Huawei’s sub brand Honor launched it’s new mid-budget smartphone the Honor 10 Lite in India a few days back. The phone is a successor of Honor 9 Lite which was launched last year and is priced at Rs 13,999 for the 4GBR and 64GB internal storage variant while the 6GB RAM and 64GB storage variant has been priced at Rs 17,999. I’ve been using the phone for over a couple of weeks and here’s a quick review based on my usage.
Talking about the device, the Honor 10 Lite comes with a large display with minimum bezels, a barely there notch resulting in a high screen to body ratio and a gorgeous gradient back housed in a compact body. The phone runs on Android 9 Pie based EMUI 9 skin on top. In the regular retail box we’d get the phone, a 10W charger, a Micro USB cable and a protective TPU back cover.
The phone has a plastic back panel which still looks premium, though it is prone to getting scratched easily if a case isn’t used. In terms of looks, the Honor 10 Lite looks better than most of the competition devices in its price segment and feels nice and compact when held. It comes in a few colour variants like Sky Blue, Midnight Black and Sapphire Blue.
At 6.2 inches, the display is ideal for all regular tasks and its minimum bezel makes watching movies or playing games a pleasant experience. The phone was able to run most of the graphic intense games like Asphalt 9 and Fifa etc with an ease thanks to the capable processor, the HiSilicon Kirin 710. For those interested, PUBG operated on medium graphics settings only. The phone comes with a LCD display, hence colour reproduction isn’t as sharp and accurate as you’d see on an OLED panel but considering the price point, this isn’t a deal breaker.
The Honor 10 Lite is one of the only few Honor devices that runs on EMUI 9 out of the box, which is based on the latest Android 9 Pie OS from Google. It does come a few additional tweaks and most important one is the ‘Digital Balance’ based on Digital Wellbeing which lets you limit your screen time and even an option to switch the screen to grey scale when it is time to hit the bed. Like any other device running on latest Android OS, you have an option to use swipe gestures to navigate rather than on-screen buttons. Though gesture navigation may feel tricky for some and it may need some time getting used to.
The phone has 64GB of internal storage, out of which you get almost 50 GB for use, in case you need more storage you can just pop-in a micro SD card. There are two different variants to choose from, in terms of RAM- 4GB or 6GB, however, on board storage remains the same in both the cases. This is slightly weird since at a very slight difference of price you can get the Honor 8X with similar hardware but double the on-board storage.
The camera app on the phone offers a lot of options and is a decent performer overall. The dual camera setup helps in taking some impressive close-up shots but has its own limitation. Images clicked with ample background light are detailed, though low light images lack details and sharpness. The AI or Scene detection present on the phone identifies 22 different scenes, however, I preferred to turn it off to avoid unnatural looking images. On the front it has a 24-megapixel selfie camera which takes detailed selfies even in low light and here as well if you turn off the beautification mode, you’d be able to capture more realistic images.
Since this is a mid-budget segment phone, it still has the 3.5mm headphone jack but unlike many new phones it doesn’t come with USB type-C which is a bummer considering almost all the new phone feature a Type C port. A 3400 mAh battery powers the device and does not come with a fast charge support, taking almost close to 1.45 hours to charge it fully. With regular usage which includes some calls, social media messages and light gaming, you’d end up searching for a charging point by the evening. A 20 minute’s gaming session was enough to drain away over 40% of the battery.
To sum it up, the Honor 10 Lite is a gorgeous mid-range smartphone with a capable camera, smooth performance, powerful SoC aided by GPU turbo for gaming and the latest Android OS makes it an interesting device. It does have some quirks like micro-usb port for charging, 64GB internal storage when the Honor 8X, Realme 2Pro etc. are offering more internal storage at almost similar price and a battery that leaves you desiring for more. If you’re ok to overlook these nit-pickings, Honor 10 Lite is definitely the device for you.
Honor 10 Lite specifications
(A technology buff, Jitendra stays up-to-the-minute of trends in smartphones, gadgets, apps and more.)
