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Huawei P10 Lite review

Review: August 2017

Rating:

In a nutshell: We rated last year's Huawei P9 Lite as one of the best phones you could buy for under £300. Guess what? The new P10 Lite is even better.

P10 Lite: the best phone for under £300?

New for 2017, the P10 Lite is an update to the extremely popular and top-rated Huawei P9 Lite. It's almost the same phone, with a few upgrades that are well worth having.

The phone is even thinner than the P9 Lite, measuring just 7.2mm thick. It has a good weight-to-size ratio too, feeling solid but never too heavy. Build quality is very high, with a diamond-cut metal frame and toughened glass front and rear. The phone is nicely detailed with a speaker grille on the bottom edge. The square fingerprint scanner on the rear of the phone is fast and reliable and can be used to unlock the phone, take photos, and swipe through photos in the picture gallery.

The 5.2 inch screen has Full HD resolution with a high pixel density of 424 ppi. It's a bright, sharp screen with excellent colours. Note that you don't get a physical home button on the P10 Lite, just virtual on-screen buttons.

The P10 Lite is available in Platinum Gold, Graphite Black, Sapphire Blue or Pearl White.

8-core Kirin processor

The P10 Lite features an updated processor - the quick Kirin 658. This is an 8-core processor running at speeds of up to 2.36GHz. It uses a new generation of 16nm technology, and the device also incorporates a new i5 co-processor. The phone is extremely fast at most tasks, and only begins to show its limitations with demanding 3D games.

RAM is 3GB or 4GB, depending on region. Either way, there's plenty of memory available for multitasking and speedy swapping between apps.

We're very pleased to see that the onboard storage has been doubled up to a sizeable 32GB, and you can also add a microSD card for extra storage.

Android 7

The P10 Lite has been updated with the latest Android version, and also comes with a new version 5.1 of Huawei's Emotion user interface, which is slick, user-friendly, and provides lots of useful additional tools to stock Android.

12 megapixel camera

The camera ia a decent mid-range performer, with a 12 megapixel resolution and video recording at 1080p HD resolution. There's nothing exceptional about the camera performance, but nothing to complain about either. It has HDR, manual mode, time-lapse mode, and plenty of other features. If Huawei's goal was to build a phone that performs well in every respect, then the camera doesn't let it down.

The front 8 megapixel camera is perfect for selfies.

Connectivity

Connectivity is as you'd expect from a mid-range phone, with 4G, GPS/Glonass positioning, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, micro-USB, NFC and a 3.5mm audio jack.

Strong battery life

The P10 Lite comes with a heavy duty 3,000mAh battery. The low energy use of the Kirin processor makes this last a long time. Heavy users will get a full day between charges and light users might be able to stretch this out to 3 days. The phone supports fast charging, and a 10 minute charge is enough to add another 2 hours of battery life.

Conclusion - easily one of the best phones of 2017

The P10 Lite isn't very different to last year's P9 Lite, and that's a good thing. Huawei have taken the best mid-range phone of 2016, made it slimmer, updated it to the latest Android version, and doubled the memory to 32GB. They've kept the price the same, and in so doing have produced the stand-out mid-range phone of 2017 so far.

You might also consider the Sony Xperia XA1.

Huawei P10 Lite features include:

Operating system: Android 7 Nougat with Emotion UI 5.1
12 megapixel camera with autofocus and dual LED flash, 1080p video recording
8 megapixel front camera
Display: 5.2 inches with 1920 x 1080 pixels
A-GPS/Glonass positioning
Messaging: SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging
Processor: Kirin 658, 16nm Octa-core (4 x 2.1GHz + 4 x 1.7GHz) + i5 co-processor
Sensors: Fingerprint sensor, Gravity sensor, Distance sensor, Compass, Gyroscope, Optical sensor
Connectivity: Wi-Fi (2.4GHz b/g/n), Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth 4.1, USB, NFC, 3.5mm audio jack
Memory: 32GB, microSD memory card slot, 4GB RAM
Networks: 4G LTE, HSPA 3G, Quadband GSM
Size: 147 x 72 x 7.2 mm
Weight: 146g
Battery: 3000 mAh

User questions

Sorry - questions and comments on this page are now closed.

Screen bending issues?

Asked by kylie from UK on 20th Jan 2018
It also bends by itself !! and the side casing cracks due to the pressure put on it from bending. Huawei will take no responsibility for this which is a COMMON fault if you google it. We had the phone for about 6 weeks and were told over the phone (even before sending it back for them to physically check) that it had been misused. If it had of been dropped there would be cracks in the screen! I sent it back and no surprise they claimed it had been misused and its going to cost either £14.40 to get it back unrepaired or £88.44 for them to repair their own fault of a phone overheating and bending. I ADVISE not to waste your money, buy a proper phone.

Reply by Redfitzy from United Kingdom on 21st Jan 2018
I don't know how it's ending I've had Huawei p8 lite 2017 the p9 lite and now I have the p10 lite and there all extremely robust excellent phones the p8 lite was the only one I dropped and back glass cracked but ebay and a tenner to replace then 20 to fit it was good as new anyway how ur phone is bending is cos ur actually bending it u see these videos online complaining about bendy I phones etc that's cos there bending them selves.. Here's an idea don't put photos e in skin tight jeans back pocket and forget then sit down lol also don't try bending ur phone to see if it bends cos I could bend any phone there is if I try lol anyway hope u get a non bendy handset in future

How robust is the phone with it being made of glass?

Asked by Mark from Northern Ireland on 1st Dec 2017
Thinking of buying a p10 lite
I'm currently using an I phone 5c
Just worried how robust the phone is with it being made of glass has anyone had any issues?
And just genuinely how good the phone is ?

Many thanks

Reply by Saffy from uk on 31st Dec 2017
It's absolutely fine. Nephew has had one for a couple of month's and no issues. Must say the finish looks very stylish and premium. A good budget buy.