Honor 10 Lite Design
As soon as you see the glossy back panel of the device, you will guess that this is an Honor phone. Honor is known for giving such finishes to its devices. We have reviewed the Sapphire Blue finish variant. Sky Blue and Midnight Black variants have also been launched in the market. The reviewed variant reminded us of the Honor 8X (Review) and Honor 9N (Review).
The problem is that the back side is easily stained. This Honor phone also comes with a transparent case in the retail box, which will prove to be helpful. Honor 10 Lite is the first phone from the company to come with a dewdrop notch. A very small notch is in the center at the top of the display. It has space only for the selfie camera. To make the notch smaller, Honor has shifted the earpiece towards the frame of the smartphone. The notification light has moved to the lower bezel, you will get an idea of this when it blinks.
The aspect ratio of the 6.21 inch screen is 19.5:9. It is equipped with full-HD+ resolution. Honor claims that due to the chip on film screen technology, it has been able to make the bottom bezel very thin. The back of the phone along with the frame is made of plastic and it does not look premium at all. Probably for this reason the company has been successful in keeping the price and weight of the handset low.
Honor has placed the power and volume buttons on the right side. The power button is easy to reach. But the volume buttons can be a little difficult to reach. The left edge of the phone is completely empty. The SIM tray is on the top, along with a secondary microphone. There is a micro-USB port, 3.5mm headphone jack, primary mic and bottom firing loudspeaker at the bottom. This Honor phone comes with a 10 watt charger. Honor 10 Lite has a dual rear camera setup. There is an LED flash and fingerprint sensor on the back. Honor has curved the edges of this phone so that the grip of the phone remains good.
Honor 10 Lite specifications and software
Honor claims that the 10 Lite handset comes with a 91 percent screen to body ratio. The 6.21-inch panel has a 19.5:9 aspect ratio and full-HD+ resolution. There is no information about any kind of protection on the display. In such a situation, we would suggest you to be a little cautious about the device.
The Huawei Kirin 710 processor has been used in Honor 10 Lite, which has been a part of Huawei Nova 3i and Honor 8X. This is an octa-core processor based on 12nm process. Its clock speed is 2.2 GHz. Honor 10 Lite has options of 4 GB RAM and 6 GB RAM. The inbuilt storage of both variants is 64 GB.
If you are not satisfied with the existing storage, you can use a microSD card up to 512 GB through the hybrid SIM slot. If you do not want to increase the storage, two nano SIMs can be used simultaneously. The device supports dual 4G VoLTE. Other connectivity features include Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, GPS and GLONASS.
Honor 10 Lite is the first smartphone from the company to come with Android Pie out of the box. It has EMUI 9.0.1 with the November security patch. The overall UI is similar to the older version of EMUI. Like other recently launched smartphones, you will get the option to enable gesture navigation. This hides the Android navigation bar and you will be able to swipe to navigate. Apart from this, there are many other gesture controls.
Honor 10 Lite performance, battery life and camera
The Kirin 710 processor handles day-to-day tasks with ease. Our user experience with the 4GB RAM variant given for review was very smooth. There was no complaint of the phone slowing down even during multitasking.
During use, we found the fingerprint to be a little slow to unlock the phone. There is also face unlock which uses the selfie camera. Face recognition was faster and was able to unlock the phone in most situations.
In our benchmark tests, the Kirin 710 performed better than the Snapdragon 660 in CPU benchmarks, but lagged behind in GPU tests.
We ran PUBG Mobile on the Honor 10 Lite at medium settings. We found that after playing the game for about 36 minutes, the battery drained by 11 percent.
In our HD video loop test, the Honor 10 Lite’s 3400mAh battery lasted for 11 hours and 20 minutes. In normal use, we were active on WhatsApp, played games for about an hour, used Google Maps for 50 minutes and watched a few YouTube videos. After 24 hours, we had about 46 percent battery left. Honor does not provide any fast charger in the retail box. The 10-watt charger provided with it charges the phone slowly.
Honor 10 Lite has a dual camera setup on the back. The primary sensor is 13 megapixels and there is a 2 megapixel depth sensor. For selfies, you will get a 24 megapixel camera. The camera software is similar to other Honor smartphones. The company says that both camera setups are equipped with AI.
Tap to see full-sized Honor 10 Lite camera samples
Apart from the usual photo and video modes, modes like Aperture, Night, Portrait, Panorama, Pro and Time-lapse will be available. HDR is available as a separate mode, not with a quick toggle. The HiVision feature that was part of the Huawei Mate 20 Pro is also available. But its features are limited.
The Honor 10 Lite focuses quickly and also detects scenes correctly. The smartphone does accurate detection when the AI mode is enabled. The output in this mode is overly saturated. The sky looks more blue and the grass more green on the phone’s display, but it looks artificial.
Photos taken without AI turned out better in some cases, especially in macro shots. In landscape shots, the Honor 10 Lite failed to capture details of distant objects. Macro shots taken without AI mode turned out better than those taken with AI mode. The Honor 10 Lite did a decent separation between the subject and the background.
The Honor 10 Lite did not deliver great output in portrait mode. Edge detection was not accurate. On some occasions, the phone did not even blur the background completely. Low light performance was below average. If AI is enabled, the phone’s night mode is automatically activated which keeps the shutter open for a longer time. Due to this, if the subject moves while taking a shot, the shots come out blurry. Photos taken at night did not have noise, but the output was grainy and lacked details.
The beautification mode is already activated in the selfie camera, which makes the pictures smooth. If you want, you can switch it off or decide the level of beautification. It also has a bokeh mode with which you can blur the background.
You will be able to record videos at a maximum resolution of 1080p with the primary and selfie cameras. You have the option to record videos at 60fps with the rear camera. But the output is shaky due to the lack of image stabilization.
Our verdict
Honor 10 Lite is another claim from Honor in the Rs 15,000 price segment. Talking about its uniqueness, the 10 Lite comes with a glossy finish. It is the first Honor phone to come with a dewdrop notch and Android Pie out of the box.
The Kirin 710 is a very powerful processor that gives a tough fight to the popular Snapdragon 660 processor in this segment. But the Honor 10 Lite’s claim becomes a bit weak in terms of camera. This phone will get strong competition from Asus ZenFone Max Pro M2 (Review), Realme U1 (Review) and Xiaomi Mi A2 (Review). Its 4GB / 64GB variant available at Rs 13,999 can be considered, but the 6GB / 64GB variant priced at Rs 17,999 does not have that appeal.
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