HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro: Five reasons why it should be the next phone you buy

There is a certain pleasure to be had from staying away from the herd, especially when it comes to smartphones. Trouble is, what else do you buy if you still want an ultra-slick, ultra-desirable phone? How about the HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro?

Huawei is a company that has been knocking on the door of smartphone greatness for some time now and its latest phone – the HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro – certainly makes the grade. It’s a genuinely brilliant smartphone and here are five big reasons to go out and buy one.

1. Its battery life is phenomenal

In the old days, phones that lasted up to a week on a single charge were the norm; these days you’re lucky if you get to tea time before needing to plug in. That’s not the case with the HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro.

I’ve been using the phone since its release and the main reason I keep coming back, is a simple one: battery life. Its enormous 4,000mAh lithium-polymer battery keeps on running when other phones give up the ghost. In fact, I regularly get a full two days of use from the HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro before needing to recharge.

Now, obviously this depends on your usage. If you play a lot of intensive games, run around catching Pokémon every day or binge watch a lot of Netflix shows you’ll see shorter run times than this. But even if you do, you’ll see very, very good battery life; there’s something magical about knowing that, when the battery gauge reaches 20% or 30%, you don’t need to panic as there’s still half a day’s worth of juice left in the tank.

And when you do plug in, Huawei’s SuperCharge tech (which is the first fast charging technology to be certified by TÜV Rheinland, a global leader in independent product inspection services) ensures it’ll charge to more than 50% in half an hour.

And it is not just the hardware of the HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro that can get you through the day. Huawei’s latest version of EMUI 8.0 running on Android 8.0 Oreo means the device has you covered with two power saving modes that can dramatically extend battery life.

What’s more, over time the HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro is also able to provide power management with a personalised approach thanks to the NPU (Neural Network Processing Unit) inside the Kirin 970 that powers the device. As you use the HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro, the Kirin chipset learns what sort of user you are and optimises settings and power allocation in the background. For example, if you are a serious gamer, the HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro will adjust settings such as the speaker volume level and screen brightness to ensure you have a great experience while still maximising battery life. By combing its huge 4,000mAh battery, with safe Huawei SuperCharge technology and AI intelligence, the HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro is always ready for whatever the day throws at you.

2. The camera is fantastic

There’s a saying among professional photographers that “the best camera is the one you have with you”. It’s a maxim that could have been written for the HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro, partly because the great battery life means it’s always ready go, but also because the camera is quick, easy to use and produces great quality photographs.

I say camera; in fact there are two cameras (a 12 megapixels RGB sensor and a 20 megapixels monochrome sensor) on the rear of the HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro instead of only one. Both have incredibly bright apertures of f/1.6 with lenses provided in partnership with none other than legendary camera firm, Leica. That’s not the only unusual (and desirable) thing about the camera setup on the device, though.

With one of these dedicated to black-and-white photography and shots from both combining to produce colour photographs of rare quality, the HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro’s camera is one of the most satisfying to use on any smartphone. I’ve taken some stunning shots with it over the past couple of months in all conditions and I’ve even used photographs captured with the HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro’s camera in some of my reviews; it’s really that good.

You can even shoot in RAW format for editing professionally in Photoshop or Lightroom and the Pro mode is excellent, giving you control over the full range of enthusiast photographer settings from focus, metering and ISO sensitivity through white balance and shutter speed.

3. It’s fast; really fast

It’s no good having a great-looking smartphone that can take wonderful pictures, though, if performance is sluggish. Luckily, that’s far from the case with the HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro. It has Huawei’s latest Kirin 970 chipset which helps it to performance that’s as good as any phone on the market.

Backed up by 4GB and 64GB or 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage (depending which model you buy), there’s plenty of multitasking oomph and room to install the most storage-hungry apps. Even graphics power is right up there with the best. Not only does this phone feel stupendously responsive but it’ll play the latest and most demanding games from the Google Play store.

4. It’s ready for an AI-driven future

The Kirin 970 inside the HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro isn’t all about raw performance, though. With more and more phones building in some kind of AI features via digital assistants like Google Assistant, Huawei is giving them a helping hand via the Kirin 970’s NPU.

Although most AI processing is currently carried out in the cloud on hugely powerful servers, your phone is soon going to need to do more local AI processing as machine learning becomes more important – and these are the tasks the NPU is designed specifically for.

To showcase the processor, Huawei has also developed an NPU-optimised version of Microsoft Translator to make scanning photos and translating foreign languages offline more efficient and less processor-intensive. The NPU is also put to use to make the incredible automatic scene recognition in the phone’s camera app even more effective.

5. It looks beautiful – and it’s practical, too

No two ways about it, the HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro is an absolutely astounding smartphone to look at; as attractive as any other on the market. It’s covered in glass on the front and back and the colours it’s available in add a little something extra.

I’m a huge fan of the Mocha Brown, but whether you choose the Titanium Gray, Midnight Blue or Pink Gold, you’ll have a phone in your pocket that people sitting next to you will take notice off.

I particularly like the subtle stripe on the rear that surrounds the two camera lenses, but if you look close you’ll see all sorts of other small details that contribute to a sense of sophistication with this smartphone that’s up there with the very best phones ever made.

The brushed aluminium frame is lovely, for instance, and the fact that the screen border is colour coordinated to match the front is a nice touch, too. There’s even waterproofing up to the IP67 standard, so you don’t need to worry about using it in the rain.

And then there’s the screen – 6in 18:9, 1,080 x 2,160 AMOLED which is bright and fabulously colourful and stretches from edge-to-edge, occupying nearly the entire front of the phone.

Put simply, not only is the HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro among the best smartphones available today, it’s also ready to take on the mobile phone software and AI-driven apps of the future. If you haven’t already considered buying a HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro, now is the time.