Huawei's P10 breathing on Samsung's shoulder

Huawei began to make significant inroads into the premium phone business in the West last year with its heavily promoted P9 models, and the Chinese giant has got this year’s shot at the market in early: ahead of Samsung and HTC. The story of the P10 flagship is quite straightforward. Huawei has refined the P9, given it some …

[djstardust]

Why oh why

Is everyone copying the design language of the iphone?

The current Apple offering looks like some $99 Chinese knock off and everyone else is trying to make their handsets equally dull.

(except Sony who are still designing theirs based on 2006)

[Tom 38]

4 pages

No mention of whether the battery is replaceable or not (its not).

[Anonymous Coward]

Replacing the battery?

This is an exception these days, so if there is no mention of it.. then assume the answer is no!

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Replacing the battery

Probably because 99.99% of customers don't care. It is not the issue it used to be.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Replacing the battery

Probably because 99.99% of customers don't care. It is not the issue it used to be.

It is broadly speaking the same issue it always was, but 99.99% of customers appear to treat a phone as a very short life product, almost disposable. Even for £500 handsets, because all they see is a monthly charge equivalent to a few high street coffees.

But as phones follow PCs, and the reason to upgrade disappears for most people, it will be interesting to see if people start to mind the fact that replacing a sealed in battery is a tedious process..

[Chz]

Re: Replacing the battery

It's hardly tedious to pay a shop £50 to do it (cost of battery included).

[c3me]

Re: Replacing the battery

'Replaceable': I have an iPhone 4 that has had its battery replaced twice and still works well. I am happy to pay for a technician to replace the battery for a fraction of the cost of a new phone.

[P. Lee]

Re: Replacing the battery

>'Replaceable': I have an iPhone 4 that has had its battery replaced twice and still works well.

AU$120 to have my kid's iphone 5 battery replaced.

With laptop batteries from Dell coming in at $50-$100, $120 for a tiny phone battery seems... excessive.

It's the vendor's way of taking a slice of the second-hand market. There is no real need for sealed-in batteries. I was going to suggest that it is driven by the "thin and light" but I suspect it's the other way around: "thin and light" is driven by the vendors' desire to seal in the battery.

[Dave 126]

> the HTC 10 or LG G6, both of which feature a high-quality DAC (24bit and 32bit respectively).

LG have been daft with the G6. The Korean version gets the dog's bollocks ESS DAC, the yanks get wireless charging, and Europe gets neither. So, no, the version of the G6 that Reg readers might buy doesn't the 32 bit DAC. Annoyingly, Europe never got the LG V20, either - again a phone with ESS in it, and saner than the modular G5.

Note: it isn't that the DAC is 33bit that makes it good, it just happens to be a feature of what is widely considered to be very good sounding chip from ESS.

[Dave 126]

EDIT: can't find edit button on mobile site.

I omitted the word 'get' from one sentence. Also, the 33 bit DAC I erroneously referred to is obviously one better than a 32bit DAC - in the same way as Spinal Tap's amp is 'one better' than an ordinary amp that merely goes up to ten!

[Locky]

You also forgot to mention how much more black could it be. The answer is None. None more black

[Dave 126]

Well, Black Sabbath have licensed their name to some earphones, so why not a Spinal Tap phone?

As you say, it would be black. Every spec would be one better than anyone else. It would double as a ruler, with feet on one side and inches on the other. It would include a sensor for swabbing vomit, testing whether someone has choked on their own or somebody else's. The battery would be guaranteed not to spontaneously combust - unless in the pocket of a drummer, in which case it would not only combust but act as an incendiary too or your money back (powdered magnesium case construction, obviously). Built in metronome app with 23/π time signiture for jazz odyssey solo projects.

[J. R. Hartley]

But does it play Stonehenge?

[cbars]

Whad I wanna know

Why isn't it dual SIM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Whad I wanna know

Why isn't it dual SIM?

Probably is for markets where that's a common requirement. Here in the UK the mobile networks business model is split between being a carrier and offering lease purchase of handsets, so they're in no hurry to encourage you to use another MNO's sim.

[Anonymous Coward]

oleophobic coating?

Other reviews have stated there is no oleophobic coating on the glass, there is no mention of that in this review. Without it, once the screen protector is removed, the glass becomes a smudge fest.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: oleophobic coating?

People still remove the film and don't replace it with a £5 glass screen protector off ebay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: oleophobic coating?

Do not generally use a screen protector, last time I did was with my Palm Pre, it had a plastic screen.

Some people wont use / don't like them so it is definitely worth mentioning.

[ToonArmyBarmy]

Android Pay

No mention of approval for Android Pay. Would be nice to know.

[Charlie Clark]

Missing specs

I'll only buy phones with OLED screens so it would be nice to have this in the summary. Huawei do do OLED but just not with this phone.

http://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_p10-8514.php

[Luke 11]

Shouldn't it be "Breathing down Samsung's neck" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. The association is correct, but you've missed the point of the carefully chosen words.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got an iPhone.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got flatulence. In both our cases I think we're a little off topic.

[Unicornpiss]

Really?

"But if Huawei could copy just one part of the Apple design philosophy please let it be this: show as few superfluous alerts as possible."

What philosophy is this?? This is the thing I hate the most about iOS: The way dialogs will pop right into the middle of what you're doing, regardless of what you're doing, to remind you to sign back in to Facebook, turn on family sharing, or 9,000 other things that could simply just wait. I haven't experienced it personally, but I wouldn't be surprised if iOS notified you that your garden needs weeding while you're bleeding and frantically trying to make a 911 call.

At least Android reminds you with a message bar at the top, then leaves the notification icons there for later attention.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Really?

I don't use an iPhone but I have an IPad.

It's pretty simple, when you start an app for the 1st time, it asks you do you want to receive notifications (from this app) you say NO.

The only time I receive a notification is when I receive a new email...

[Jos V]

meh

Someone please tell me when there's a decent cheap bugger of a replacement for my Moto-G (2nd gen).

I can't be arsed about all the menu swipe squirly wirly stuff.

Or maybe I'm just grumpy today.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I'm paying that kind of price I want the level of future-proofing I'd get with a PC - 5 years minimum (of course this wouldn't be an issue for Apple aficionados who'd not be seen dead with last year's model). That means confidence that I'll get OS upgrades and the ability to replace failing hardware components, in the case of mobile phones that's the battery.

Second is the issue of dual SIM. UK models are less likely to have those whereas the far east models do. When I travel I really don't want to be ripped off by my UK carrier and swapping out a micro SIM is a PITA.

Third is an SD option. It would be less of a problem if installed memory was larger and if the manufacturers didn't see it as an opportunity to add a massive premium - whats this 32/64 GB nonsense about? 128GB as standard please.

[it-assist]

I love Huawei

Great article. A member of my family is a reseller for Huawei and he was the person who converted me from Apple fo Android again. I personally have the P9 and I love it (I wrote an article about how awesome it is along with a comparrison of the competition here- http://it-assist.co.uk/heres-why-i-didnt-buy-another-apple-iphone/). He gets all the latest models and had the P10 quite a while back. I must say its fantastic and seems a cut above anything else. Personally not a fan of the Samsungs, Sony feels cheap and Apple are losing their ways.