Huawei P10: Night photos around Barcelona and first impressions (pt 1)

Ahead of the official start of Mobile World Congress, a number of manufacturers couldn’t wait to spill the beans about their new products.

In the case of Huawei, it decided to talk up the P10 (and P10 Plus) weeks in advance (with daily videos on its YouTube channel), as well as post numerous teasers to its latest smart watch, the Huawei Watch 2 and Watch 2 Classic.

I was at the Huawei event and came away with the P10 to review, and as usual I’ll be focussing on the camera in the coming days and weeks.

However, there are a few fundamental differences between last year’s P9 and this year’s P10. Although the fundamental design hasn’t changed that significantly, the biggest change is the removal of the rear-mounted fingerprint sensor.

This is replaced with a front, Apple-like, home button that not only lets you securely unlock the phone, but also perform multiple functions. A short tap for back, a long press for home, and a swipe to bring up the recent apps.

You can, fortunately, decide to keep it old-school and use on-screen icons instead. In fact, given this is the default, if it hadn’t been demonstrated at the event there’s a good chance I wouldn’t even have known.

The camera is now that of the Mate 9, with a 20-megapixel monochrome sensor and 12-megapixel RGB sensor in the P9’s horizontal arrangement. The camera interface remains the same, but with new portrait modes that work on both the front and rear cameras.

A lot of these things will need to be given a good test. For now, I’ve posted night photos and in the next day or two I will add daytime photos, plus videos etc.

The battery is increased in capacity to 3,200mAh and the phone also has the latest 4.5G modem (with 4×4 MIMO) for data speeds of up to 600Mbps, as well as 2×2 MIMO Wi-FI. My phone is the dual-SIM version, with a choice of second SIM or microSDXC card, plus 64GB of internal storage and 4GB RAM.

The Huawei P10 is also powered by a HiSilicon Kirin 960 chipset.

Night photos

EE, Vodafone, O2 and Three have confirmed they’ll all be selling the Huawei P10 (and the bigger P10 Plus) and the phone will support 4G Calling and Wi-Fi calling on EE, and most likely Three.

Huawei will offer these phones in a large range of colours, but it is not yet clear which versions will be available on each network, or if all of the versions will be available to buy SIM-free from the Huawei’s own online shop.

Please share your thoughts below, including any questions you may have.

• Coverage of MWC was made easier thanks to Vodafone, who challenged me to use 4G data exclusively throughout my time in Barcelona and provided me with a SIM card for use in a portable hotspot.