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Honor has launched a pair of new smartphones at an event today in London, which include the already announced Honor 7X and the brand new Honor V10. Both of these smartphones sport Honor’s new “Fullview” display, which is its marketing term for a 18:9 aspect ratio display. This shows that Honor is now following the rest of the industry by going with this new 18:9 or 2:1 aspect ratio for thinner bezels and more screen. The Honor V10 is a high-end smartphone from Honor, featuring the 5.99-inch Fullview display which has a full HD+ resolution of 2160×1080, and the Kirin 970 processor inside.
The Kirin 970 is the newest SoC from Huawei, which debuted in the Huawei Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro just about a month ago. This processor is the best of the best, as far as Huawei and Honor are concerned. It’s manufactured on a 10nm process, similar to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 chipset. This means that it is a smaller chipset, which will put out less heat, but also take up less space in the smartphone, which makes it more energy efficient. But the more interesting part of the Kirin 970 is the NPU or the Neural Processing Unit. This is bringing AI to the Honor V10, and across the entire phone, not just in some areas. Honor is touting that the camera on the V10 will be able to recognize 13 different objects. Now there’s much more to the camera, than just the Kirin 970 here, Honor has upgraded the dual-camera setup, so there’s a 16-megapixel sensor and a 20-megapixel sensor included. It has also changed the software so that you can adjust the bokeh effect (blurred background) before and after you snap the photo. The aperture ranges from f/0.95 to f/16. Now once you get above about f/1.8, that is going to be done by the software, so it may not be as good as a DSLR. We’ll have to wait to get the phone in our hands to find out for sure.
Despite going with a taller display and very thin bezels, Honor was able to incorporate a home button for the fingerprint sensor. Which means it is crammed in the bottom bezel of the smartphone. It’s something new, especially with these taller displays these days, but it should still work just as you’d expect. Now Honor (and Huawei) have been leading the pack in terms of fingerprint sensors, and this one is no different. It’s one of the fastest on the market right now. It’s using Huawei’s Fingerprint 4.0, which is recognizing your finger in about a quarter of a second. Honor said it wanted to keep the fingerprint sensor on the front so that the back can be plain, with only the Honor logo and the cameras at the top.
Rounding out the specs, the Honor V10 is going to come with 6GB of RAM and either 64GB or 128GB of storage, depending on the market. There’s also a 3750mAh battery inside, which Honor says can be recharged in as little as 95 minutes, thanks to its fast charging that is included in the Kirin 970. That is on-par with Quick Charge 3.0 from Qualcomm, if not a bit faster. There is also a headphone jack on this one, which is a pretty important feature in 2017.
The Honor V10 will be making its way to the US, however there is no set date for it releasing in the US just yet. Pricing and storage also has not been confirmed just yet, but it should be around $450-500 USD for the Honor V10. It’ll be offering the Honor V10 in two colors, Navy Blue and Midnight Black, which again, Honor hasn’t decided which one will make its way to the US just yet.
