP4
RAM: 3GB
Display: 6.21″ FHD+ (1080p) IPS display
Storage: 32GB (expandable via microSD card up to 512GB)
Camera: Main Camera(s)
13MP f/1.8 + 2MP f/2.4 depth sensor
LED flash, AI stabilization, Night mode, AI camera
Front Camera
24MP f/2.0 AI beautification, Portrait
OS: EMUI 9.0 based on Android 9.0 Pie
Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2
SIM: Hybrid DualSIM
Battery: Li-Po 3400 mAh (non-removable)
Dimensions: 154.8 x 73.6 x 8 mm
Weight: 162 g

Performance

For the performance section, do note that we weren’t able to run all of our usual benchmarks as the phone isn’t compatible to run them (at the time of writing). We are able to test it out on 3D Mark though. As for the rest of the tests, we will update accordingly once they are made available to the device.

HONOR 10 Lite Review — The Selfie Phone For You? 26

As you can see from the 3D Mark test here, the HONOR 10 Lite performed rather low. If you compared it to the HUAWEI Y9 which uses the same Kirin 710 chipset, the difference is visible. It’s worth noting that the HUAWEI Y9 scores even higher than the HONOR 8X which we’ve reviewed previously too.

HONOR 10 Lite Review — The Selfie Phone For You? 27

As for the battery test, this is how it looks like which I’ve tested over the weekend. I’ve used it to play one full movie on Netflix, several Youtube videos, some social media scrolling on Facebook and Instagram, as well some light messaging. The results aren’t bad, but that’s not to say that the battery life is impressive either.

For a duration of a 30 minutes charging period, I managed to fill it by 24% by using the its 10W brick and cable that comes along with the box. So the next time you are in a hurry of going out while your battery is low, be prepared for that.

User Experience

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First impressions when holding the device is good, where the phone feels grippy. The size is just perfect on the hands. Although the Black variant looks decent, I preferred the blue gradient version of the HONOR 10 Lite.

As I’ve used the phone more and more, I found out that the phone’s daily performance is quite sluggish. This could be due to the fact that the phone offers only 3GB RAM, well at least on the device that HONOR has provided us with.

Facial unlocking is rather slow, where it took roughly 2 seconds to unlock the device. As for your traditional fingerprint sensor unlock, the phone unlocked almost instantly. At least it’s fast under that department there.

With the phone being the first device under HONOR to come with a dewdrop display, it really helps in giving more enjoyment in watching videos and playing games on the device.

Usage wise, it wasn’t the best experience for me from an EMUI device. When switching between apps, you can notice the delay that it had in doing so. This may be due to the fact that the phone only packs 3GB of RAM.

HONOR 10 Lite Review — The Selfie Phone For You? 29

With the HONOR 10 Lite offering a EMUI 9.0 interface, it’s pretty straightforward. There’s a number of bloatware if that’s your concern, but still I find it acceptable.

HONOR 10 Lite Review — The Selfie Phone For You? 30

There’s pretty much everything in the camera’s UI of the HONOR 10 Lite. You’ve got several different modes to play with at your disposal. It’s rather similar to what you’d find at other flagships from HONOR and HUAWEI.

In adequate lighting, the phone does an acceptable job. Shots taken with HDR is pleasant. Under those conditions and settings, the phone does a good job for your social media postings. However, as with most cases of smartphones today, the phone suffers during the night, where your usual noise comes to play a factor. Despite that, you can see the difference when you opt to use the Night mode on the HONOR 10 Lite, where it lifts the quality of the picture. There’s the need of you to steady your hands while taking the shot for four seconds though. AI on the main camera seems to overexpose pictures and just make them brighter in my opinion.

Selfies on the other hand are quite good. The shutter speed is a bit slow, so be sure to steady your hands when you take your shot. AI on the front camera does a good job actually and you have the option to ‘beautify’ your skin to look more presentable.

Conclusion

The HONOR 10 Lite is a decent smartphone. That being said, it doesn’t present itself as something special for its price range, which is RM749. There’s definitely areas that it need improvements on, as mentioned in the review. Instead of getting this, I would rather recommend to get the HONOR 8X. Despite the HONOR 8X costing around RM200 more than the 10 Lite, you’d be getting more or less the same as the HONOR 10 Lite but with more RAM as well as more internal storage. 3GB RAM and 32GB of storage is just not enough for the average person in today’s world.

We would like to thank HONOR Malaysia for providing the HONOR 10 Lite that was used in this review.

About The Author
Raja Idris
The name's King, Kingky King. Likes to keep it simple and straightforward. A person who games regardless of what platform. Need value for money performance? Get AMD.

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