The buzzword for Huawei’s Mate 10 global launch last week was artificial intelligence (AI), which will be driving advanced features like smart photography, machine translation, and predictive behaviour in its flagship phones.
While we’re waiting for the Pixel 2 and the iPhone X to land in Singapore stores, Huawei has joined the AI fray with its new flagship smartphones.
This is the Chinese company’s first smartphone with a chip tuned to power artificial-intelligence software. Inside the phone’s new Kirin 970 processors (which Huawei designed and built itself) is a Neural Processing Unit, which fuels the machine-learning features.
As the Huawei Mate 10 sees a major new upgrade, here are 5 reasons why you should get your hands on their brand new smartphone when it lands in Singapore:
1. Artificial Intelligence
Huawei’s Mate 10-branded devices are aimed at professionals and business users, and come equipped with AI-related innovations thanks to the world’s first Kirin 970 chipset.
According to Huawei, this will offer consumers a better user experience in the areas of better battery life, faster processing speeds, and picking up user behaviour over time.
Specifically, the Mate 10 can learn your voice and then intelligently enhance the volume level when you’re talking on the phone so you can speak normally in all environments, even when you need to keep silent in a meeting.
2. Leica-Engineered AI Camera
There’s also AI in the camera app. And with Huawei’s partnership with Leica to make the mobile camera hardware for the Mate handsets, its camera is bound to get infinitely better and smarter.
The Mate 10 Pro has a dual-lens Leica camera that’s excellent, and the addition of AI makes it simpler to catch complicated shots more quickly.
For instance, when you point the Mate 10 at different subjects, the camera automatically switches into the appropriate mode for whatever it recognises in the frame. A flower, a meal, a person, or a landscape will all trigger different settings.
But if for some reason you don’t agree with what it’s doing to your images, you can tweak the settings or override it altogether.
The camera also adjusts its capture parameters to suit the occasion, fine-tuning exposure, contrast, saturation, and shooting modes to help you produce the best possible picture. The promise is that if you put the camera in Auto and start shooting, everything else will take care of itself.
There are 14 of such scene modes available at launch including landscape, selfies, food, cat, dog and a few others; and we expect Huawei to roll out more of these in the near future.
3. A Great Work Phone
One of the coolest Huawei features debuting on the Mate 10 is Projection Mode. Simply buy a USB Type-C to HDMI cable with support for Display Port 1.2 and you can plug your phone directly into an external monitor – no dock required.
In this mode, you can add Bluetooth peripherals like a mouse or keyboard or use the phone’s display like a trackpad. You’ll need app support for full desktop mode, but other apps will still open, just in portrait mode like on your phone.
Huawei has also added a smart split-screen mode so you can do more on your phone. When you’re watching a video or playing a game in full-screen mode, the Mate 10 will add a split-screen icon to most messaging apps’ popup notification.
The app will then appear in a window side by side while your video or game continues playing in the other.
4. Long-Lasting Battery
Both versions of the Mate 10 ship with a large 4,000 mAh battery and support Huawei Supercharge via the included 4.5V/5A charging brick.
Charging a fully depleted device with the power off will get you between 30 to 35 per cent charge in 15 minutes, 55 to 60 per cent in half an hour, and 85 to 90 per cent after an hour (batteries charge slower the fuller they get). Huawei also claims that it works 50% faster than the iPhone 8 Plus.
The 4,000 mAh cell will regularly get you somewhere between 4 and 5 hours of screen-on time, depending on the brightness of your screen.
At the end of the day, the Mate 10 promises 30 per cent improvement in battery life with the same size cell. Most of this is down to the added efficiencies of the 10 nanometre process, but some of it can be attributed to the AI power management.
5. Intuitive Design
With the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, Huawei has moved away from its signature all-metal design and made a shift towards a glass front and back around an aluminium frame.
Despite the change to a glass back, Huawei did not think that adding wireless charging was necessary.
The two phones look almost identical from behind, except for the rear-mounted fingerprint scanner on the Pro version and a slightly different overall shape.
The Mate 10 Pro assumes the 18:9 aspect ration common to 2017 flagship displays so as such, it is taller and thinner than the Mate 10 which retains the traditional 16:9 ratio.
It feels comfortable in the hand despite the 5.9-inch screen on the front, and if you are used to using a phablet with around a 6-inch screen, this should be the optimum size for you.
There’s a USB-C connector on the bottom of the phone and a 3.5mm headphone jack at the top, but the phone isn’t waterproof like the Mate 10 Pro is.
On the rear there’s a vertical dual-sensor Leica camera – more about that later – while the fingerprint scanner is now on the front below the screen, and works in a similar way to how it does on the P10.
On Sale From October 28
The 64GB Mate 10 device will go on sale this month, and in two colours – Mocha Brown and Black. It will retail for $888 at Huawei’s concept stores, local telcos, Lazada and major electronic stores.
For the Mate 10 Pro, Huawei said that Singapore will be the first in the world to buy and experience the device. The 6-inch smartphone in Mocha Brown will be available from November 11, and the Midnight Blue version from November 25. The 128GB phones will cost $1,098.
Meanwhile, the much-anticipated 256GB Porsche-designed Mate 10 will only arrive at a later date on November 4 with a price tag of $2,298.
Featured Image Credit: Vulcan Post
