The Honor 10 has the same Kirin 970 chip that runs on flagships like the Huawei Mate 10/10 Pro and P20/P20 Pro, yet it’s priced like an upper midrange phone, at P23,990. (By comparison, both the midrange OPPO F7 6GB RAM/128GB ROM and Nokia 7 Plus are both P21,990.) Launched in the Philippines on May 30, the Honor 10 is available online (exclusively) through Shopee and through authorized retailers (see list of stores below). The Honor 10 has a 5.84-inch FHD+ 19:9 display, 128GB storage, 4GB RAM, Face Unlock, and A.I.-assisted dual rear cameras: 24MP monochrome sensor + 16MP F1.8 RGB sensor. The selfie camera is a 24MP F2.0 sensor with A.I. Face Beauty and 3D portrait lighting (similar to selfies on the iPhone X). Its front fingerprint sensor can unlock the phone even with wet fingers. It has a 3,400 mAh battery, Honor Super Charge 5V/4.5A for convenient fast charging, and comes in Phantom Blue and Midnight Black. Honor, a sub-brand of Huawei but operates independently, aims to be the top 5 smartphone brand in 3 years. Honor 10 pre-orders on Shopee start on May 31 and ends on June 4. The first 100 who register will get a P1,000-off voucher on their Honor 10 purchase; and the first 100 buyers get a JBL Bluetooth Speaker worth P2,999. See sample camera shots below.

The Honor 10, like most phones these days, dons a notch.
Both colors of the Honor 10 – Phantom Blue and Midnight Black – really shimmer in various angles. They’re really reflective.

Honor 10 Full Specs

5.84-inch FHD+ 2244 x 1080 resolution with 3D curved glass
– with Gorilla Glass protection, 428 ppi
2.36GHz 64-bit Kirin 970 Octa-Core Processor
– with NPU and i7 co-processor
Mali-G72 MP12 GPU | 4GB RAM
128GB Internal Storage | dual SIM (hybrid)
Rear Cameras: 24MP monochrome sensor + 16MP F.18 RGB sensor
– with Phase Detection Auto Focus, LED Flash
Selfie Camera: 24MP F2.0 with A.I. Face Beauty, 3D portrait lighting
3,400 Battery with Honor 5A Super Charge
Android 8.1 Oreo with EMUI 8.1
WiFI 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2.4/5GHz), 4G LTE Cat 18, Bluetooth 4.2 BLE, aptX HD, OTG, NFC, GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS
Accelerometer, light, orientation, proximity, gyroscope, sound, magnetic, pressure
Ultrasonic Rear Fingerprint Sensor, Face Unlock, IR Blaster, USB Type-C
Comes in Phantom Blue and Midnight Black
Price: PHP 23,990.00

Update July 29, 2018: For a “budget” flagship comparison, check out the Xiaomi Mi 8 (Snapdragon 845, 6GB RAM, P25,990) and the Huawei Nova 3 (Kirin 970, 6GB RAM, P25,990).

The rear camera of the Honor 10 in action, with an artist, painting the mural at the launch event, in the frame.

The eye-catching “Aurora Glass” look back of the Honor 10 is a 3D glass back with nano-scale optical coating composed of 15 layers of shimmering color. The Honor 10 uses an advanced A.I. 2.0 technology used mainly by the phone’s dual AI cameras: 24MP + 16MP with 1.8 aperture and 4K video recording capability. The A.I. “muscle” can be seen in the phones’ ability to recognize over 500 scenarios across 22 categories, a variety of shooting modes, and the bokeh feature. Honor has also recently launched its official store on Shopee. Prior to the Philippine launch, the Honor 10 sold more than 100,000 units.

Camera Samples

Lighting at the venue was tricky, with blue-violet spotlights “moving around”. It was medium to low light practically everywhere.
Macro shot (close up) of the Huawei Mate 10 Pro (my go-to smartphone for event coverages). Again, bluish-purplish light everywhere, but the image is clear and crisp.
Selfie with bokeh and beauty mode, which kicked in despite being against a really strong spotlight that a lesser phone would render our faces dark. Left is Jeman Villanueva of orangemagazine.ph, and the guy with the bonnet is me. The Honor 10 is a good selfie phone.
The launch venue, predominantly medium to low bluish and purplish light all around.

Now, if you don’t have a Shopee account yet, or if you haven’t bought anything yet, you can use my special code below to get P80 OFF on your first purchase.

SwirlingOverCoffee Shopee Unique Code

Buy the Honor 10 at these Malls and Outlets

  • SM Malls (SM City Clark, SM City Tarlac, SM City North EDSA, SM Mall of Asia, SM Lipa, SM Cubao, SM Sta. Rosa, SM Calamba, SM Southmall, SM Megamall, SM Fairview, SM City Calamba.)
  • Robinson’s Malls (Ermita and Malolos)
  • Festival Mall Alabang
  • Alabang Town Center
  • Market! Market!
  • Trinoma

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