Apple and Google may have machine learning, but Huawei has artificial intelligence.
The Mate 10 Pro is the first phone with a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU), letting it run AI computations with greater efficiency than a CPU or GPU.
Processing smarts aside, it also has a sleek glass body, an edge-to-edge display, and solid dual camera sensors, along with all the other premium features you'd expect on a high-end Android phone.
At $649.99 it's a bit more affordable than the Samsung Galaxy S9+, but quite a bit more costly than Huawei's own View 10 and only available online and unlocked, making it a hard sell in the US market.
Design, Features, and Display
Glass is making a comeback.
Unlike the aluminum Mate 9, the Mate 10 Pro ( at Amazon) features an all-glass body that curves along the back for a comfortable grip.
There's a distinct reflective stripe that runs horizontally across the top of the phone where the camera is located.
Color options include midnight blue, mocha brown, pink gold, and titanium gray.
The look is sleek and attractive, though fingerprints appear easily.
A special Porsche Design Mate 10 features a vertical reflective strip, similar to the racing stripe on car.
The phone measures 6.1 by 2.9 by 0.3 inches (HWD) and weighs 6.3 ounces, making it a little bigger and heavier than the Galaxy S9+ (6.2 by 2.9 by 0.3 inches, 6.7 ounces), despite a similar overall form factor.
You'll find most of the standard buttons and ports, with the exception of a headphone jack; you have to use the USB-C port with a dongle for wired audio.
There's a fingerprint sensor on the back, below the camera and within easy reach of your index finger.
An IR blaster on the top lets you control compatible TVs, air conditioners, and other devices with the preloaded app.
The phone is IP67 waterproof, so it can handle immersion in five feet of water for up to 30 minutes.
It stood up to thorough dunking without issue.
Alas, there's no microSD card slot.
The glass look continues on the front, where the 6-inch AMOLED screen has a tall and narrow 18:9 aspect ratio, similar to most new flagship phones.
That makes it easy to reach across with your thumb.
There's also a floating display dock (basically an on-screen home button), along with a one-handed mode that shrinks the keyboard to one side of the screen to make it more accessible.
There is one downside to the display.
The resolution is a relatively low 2,160 by 1,080, which works out to 402 pixels per inch (ppi), making it less sharp than the Quad HD panel you find on the S9+ (529ppi) and a number of other high-end phones.
So while you get the rich, saturated colors and perfect blacks AMOLED displays are known for, very fine details aren't quite as sharp as they appear on other screens.
That said, viewing angles are good, and screen brightness reaches an impressive 730 nits, making for solid outdoor visibility.
Network Performance and Connectivity
There are two SIM card slots, both capable of providing 4G LTE data with VoLTE on GSM carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile.
The phone is also capable of blazing fast Cat.
18 speeds (up to 1.2Gbps) with 4x4 MIMO.
Of course, those speeds are largely theoretical.
We tested the phone on AT&T in highly congested midtown Manhattan and saw average results of 8.7Mbps down and 8.5Mbps up, which is in line with other phones we've tested on the network recently.
Additional connectivity protocols include Wi-Fi on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, NFC for mobile payments, and the older Bluetooth 4.2 standard that only allows audio playback for one device at a time.
Call quality is excellent.
Transmissions come across in clear, natural tones with little to no distortion, and noise cancellation effectively blots out background noise.
Earpiece volume is loud enough to be heard in a noisy environment, and the single bottom-firing speaker is reasonably loud as well.
Processor and Battery
The Mate 10 Pro is powered by a Kirin 970 processor, the first chipset to have a Neural Processing Unit, (which you'll also find in the Honor View 10).
This provides the phone with AI computational abilities that allow it to do things like recognize images (more on that later) and perform on-the-fly language translation.
Using the preloaded Microsoft Translate app, we were able to translate a sign from Chinese to English without issue.
The NPU also helps to identify usage patterns and offer suggestions to improve your experience.
For instance, the phone will pick up on when you're using it for reading, as well as the reading environment around you, and suggest that you enable eye-care mode.
See How We Test Cell Phones
There's also 6GB RAM and 128GB of storage, giving you plenty of power for multitasking and gaming.
The Mate 10 Pro scored 7,064 on PCMark 2.0's work performance test, which measures a variety of tasks like web browsing and video editing.
That's less than the S9+ (7,273), which is powered by a Snapdragon 845 chipset, but the difference isn't as large as you'd expect.
On GFXBench's graphics test there's a greater disparity, with the Pro scoring 20fps in the Car Chase on-screen test, compared with 32fps for the S9+.
That said, the Pro is able to handle PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds on high-quality settings with smooth and responsive gameplay.
Battery life is great, with the Pro's 4,000mAh cell lasting for 9 hours, 59 minutes of streaming full-screen video over LTE at maximum screen brightness.
Huawei's proprietary SuperCharge standard should be able to juice you up to 50 percent in just 30 minutes, and there are a number of power-saving modes that can help preserve battery life when you're running low.
There's no wireless charging support, however.
Camera
The Mate 10 Pro has a primary 20-megapixel monochrome sensor paired with a 12-megapixel RGB sensor with optical image stabilization (OIS), both with f/1.6 aperture for improved low-light performance.
Using the NPU, the phone is capable of identifying objects in real time and intelligently adjusting the camera settings to take the best picture possible.
This goes beyond simple automatic mode because the NPU can factor in all aspects of scenery, not just basic ISO adjustments.
It'll use different settings for scenic shots than it will for a plate of food, for instance.
Selfies are AI-powered as well.
Photos taken in good lighting come across sharply defined, with good color reproduction.
The Pro also handles well in low light, focusing quickly and minimizing blur.
In a shootout with the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, the Mate 10 Pro compares favorably, matching the Note 8 outdoors in terms of overall clarity, though it does tend to look oversharpened and less natural, perhaps due to its AI-powered tweaking.
Still, with manual controls you can disable the AI tweaks and take shots according to your own preference, if you choose.
When it comes to low-light scenes, the Pro again does a solid job, with minimal noise, but some finer details become muddy.
For instance, the balustrade of a building came across quite a bit more clearly on the Note 8 than the Mate 10 Pro, and the same was true indoors when shooting figurines inside the dimly lit setting of PC Labs.
Both phones are capable of 2x optical zoom and can shoot 4K video at a smooth and stable 30fps.
The Mate 10 Pro's 8-megapixel front-facing camera takes good photos indoors and out, though you may want to disable the airbrush effect that's enabled by default to get a more realistic shot (or not).
Software
The Mate 10 Pro runs Android 8.0 Oreo with Huawei's EMUI 8.0 software on top.
It's a fairly heavy UI layer that by default removes the app drawer, placing all your apps across the home screen, along with some other visual changes.
Beyond that, you get a number of special features like the aforementioned floating navigation dock.
The dock can be placed anywhere on the screen and functions as a second home button.
When you disable the software keys you can use different swipe gestures for the Back and Recent buttons.
There's a Smart Split Screen mode that uses AI to identify the context of what's happening.
For instance, if you're watching a video and you get a phone call or text, the phone will deliver an unobtrusive notification allowing you to immediately launch into split-screen mode so your video isn't interrupted.
Perhaps the most interesting productivity feature is the ability to easily connect the phone to a monitor or TV.
Using only a USB-C-to-DisplayPort cable (or an adapter), you can simply plug the phone into a bigger screen and run Desktop mode, similar to what Samsung DeX does, except no dock is required.
The phone can also connect to up to two Bluetooth devices at a time, letting you hook it up to a keyboard and mouse.
Otherwise, its touch screen doubles as a virtual touchpad.
I found the experience to be fairly seamless.
The phone booted into desktop mode shortly after plugging in, and despite some minor latency (which may have been due to the TV), I was able to open a number of apps and windows including the photo gallery, notes, and web browser without any issue.
It's also possible to continue using your phone while Desktop mode is running, letting you privately receive texts or phone calls without it showing up on the big screen.
There are a few preloaded apps, with Amazon, Booking.com, Prime Video, SwiftKey, and Microsoft Translate installed.
Fortunately, you have plenty of storage, with 114GB out of 128GB available.
Conclusions
At $650 the Huawei Mate 10 Pro is more affordable than flagships like the Galaxy Note 8 and S9+ while coming close in some aspects of performance.
Unfortunately, the pricing is awkward for the US unlocked market, wedged between more affordable midrange phones like the Motorola Moto X4 and G5 Plus, which can work with any US carrier, and Huawei's own Honor View 10, which has the same Kirin 970 processor and AI features for a lower price.
There's also the rumored OnePlus 6 to consider, which could cost around the same as the Mate 10 Pro while offering the very latest hardware.
The Bottom Line
The Huawei Mate 10 Pro is a powerful phone that uses a dedicated AI processor to improve camera capabilities and day-to-day performance.
