Huawei Mate 10 Series: ‘Intelligent Machines’ That Don’t Quite Add Up
AI Hype, Familiar Hardware
Everyone’s calling the Mate 10 lineup Huawei’s big AI breakthrough. The reality is more muted.
On paper, the Mate 10 family looks like a textbook 2017 flagship push: new Kirin 970 chipset with a dedicated NPU for on‑device AI, Leica‑branded dual cameras with bright f/1.6 lenses, slimmer bezels, and a glossy all‑glass design. Huawei’s marketing goes hard on the “intelligent machine” angle, promising smarter performance and photography over time.
But once you strip away the slogans, the Kirin 970 is more evolution than revolution. It keeps the same CPU core configuration as its predecessor and focuses on data processing efficiency and power management rather than raw, noticeable speed gains. The AI NPU might be a glimpse of where phones are heading, but for a buyer today, it’s not a feature you can directly feel or control.
Meanwhile, concrete, day‑to‑day upgrades like the GPU uplift are partly canceled out by a resolution bump on the standard Mate 10’s QuadHD display. So you’re pushing more pixels with that extra graphics horsepower, not suddenly turning this into a gaming monster.
Mate 10 vs Mate 10 Pro: Confusing Feature Split
Huawei didn’t just launch one flagship. It split the high‑end into the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, and the way features are divided feels messy.
The Mate 10 gets a sharp QuadHD LCD, an analog audio jack, and only splash protection. The Mate 10 Pro flips the script with an 18:9 FullView 1080p AMOLED panel, proper IP67 water and dust resistance, and no headphone jack. So if you want a higher‑res screen, you lose IP rating. If you want actual water resistance, you lose the jack and settle for lower resolution.
Both share the same Kirin 970 platform and Leica dual‑camera system, and both move to glass backs that finally make Huawei’s design language look genuinely premium. But Huawei still skips wireless charging, which is a strange omission when you’ve already committed to all‑glass hardware.
The net result: neither model feels complete. The vanilla Mate 10 is missing durability, the Pro compromises on basic I/O. This is fragmentation for the sake of product segmentation, not a clean “pick the size and spec combo that suits you” story.
Porsche Design: Same Phone, Sharper Price
Then there’s the Mate 10 Porsche Design, the halo product Huawei hopes will pull the whole lineup upmarket.
Under the surface, this is a Mate 10 Pro. Same Kirin 970, same AI pitch, same dual Leica f/1.6 cameras, same 18:9 AMOLED and IP67 protection. The changes are about aesthetics and storage:
- Exclusive Diamond Black color
- All‑glossy black frame
- Symmetrical bottom design: mic hidden under a grille mirroring the loudspeaker
- 6GB RAM and 256GB storage (versus the Pro’s 6GB/128GB configuration in the US)
- Porsche Design‑branded EMUI theme and UI tweaks
In the US, the Mate 10 Pro is set at $799 for 6GB/128GB. The Mate 10 Porsche Design jumps to around $1,225 for 6GB/256GB. That premium buys you the design treatment, a more deluxe unboxing, and a pile of accessories: two charging cables, both home and car SuperCharge bricks, earbuds, and a flip cover case.
You’re not getting better cameras, faster silicon, or extra features. You’re paying luxury‑brand pricing for what is basically a storage bump plus a darker paint job and a different theme.
Mate 10 Lite: Name Says ‘Mate’, Performance Says ‘Careful’
On the opposite end sits the Mate 10 Lite, the budget‑minded sibling that borrows the branding and tall‑screen trend but not the flagship competence.
The 18:9 1,080 x 2,160 display is perfectly reasonable for its class, with decent outdoor visibility and automatic brightness that mostly behaves. But it’s far from flawless. The lowest brightness is still too high in the dark, the Eye comfort (blue light filter) skews oddly green instead of the usual warm yellow/orange, and EMUI ships with a long‑standing bug where the screen randomly dims when you open certain apps like Chrome, Gmail, Medium, or even Huawei’s own Dialer and Messaging.
On top of that, the LCD shows severe contrast shifting when viewed off‑axis: tilt the phone and one half of the screen keeps normal contrast while the other washes out. Once you see it, it’s hard to unsee.
Performance is where the “Lite” label really bites. Powered by Huawei’s in‑house Kirin 659 mid‑range SoC, the Mate 10 Lite feels acceptable in light use, but it’s fragile under pressure. App updates plus Bluetooth music can trigger stutters and even full UI freezes lasting seconds to around a minute. Huawei tries to mask some of this by shipping EMUI with animation scales set to 0.5x instead of Android’s usual 1x, but that’s just a perception trick, not an actual horsepower boost.
Battery life doesn’t bail it out either. A 3,340 mAh cell should be competitive, yet real‑world results are erratic. On mostly Wi‑Fi with a bit of 4G, an hour of calls, and about an hour of Bluetooth streaming, you’re looking at roughly five hours of screen‑on time over a 16‑hour day. Shift more usage to 4G and extended Bluetooth audio, and three hours of screen‑on isn’t unheard of.
The bigger issue is how badly 4G standby, Bluetooth streaming, and GPS seem to hit this particular combo of Kirin 659 and EMUI. For a phone carrying the “Mate 10” name, this feels like a step too far down the ladder.
Competition and Huawei’s Own Shadow
Even ignoring external rivals, the Mate 10’s biggest problem might be older Huawei hardware.
The Mate 9 undercuts the Mate 10 by almost €300 while offering similar CPU cores, comparable GPU performance thanks to a lower‑resolution display, nearly identical battery life, and a very similar camera story. EMUI 8 is on the way to it, which makes the software gap even smaller.
The P10 Plus sits another €200 below the Mate 10 with a high‑resolution screen, big battery, and essentially the same camera setup. Unless Huawei aggressively clears old stock, these devices make the new flagship a much tougher sell.
Against the broader market, the Mate 10 series is surrounded by sharper, clearer value propositions. Samsung’s Galaxy S8+ is about €100 cheaper, with more advanced AMOLED tech and more RAM, at the cost of losing a dual‑camera setup. The Note8 adds a telephoto camera and S‑Pen for around €150 more. LG’s V30 pushes durability (water, dust, shock, temperature, humidity), a QuadHD P‑OLED FullVision panel, wide‑angle secondary camera, and high‑res audio—but it’s pricier and not available everywhere.
Xiaomi’s Mi Mix 2 undercuts the Mate 10 by about €200 with a Snapdragon 835 and a bold bezel‑light design, though its camera is weaker. And on the iOS side, the iPhone X is hoovering up pre‑orders on the promise of an all‑screen design, upgraded camera, and Face ID, while the iPhone 8 Plus offers the new A11 chip and strong dual camera in a familiar 16:9 frame.
Next to all that, the Mate 10 looks competent but not compelling. It follows trends—tall displays, glass backs, AI buzzwords—rather than setting them.
Verdict: Strong Hardware, Weak Story
The Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro look great, pack big 4,000 mAh batteries, and ship with a bright dual Leica camera and a capable new chipset. The Mate 10 Lite brings the tall‑screen aesthetic down to a friendlier price point.
But the lineup as a whole feels like a missed opportunity. The flagship feature split is awkward, AI is over‑marketed and under‑tangible, the Mate 10 Lite underperforms the name on both performance and battery life, and the Porsche Design edition leans heavily on luxury branding rather than meaningful upgrades.
Huawei keeps showing it can build serious hardware. The problem is everything around it: product strategy, naming, and the gap between marketing fantasy and how these devices actually behave in real use.
Check back soon as this story develops.