It is very hypocritical of a company when they market a Product as a flagship but don't hold them to the same standard. It is very bad that they mislead customers about very much slower emmc and then make rubbish claims of optimization.
Roughly equivalent or perceptually equivalent is one thing. Clearly different, as is the case with the flash here, is unquestionably unacceptable. Guess I can mark Huawei off my list of manufacturers to follow.
The only Huawei I wanted to buy was the Nexus 6P, and only because Google was in charge of the software running on it. Otherwise I'm really not interested in any Chinese phones, this may be generally true for any non Nexus/Pixel phones but the Chinese have earned a special disdain from me many years ago with their practices/software.
So no... I'm not interested in this phone. If you gave me one I'll go ahead and try to sell it immediately.
Who writes this innocuous crap? "Trump is ruining his political career?" Trump doesn't have a political career. He is a circus clown told what to say by the wealthy few who are running everything, own everything! They put a magpie frontman in that position to guarantee that their status quo is maintained and increases , by design, to their benefit alone, and to the oppression, impoverishment, and murdering of everybody else. "Providing context?" On what? At this stage of the game, the only 'context' any legitimate person should be engaged in is guerilla warfare!
This reminds me of Kingston using different flash that is far slower but nothing on the box to state what it is (only find out when you used it for a bit or do benchmark tests
If they didn't advertise about specific technology or a specific performance standard the product should reach then you can't fault them, not the case for Huawei.
Nice to see more people agreeing with what I've been saying for literally years(since P8), I guess it's inevitable that more discerning customers will come to realize Huawei's deceptive nature as they expand their businesses beyond China. I honestly hope that a company like this would crash into the ground real soon, but I just don't think most of the consumer market is knowledgeable and principled enough for that to happen.
I'm glad you said that it's smooth and responsive but not Pixel XL smooth. It's good to know. I want to see how P10/ P10 Plus's camera image quality. But I did saw dxomark review about it.
I've not used the Pixel, but can confirm that my P10 is really very smooth and responsive and a pleasure in general use.
But I can absolutely imagine that with the OS familiarity Google has, on the same hardware, battery smoothness is entirely possible. Gratuitous car analogy: Mercedes-Benz not quite a Bentley.
On the other side of the coin, I think the physical build, first rate certainly, you will be able to sense as short of a iPhone 7, if you ever once use the iPhone for a while. The iPhone has the better mass distribution of the two, the P10 just a touch weighted on the left. It may be my recovering hand from injury that makes my hold less secure than before, but I went to a store specifically to jog my recollection. IPhone definitely wins in the purely illusory feeling of security in holding balance. I caveat this with the fact that during recovery from my hand in which my index finger was badly broken, I perceived that perfectly flat items like credit cards I gripped were concave. So my touch is not calibrated. However the impression I relate is that which I went to check only last week.
I should further note that my P10 replaced my LUMIA 650. This was too close a call entirely due to the LUMIA 950 XL making the only sensible decision that just does not feel sensible any longer. Other than the state of hardware, and sorely needed Edge advancements, the switch from Windows 10 Creator's Mobile, is one I simply would not have called, was a Microsoft direction visible. I think it is testimony to Steve Ballmer, how much survived, superannuated, that remains very good. Nadella appears to have had to asphyxiate the Ball er legacy plans, as if he couldn't present good reason to shut them down. Microsoft have forgotten that cutting off the air supply is supposed to be done to the competition.... But if Windows Phone is the price of maturing beyond that level of aggression, in a market where we need software integration absent hardware leaps, to drive performance, then so be it. Just to not tell the world, of such a positive game plan, beats me.
The thought that you can buy a product that may be totally different to the review that you have read is crazy. They should be punished by no one buying them
Indeed - I find it very disturbing that the phones could be either a modern spec (and I have to assume Anandtech were supplied with the best possible article) or falling behind even last generation in some areas. There's a difference between SoCs which are binned and fall within a bell curve and totally different components. Yes, the difference now might be marginal in terms of experience but as software becomes more hardware intensive you expect that perceptive performance to be maintained for a reasonable timeframe - this is one reason why you're paying double for a flagship phone.
I'm sorry but if someone offered me a PC and it could come with either a HDD or SSD or DDR3 or DDR4 depending on luck and oh, by the way the cost is the same regardless of what you get and we won't tell you, you'll just have to find out when you get it.... I'd tell them to fuck off. It's an absolute disgrace and sticking two fingers up at your customer. I understand there are shortages and intense competition but if you're going to do this then you DROP YOUR PRICES! You can't charge the same as a modern flagship with the risk of getting components 1-2 years out of date (relative to flagship specification).
In addition to this, you have to consider optimisation may well suffer. You've got a closed system with components all working on one system (UFS) for example and you can spend time optimising everything to work with that. Suddenly, due to suppliers, you have to optimise late in the design phase (probably when mass production techniques have already been devised and they're now looking at supply - I assume, I'm not in the industry, let me know if I'm wrong) for not just UFS but eMMC as well which adds complexity and potentially adds bugs. As WELL as slowing down updates as they end up more complex.
If you're going to violate your customers like this then you have to offer them something in return, ideally reduced cost. They are competing with standardised flagships on price and, whilst I was very interested, knowing I could be getting something markedly different to what I'm paying for makes this brand a no, no for me.
"Yes, sir, you ordered the caviar" "Well, I appear to have a pear with a turd next to it" "Sorry, Sir this is how our restaurant operates. We can't always get supply in to meet demand so we carry on charging the same but give you what you'd get in a dirty cafe." "Well, I'm sorry, I'm returning this and I want a refund" "Sorry, Sir... it did not say anywhere that you wouldn't get a pear instead and you ARE being provided with something that came out of an animal, so you have no grounds for complaint" "Oh you can just fu......"
The P10 is by far the most modestly priced of the flagships.
UK retail carrier unlocked, I think dropped below pounds 600 last week.
I find that I am soundly impressed with the understatement of this phone. Everything about it infuses me with confidence. Only a removable battery, would be my request. (for which surely there must be a elegant engineering solution (plastic backs are decades behind the build quality we expect from any other than budget categories, and the semi liquid packed character must be solvable, alongside a truly solid attachment mechanism, clip on flush not insert and cover)
I can't compare but watching the Formula One qualifying sessions yesterday, on Now TV over LTE, the sound was of a quality comfortably filling my small hotel room, all 4 by 5 yards of it, and I could make out the transmission artefacts hampered car to pit radio, and even the transmission of the cars in corners, on the internal speaker. If this is the general quality to expect nowadays, we're doing well, I don't see the need to be gloomy about the market demand for upgrades etc.
Very generous of you to assume that the gimped phones will still be fine and dandy for the end consumer. You seem to be forgiving of the practice, or at least understanding. I am not. If you can't procure the parts you don't sell the product. This kind of bait and switch is precisely the kind of thing people will point to when they say they will "never buy a chinese phone"
It's not that I condone the practice, I just want people to understand that this happens frequently and why it happens. I've seen LG use display panels of significantly different quality in its G-series phones, and Samsung use different camera sensors (with equivalent specs) on its Galaxy phones that produce images that look completely different, for example. So the P10 is not even the worst example of multi-sourcing. Huawei needs to be more truthful in its advertising, though.
No, not even remotely close. A9 was merely manufactured by different foundries, they have identical design and spec and are pin-to-pin compatible. Difference is only the average power consumption, but even chips cut from the same wafer have different power consumption.
eMMC/UFS2.x OTOH are incompatible standards, they don't resemble each other in any way.
Problem is QUALITY aside, different suppliers still have nominally similar specs, ie all IPS LCD, same sensor size & pixel count.
Now, I can understand mixing UFS 2.0/2.1 since they have similar specs and can nominally perform similarly. eMMC 5.1 is a totally different standard/interface. I'll be replacing AMOLED with TN LCD.
Matt I was very interested when I started the review, but lost most of my interest when the variability was revealed. Then on I just skimmed through the review. What is the point of the review if the system YOU purchase could have memory a generation behind, storage 2 generations behind, and a different bin of processor? There was a quite a ruckus when apple dual sourced CPUs with marginally different preformed. At the very least either you or your should add caveat emptor or YMMV, in BIG BOLD letters to the end of the review. The reputation of anandtech.com deserves at least that.
"At the very least either you or your should add caveat emptor or YMMV, in BIG BOLD letters to the end of the review. The reputation of anandtech.com deserves at least that."
It was discussed at the beginning, middle, and end, so I think it was covered well.
"What is the point of the review if the system YOU purchase could have memory a generation behind, storage 2 generations behind, and a different bin of processor?"
This report shows several things: 1) Not all P10s come with alternate memory components 2) It shows what perf/battery life can be when not using the alternate components 3) It discusses the P10 multi-sourcing issue and how it may impact perf/battery life 4) It shows that the type of NAND alone is not enough to predict storage performance
Basically, we want to provide as much info as we can so our readers can make an informed buying decision. Obviously, I would have liked to get a P10 with the alternate components for comparison, but that was not possible.
I said "COULD". you admit admit that GOLDEN SAMPLES are a possibility You must admit that with a still lower binned SoC, eMMC instead of UHS, DDR3 instead of DDR4, the benchmarks could be materially different.
Unless you are chinese, but even then it does not make sense, why exactly do you want Huawei to succeed in the western market? It is a corrupted organization managed by government, the reason why their networking hardware is on a ban list in many EU organizations is because of repeated and consistent backdoors implemented in the hardware and software (Not that Cisco and others wouldn't do that, but there is a difference between giving access to FBI and giving it to your industry competitor). I worked for the czech branch for couple of years on various projects and it was a horrible experience, they did not even try to hide that most of their large contracts - they got pretty big deals to provide LTE hardware for carriers, was obtained via bribes. There is absolutely no reason to be giddy about Huawei growing exponentially.
I was with the people who are horrified by the principle of the idea of components substitution, at first.
At least on a flagship.
At least on a product that will sell a lot on specification given the lower rank of the brand in public consciousness.
I think only the final of those three arguments actually counts.
I made a living, once, selling home assembly hifi designs, and so I know that component substitution is both necessary, and a difficult decision for the vendor relationship with customers.
This substitution news broke right at the moment I had to decide on the purchase.
I went ahead, confident that I can return the goods since this is 2017 (or 1997, we've had excellent consumer laws for a long time, providing you avoid silly supplier risks) and can only report I am a happy customer.
And I do not even know what components my P10 contains.
I decided that I would use the phone first, and only after 2 weeks I have to return the device under distance selling law (EU) will I review and if necessary check the components installed.
I almost want to report I have the lesser components, to assuage the furore, because I just doubt that real world impact will manifest unless there is psychological confirmation bias at work.
To criticise a review is maybe a bit much, however the review could make more out of the entire process of decisions that are involved in, and surround, components substitution.
Company can't make enough of something because parts are short, ala Pixel? Customers complain. Company makes more of something with alternative parts, like this? Customers complain.
At the end of the day, the fact of the matter is, supply is hard. Even Samsung can't get enough UFS parts. And Samsung MANUFACTURES these things. What makes you think Huawei can? They have to launch a flagship no matter what.
Notably, I would suspect that customers probably aren't complaining. Of the group of us commenting in these articles, I would be willing to bet few to none of us actually bought a P10 or will ever do so.
They can sell it high-low specced with the same chassis and different prices. The matter is not whether or not they use different parts but whether or not they were forthcoming and honest about it. They were first deceptive then brazen and unapologetic (and further lied) when word got out.
It's been there for years. Almost all Hexa/Octa-core SoC have at least 4 A53 cores. The ONLY SoC that doesn't have A53 is S820/821. Even S835/660's little cores are based on A53.
An a35 is perfect for handling interrupts, background tasks, or the occasional wake from s3 to see if there is anything happening. I'm actually really anxious to see the a35 being used this way.
Well Huawei has always been kind of a shady company, but now I can write them off my list completely. It will make shopping for phones that much easier. Thanks for reporting this, Ananadtech!
I was going to post something about an AnandTech writer receiving a nice Huawei factory tour a while back, etc... and giving Huawei a pass for shipping flagship products that might use components that are inferior to the components that accompanied the AnandTech review samples...
I find it very problematic that different units ship with radically different specifications. I don't want to play the lottery when paying a lot of money for a smartphone; this alone would keep me from considering Huawei's products.
Another review site did come to this conclusion. I think the issue is that the smartphone has hit perfection in many ways, just like the old T9 based phones of old. There's only so far you can go with a form factor before something new has to come along. Samsung is trying with it's display (as is LG) but frankly I don't give a crap about HDR on my phone screen. I do care about HDR on my TV or PC monitor but that's because I'll sit and watch a film on it. If you're watching a film on a smartphone, you're likely on a train or somewhere where the ambient lighting is going to be more of an issue than the dynamic range of the screen. I just don't see the hardware formula going anywhere anytime soon unless someone comes out with something completely different. They are all merging on the same kind of platform. Google has the software in hand so there's little to differentiate on, unless you're a bunch of idiots and think that Bixby has a chance up against the might of Google.... why, Samsung, why waste the resources?!
"I think the issue is that the smartphone has hit perfection in many ways, just like the old T9 based phones of old."
That's a good way of thinking of it, though I think/hope there's room for improvement in battery life and performance. But with the A73 being more of a sideways move compared to the A72, despite being very different, I do wonder if we're reaching a limit.
I think we're reaching a limit in terms of what you can do with the form factor that's going to vastly improve the user experience. I'm sure there will be little things here and there but from what I feel, they're now just ensuring you have to upgrade every couple of years in order to maintain the user experience. I am on an S810 based phone and there is absolutely no reason why this should struggle with normal use at all yet just recently (just before the S835 was released), updates came along which introduced vast amounts of lag. The solution? Well I'm sure it's to upgrade to ensure I once again have smooth performance. You don't get anything really new, you're paying a fortune for the basics to remain the same and for incremental improvements which don't really make a massive difference. If it wasn't for the battery life being dire and the introduction of poorly optimised software creating issues which didn't need to be there, would I upgrade? Probably not.
As it stands I'm left with little choice due to the tyranny of planned obsolescence and it seems to me that they want nearly a grand every two years to tread water in many respects.
I agree with most of the posts here in regards to false advertising, Huawei is ruining their newly built reputation, it's a huge NOT recommend from me to any of my friends & families.
I understand there are supply shortages(other OEMs do too), so I would much prefer if they advertise the P10 phones with eMMC 5.1 & LPDDR3 @ lower price points, then reviewers report people getting UFS & LPDDR4(icing on the cake with lucky draws).
On a separate topic, why is it that Huawei and OnePlus are using F2FS, but Samsung and the other didn't? As far as I can tell and read, F2FS was created by Samsung and it basically gives you "free" performance.
On the other hand, phones with slower RAM and NAND might have lower power consumption. I'd be wary of Huawei's advertising and pricing though; it's obscene to charge flagship prices for EMMC storage. Maybe they could do block 1 or block 2 variant pricing so users know which hardware they're getting.
They could do what LG did with the G5 - they had a version with a slower SoC but the same screen and camera set up and sold it cheaper. Probably had slower RAM and so in as well. For many people that makes a lot of sense as the top tier chips are only slightly better for general use and really a bit of a waste if you don't game or do a fair bit of video / photo editing.
Bravo, that is a brilliant suggestion. Intel does it, AMD does it, nvidia does it, everybody does it. Bin it. The customer is happy, the reviewers don't get accused of anything, and you sell every part that you produce.
I think the comparison to Google Pixel on i/o performance is somehow biased, I remember the storage of Pixel is encrypted by default, at least according to Google...
I am sorry to report that my Huawei P10 exhibits very different real life battery behaviour than your findings may suggest... As a previous owner or three (3!) Huawei P9 devices I can without any doupt say that they had better battery life than my current P10 that barely gets me through two days of very minimal use. Further more, my Huawei P10 (running factory Android 7.0) shows sudden drops of battery percentage when the phone is idle, or during nighttime even though I carefully configured all apps to be deactivated when screen is off etc. I have a very certain feeling that the idle power consumption of this device is absolutely ridiculous and maybe Huawei should tone down the performance of their processor for every day use in future updates for this phone and let users opt for an extreme/gaming performance mode only when necessary... So far, both camera performance and battery stamina have been dissapointing in comparison to the previous model (P9) which was an excelent device overall...
Sorry to hear about your battery life issues. Do you see the same drop overnight if you put the phone in airplane mode? Maybe there's a signal strength issue causing the phone to burn more power.
According to Notebookcheck, both P10 and P9 have an average idle power consumption of 2.1W and 2.37W respectively whereas Galaxy S7 (Exynos) and iPhone 7 have 1.02W and 1.51W respectively. Average load being 6.57W, 3.09W, 4.73W and 3.75W in the same order.
It seems like Huawei/HiSilicon have problems with power management and I'm not referring to the out-of-control overclocked Mali G71 on the K960 (I'd bet the maximum of 9.32W would be considerably lower if clocked below 800 MHz or even 900).
Can you corroborate that? Does HiSilicon have a problem that other chip manufacturers do not? Or is it just bad software optimization causing unnecessary load? Do you have other power consumption figures?
It looks like the idle power numbers you quote were measured with the screen brightness set to maximum, so they are not very useful. The Kirin 960 SoC does draw more power than the Kirin 950/955 as our analysis showed, though. There are several reasons for this that are specific to this SoC and are not software related.
Hmm, that appears to be the case but it seems odd that both the P9 and P10 reviews would have maximum brightness and the others would not. Makes no sense to me but of course that's something to critique the author of and not you :)
I don't recall there being device power consumption averages in your analysis. I would like to see how various devices do. We all see how the iPhone pulls incredible idle/standby numbers (in hours) but starts to falter during load (probably due to the smaller batteries) and we also see how Samsung generally does well in load scenarios due to reasonably efficient internals including advances in AMOLED efficiency giving them an edge while getting flak for poorly optimized software (Snapdragon variant especially) that ruins the user experience with stutters.
Dear Matt, thanks for your suggestion. Haven't tried putting the P10 in Airplane mode overnight, cause I still need to have access to phone calls. But keep in mind that the P9 was operating in the very same conditions. I will try to test force-using other bands than 4G and check wether it is a signal strenght issue related to one specific band...
Hi... Just an update. After the latest firmware update -which clearly stated right at the top "enchancement in battery life- I can attest to enormous difference in the battery life of my P10. Now it is directly comparable to the battery life I was getting from my P9. Latest version is VTR-L09C432B150... Is there any chance to re-run some test (including idle power consumption)? It would surely make for a pretty intereting read to see how just a firmware update affects battery life or performance...
Hi... Just an update. After the latest firmware update -which clearly stated right at the top "enchancement in battery life- I can attest to enormous difference in the battery life of my P10. Now it is directly comparable to the battery life I was getting from my P9. Latest version is VTR-L09C432B150... Is there any chance to re-run some test (including idle power consumption)? It would surely make for a pretty intereting read to see how just a firmware update affects battery life or performance...
F2fs shouldn't be noticably faster than ext4 except when a program forces an fsync. The fs mount options matter more than the fs when it comes to these two.
Late to the party I know, but P10 just arrived in Australian stores, so I got to play with one yesterday. It does seem snappy, but I had more missed touches than I've had with any other (expensive) phone. The factory screen protectors were left on, but they're pretty thin so shouldn't have been the problem.
I checked YouTube and some reviewers are also experiencing this - did you experience it at all Matt?
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"Huawei...'stated' that it never committed to using any specific type of NAND", well, the more accurate word would be "lied", though that's no surprise coming from Huawei, with its long history of dishonesty and shameless marketing tactics.
I remember reading that anandtech had to tweak chrome because the brightness is dimmer when opening chrome for some reason. I would sincerely appreciate it if some from anandtech could tell me what they did. I have a P10 plus. When I open chrome, the standard messaging app and contacts the screen dim down. When opening the multitask to se all apps running or pressing the home key, the brightness goes back up again.
I have searched every setting in the phone but cannot find some setting to fix it. Had the same problem with the mate 9 pro. (No, I have no apps causing this and battery saving is off)
I've received my P10 yesterday and it seems like they have added a 3rd type of NAND to the device.
I don't know if anadtech is running G the androbench with default settings but I get consistently over 714 MB/s in the Sequence read and also have double the performance in the random write test.
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Eden-K121D - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
It is very hypocritical of a company when they market a Product as a flagship but don't hold them to the same standard. It is very bad that they mislead customers about very much slower emmc and then make rubbish claims of optimization.BurntMyBacon - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
Roughly equivalent or perceptually equivalent is one thing. Clearly different, as is the case with the flash here, is unquestionably unacceptable. Guess I can mark Huawei off my list of manufacturers to follow.niva - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
The only Huawei I wanted to buy was the Nexus 6P, and only because Google was in charge of the software running on it. Otherwise I'm really not interested in any Chinese phones, this may be generally true for any non Nexus/Pixel phones but the Chinese have earned a special disdain from me many years ago with their practices/software.So no... I'm not interested in this phone. If you gave me one I'll go ahead and try to sell it immediately.
AlphaBlaster - Sunday, May 14, 2017 - link
Who writes this innocuous crap? "Trump is ruining his political career?" Trump doesn't have a political career. He is a circus clown told what to say by the wealthy few who are running everything, own everything! They put a magpie frontman in that position to guarantee that their status quo is maintained and increases , by design, to their benefit alone, and to the oppression, impoverishment, and murdering of everybody else. "Providing context?" On what? At this stage of the game, the only 'context' any legitimate person should be engaged in is guerilla warfare!kaidenshi - Sunday, May 14, 2017 - link
Did you mix up your AnandTech and Facebook tabs?leexgx - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
This reminds me of Kingston using different flash that is far slower but nothing on the box to state what it is (only find out when you used it for a bit or do benchmark testss.yu - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link
If they didn't advertise about specific technology or a specific performance standard the product should reach then you can't fault them, not the case for Huawei.boozed - Monday, May 15, 2017 - link
Did we read the same review?s.yu - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link
Nice to see more people agreeing with what I've been saying for literally years(since P8), I guess it's inevitable that more discerning customers will come to realize Huawei's deceptive nature as they expand their businesses beyond China. I honestly hope that a company like this would crash into the ground real soon, but I just don't think most of the consumer market is knowledgeable and principled enough for that to happen.virtuastro - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
I'm glad you said that it's smooth and responsive but not Pixel XL smooth. It's good to know. I want to see how P10/ P10 Plus's camera image quality. But I did saw dxomark review about it.John Other - Sunday, May 14, 2017 - link
I've not used the Pixel, but can confirm that my P10 is really very smooth and responsive and a pleasure in general use.But I can absolutely imagine that with the OS familiarity Google has, on the same hardware, battery smoothness is entirely possible. Gratuitous car analogy: Mercedes-Benz not quite a Bentley.
On the other side of the coin, I think the physical build, first rate certainly, you will be able to sense as short of a iPhone 7, if you ever once use the iPhone for a while. The iPhone has the better mass distribution of the two, the P10 just a touch weighted on the left. It may be my recovering hand from injury that makes my hold less secure than before, but I went to a store specifically to jog my recollection. IPhone definitely wins in the purely illusory feeling of security in holding balance. I caveat this with the fact that during recovery from my hand in which my index finger was badly broken, I perceived that perfectly flat items like credit cards I gripped were concave. So my touch is not calibrated. However the impression I relate is that which I went to check only last week.
I should further note that my P10 replaced my LUMIA 650. This was too close a call entirely due to the LUMIA 950 XL making the only sensible decision that just does not feel sensible any longer. Other than the state of hardware, and sorely needed Edge advancements, the switch from Windows 10 Creator's Mobile, is one I simply would not have called, was a Microsoft direction visible. I think it is testimony to Steve Ballmer, how much survived, superannuated, that remains very good. Nadella appears to have had to asphyxiate the Ball er legacy plans, as if he couldn't present good reason to shut them down. Microsoft have forgotten that cutting off the air supply is supposed to be done to the competition.... But if Windows Phone is the price of maturing beyond that level of aggression, in a market where we need software integration absent hardware leaps, to drive performance, then so be it. Just to not tell the world, of such a positive game plan, beats me.
Speedfriend - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
The thought that you can buy a product that may be totally different to the review that you have read is crazy. They should be punished by no one buying themphilehidiot - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
Indeed - I find it very disturbing that the phones could be either a modern spec (and I have to assume Anandtech were supplied with the best possible article) or falling behind even last generation in some areas. There's a difference between SoCs which are binned and fall within a bell curve and totally different components. Yes, the difference now might be marginal in terms of experience but as software becomes more hardware intensive you expect that perceptive performance to be maintained for a reasonable timeframe - this is one reason why you're paying double for a flagship phone.I'm sorry but if someone offered me a PC and it could come with either a HDD or SSD or DDR3 or DDR4 depending on luck and oh, by the way the cost is the same regardless of what you get and we won't tell you, you'll just have to find out when you get it.... I'd tell them to fuck off. It's an absolute disgrace and sticking two fingers up at your customer. I understand there are shortages and intense competition but if you're going to do this then you DROP YOUR PRICES! You can't charge the same as a modern flagship with the risk of getting components 1-2 years out of date (relative to flagship specification).
In addition to this, you have to consider optimisation may well suffer. You've got a closed system with components all working on one system (UFS) for example and you can spend time optimising everything to work with that. Suddenly, due to suppliers, you have to optimise late in the design phase (probably when mass production techniques have already been devised and they're now looking at supply - I assume, I'm not in the industry, let me know if I'm wrong) for not just UFS but eMMC as well which adds complexity and potentially adds bugs. As WELL as slowing down updates as they end up more complex.
If you're going to violate your customers like this then you have to offer them something in return, ideally reduced cost. They are competing with standardised flagships on price and, whilst I was very interested, knowing I could be getting something markedly different to what I'm paying for makes this brand a no, no for me.
"Yes, sir, you ordered the caviar"
"Well, I appear to have a pear with a turd next to it"
"Sorry, Sir this is how our restaurant operates. We can't always get supply in to meet demand so we carry on charging the same but give you what you'd get in a dirty cafe."
"Well, I'm sorry, I'm returning this and I want a refund"
"Sorry, Sir... it did not say anywhere that you wouldn't get a pear instead and you ARE being provided with something that came out of an animal, so you have no grounds for complaint"
"Oh you can just fu......"
John Other - Sunday, May 14, 2017 - link
The P10 is by far the most modestly priced of the flagships.UK retail carrier unlocked, I think dropped below pounds 600 last week.
I find that I am soundly impressed with the understatement of this phone. Everything about it infuses me with confidence. Only a removable battery, would be my request. (for which surely there must be a elegant engineering solution (plastic backs are decades behind the build quality we expect from any other than budget categories, and the semi liquid packed character must be solvable, alongside a truly solid attachment mechanism, clip on flush not insert and cover)
I can't compare but watching the Formula One qualifying sessions yesterday, on Now TV over LTE, the sound was of a quality comfortably filling my small hotel room, all 4 by 5 yards of it, and I could make out the transmission artefacts hampered car to pit radio, and even the transmission of the cars in corners, on the internal speaker. If this is the general quality to expect nowadays, we're doing well, I don't see the need to be gloomy about the market demand for upgrades etc.
fanofanand - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
Very generous of you to assume that the gimped phones will still be fine and dandy for the end consumer. You seem to be forgiving of the practice, or at least understanding. I am not. If you can't procure the parts you don't sell the product. This kind of bait and switch is precisely the kind of thing people will point to when they say they will "never buy a chinese phone"Matt Humrick - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
It's not that I condone the practice, I just want people to understand that this happens frequently and why it happens. I've seen LG use display panels of significantly different quality in its G-series phones, and Samsung use different camera sensors (with equivalent specs) on its Galaxy phones that produce images that look completely different, for example. So the P10 is not even the worst example of multi-sourcing. Huawei needs to be more truthful in its advertising, though.invinciblegod - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
Apple did something similar where the SOC was manufactured by Samsung or TSMC. Apparently, the TSMC one was slightly better but only marginally.levizx - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
No, not even remotely close. A9 was merely manufactured by different foundries, they have identical design and spec and are pin-to-pin compatible. Difference is only the average power consumption, but even chips cut from the same wafer have different power consumption.eMMC/UFS2.x OTOH are incompatible standards, they don't resemble each other in any way.
levizx - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
Problem is QUALITY aside, different suppliers still have nominally similar specs, ie all IPS LCD, same sensor size & pixel count.Now, I can understand mixing UFS 2.0/2.1 since they have similar specs and can nominally perform similarly.
eMMC 5.1 is a totally different standard/interface. I'll be replacing AMOLED with TN LCD.
drajitshnew - Saturday, May 13, 2017 - link
Matt I was very interested when I started the review, but lost most of my interest when the variability was revealed. Then on I just skimmed through the review.What is the point of the review if the system YOU purchase could have memory a generation behind, storage 2 generations behind, and a different bin of processor? There was a quite a ruckus when apple dual sourced CPUs with marginally different preformed.
At the very least either you or your should add caveat emptor or YMMV, in BIG BOLD letters to the end of the review. The reputation of anandtech.com deserves at least that.
Matt Humrick - Saturday, May 13, 2017 - link
"At the very least either you or your should add caveat emptor or YMMV, in BIG BOLD letters to the end of the review. The reputation of anandtech.com deserves at least that."It was discussed at the beginning, middle, and end, so I think it was covered well.
"What is the point of the review if the system YOU purchase could have memory a generation behind, storage 2 generations behind, and a different bin of processor?"
This report shows several things:
1) Not all P10s come with alternate memory components
2) It shows what perf/battery life can be when not using the alternate components
3) It discusses the P10 multi-sourcing issue and how it may impact perf/battery life
4) It shows that the type of NAND alone is not enough to predict storage performance
Basically, we want to provide as much info as we can so our readers can make an informed buying decision. Obviously, I would have liked to get a P10 with the alternate components for comparison, but that was not possible.
drajitshnew - Saturday, May 13, 2017 - link
I said "COULD". you admit admit that GOLDEN SAMPLES are a possibilityYou must admit that with a still lower binned SoC, eMMC instead of UHS, DDR3 instead of DDR4, the benchmarks could be materially different.
Matt Humrick - Saturday, May 13, 2017 - link
Yes, that's what I said in the article.AlphaBlaster - Sunday, May 14, 2017 - link
Unless you are chinese, but even then it does not make sense, why exactly do you want Huawei to succeed in the western market? It is a corrupted organization managed by government, the reason why their networking hardware is on a ban list in many EU organizations is because of repeated and consistent backdoors implemented in the hardware and software (Not that Cisco and others wouldn't do that, but there is a difference between giving access to FBI and giving it to your industry competitor). I worked for the czech branch for couple of years on various projects and it was a horrible experience, they did not even try to hide that most of their large contracts - they got pretty big deals to provide LTE hardware for carriers, was obtained via bribes. There is absolutely no reason to be giddy about Huawei growing exponentially.John Other - Sunday, May 14, 2017 - link
I was with the people who are horrified by the principle of the idea of components substitution, at first.At least on a flagship.
At least on a product that will sell a lot on specification given the lower rank of the brand in public consciousness.
I think only the final of those three arguments actually counts.
I made a living, once, selling home assembly hifi designs, and so I know that component substitution is both necessary, and a difficult decision for the vendor relationship with customers.
This substitution news broke right at the moment I had to decide on the purchase.
I went ahead, confident that I can return the goods since this is 2017 (or 1997, we've had excellent consumer laws for a long time, providing you avoid silly supplier risks) and can only report I am a happy customer.
And I do not even know what components my P10 contains.
I decided that I would use the phone first, and only after 2 weeks I have to return the device under distance selling law (EU) will I review and if necessary check the components installed.
I almost want to report I have the lesser components, to assuage the furore, because I just doubt that real world impact will manifest unless there is psychological confirmation bias at work.
To criticise a review is maybe a bit much, however the review could make more out of the entire process of decisions that are involved in, and surround, components substitution.
WPX00 - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
Company can't make enough of something because parts are short, ala Pixel? Customers complain.Company makes more of something with alternative parts, like this? Customers complain.
At the end of the day, the fact of the matter is, supply is hard. Even Samsung can't get enough UFS parts. And Samsung MANUFACTURES these things. What makes you think Huawei can? They have to launch a flagship no matter what.
Meteor2 - Saturday, May 13, 2017 - link
Nobody says it's easy. We're paying them to get it right.I find this shocking; I was warming to Huwei, they make nice SoCs, but this is appalling.
BrokenCrayons - Monday, May 15, 2017 - link
Notably, I would suspect that customers probably aren't complaining. Of the group of us commenting in these articles, I would be willing to bet few to none of us actually bought a P10 or will ever do so.s.yu - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link
They can sell it high-low specced with the same chassis and different prices. The matter is not whether or not they use different parts but whether or not they were forthcoming and honest about it. They were first deceptive then brazen and unapologetic (and further lied) when word got out.Elsote - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
Until when will we see A53 cpus in flagship phones?levizx - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
It's been there for years. Almost all Hexa/Octa-core SoC have at least 4 A53 cores. The ONLY SoC that doesn't have A53 is S820/821. Even S835/660's little cores are based on A53.phoenix_rizzen - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
Maybe they meant A35? Although, aren't those 32-bit only?Meteor2 - Saturday, May 13, 2017 - link
No, you're thinking of A32. The A35, while very efficient, is rather weedy.tuxRoller - Monday, May 15, 2017 - link
An a35 is perfect for handling interrupts, background tasks, or the occasional wake from s3 to see if there is anything happening.I'm actually really anxious to see the a35 being used this way.
vanilla_gorilla - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
Well Huawei has always been kind of a shady company, but now I can write them off my list completely. It will make shopping for phones that much easier. Thanks for reporting this, Ananadtech!zeeBomb - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
Not bad; pretty good testsdrajitshnew - Saturday, May 13, 2017 - link
IF you win the silicon lottery.IF you lose, then....
HardwareDufus - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
I was going to post something about an AnandTech writer receiving a nice Huawei factory tour a while back, etc... and giving Huawei a pass for shipping flagship products that might use components that are inferior to the components that accompanied the AnandTech review samples...Meh, not worth it...
Stochastic - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
I find it very problematic that different units ship with radically different specifications. I don't want to play the lottery when paying a lot of money for a smartphone; this alone would keep me from considering Huawei's products.Stochastic - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
Also, what advantages do these phones have over competitors? This just screams as being another "me too" product.philehidiot - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
Another review site did come to this conclusion. I think the issue is that the smartphone has hit perfection in many ways, just like the old T9 based phones of old. There's only so far you can go with a form factor before something new has to come along. Samsung is trying with it's display (as is LG) but frankly I don't give a crap about HDR on my phone screen. I do care about HDR on my TV or PC monitor but that's because I'll sit and watch a film on it. If you're watching a film on a smartphone, you're likely on a train or somewhere where the ambient lighting is going to be more of an issue than the dynamic range of the screen. I just don't see the hardware formula going anywhere anytime soon unless someone comes out with something completely different. They are all merging on the same kind of platform. Google has the software in hand so there's little to differentiate on, unless you're a bunch of idiots and think that Bixby has a chance up against the might of Google.... why, Samsung, why waste the resources?!Stochastic - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
Samsung's displays really are better than everyone else's, though: http://www.displaymate.com/Galaxy_S8_ShootOut_01.h...That's the kind of performance I'd be willing to pay a premium for.
Meteor2 - Saturday, May 13, 2017 - link
...crap speakers though. I want a picture which looks good -- but also a sound which sounds good.Meteor2 - Saturday, May 13, 2017 - link
"I think the issue is that the smartphone has hit perfection in many ways, just like the old T9 based phones of old."That's a good way of thinking of it, though I think/hope there's room for improvement in battery life and performance. But with the A73 being more of a sideways move compared to the A72, despite being very different, I do wonder if we're reaching a limit.
philehidiot - Wednesday, May 24, 2017 - link
I think we're reaching a limit in terms of what you can do with the form factor that's going to vastly improve the user experience. I'm sure there will be little things here and there but from what I feel, they're now just ensuring you have to upgrade every couple of years in order to maintain the user experience. I am on an S810 based phone and there is absolutely no reason why this should struggle with normal use at all yet just recently (just before the S835 was released), updates came along which introduced vast amounts of lag. The solution? Well I'm sure it's to upgrade to ensure I once again have smooth performance. You don't get anything really new, you're paying a fortune for the basics to remain the same and for incremental improvements which don't really make a massive difference. If it wasn't for the battery life being dire and the introduction of poorly optimised software creating issues which didn't need to be there, would I upgrade? Probably not.As it stands I'm left with little choice due to the tyranny of planned obsolescence and it seems to me that they want nearly a grand every two years to tread water in many respects.
amdwilliam1985 - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
I agree with most of the posts here in regards to false advertising, Huawei is ruining their newly built reputation, it's a huge NOT recommend from me to any of my friends & families.I understand there are supply shortages(other OEMs do too), so I would much prefer if they advertise the P10 phones with eMMC 5.1 & LPDDR3 @ lower price points, then reviewers report people getting UFS & LPDDR4(icing on the cake with lucky draws).
On a separate topic, why is it that Huawei and OnePlus are using F2FS, but Samsung and the other didn't? As far as I can tell and read, F2FS was created by Samsung and it basically gives you "free" performance.
serendip - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
On the other hand, phones with slower RAM and NAND might have lower power consumption. I'd be wary of Huawei's advertising and pricing though; it's obscene to charge flagship prices for EMMC storage. Maybe they could do block 1 or block 2 variant pricing so users know which hardware they're getting.Stochastic - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
I thought UFS and LPDDR4 were also more power efficient?Eden-K121D - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
UFS LPDDR4/X are more efficient so you're going to get worse battery life on the shitty phonesphilehidiot - Wednesday, May 24, 2017 - link
They could do what LG did with the G5 - they had a version with a slower SoC but the same screen and camera set up and sold it cheaper. Probably had slower RAM and so in as well. For many people that makes a lot of sense as the top tier chips are only slightly better for general use and really a bit of a waste if you don't game or do a fair bit of video / photo editing.drajitshnew - Saturday, May 13, 2017 - link
Bravo, that is a brilliant suggestion. Intel does it, AMD does it, nvidia does it, everybody does it. Bin it. The customer is happy, the reviewers don't get accused of anything, and you sell every part that you produce.Bondurant - Wednesday, May 17, 2017 - link
You want a lower price ? So whats the price difference between a UFS 2.1/2.0 and eMMC ? You want that deducted from the overall price ? Lol.zodiacfml - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
Their market wouldn't bother or notice anyway. They have been making pretty, slim phones which allowed them to reach their current status.Stochastic - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
Sometimes I wonder how much better consumer tech could be if everyone were as discriminating as Anandtech readers.Eden-K121D - Friday, May 12, 2017 - link
Aesthetics aside. Consumer Tech would be substantially better in terms of Technological advancementaparangement - Saturday, May 13, 2017 - link
I think the comparison to Google Pixel on i/o performance is somehow biased, I remember the storage of Pixel is encrypted by default, at least according to Google...https://blog.google/topics/connected-workspaces/pi...
Matt Humrick - Sunday, May 14, 2017 - link
The P10 uses full-disk encryption, while (I believe) the Pixel uses file-based encryption.ePambos - Saturday, May 13, 2017 - link
I am sorry to report that my Huawei P10 exhibits very different real life battery behaviour than your findings may suggest... As a previous owner or three (3!) Huawei P9 devices I can without any doupt say that they had better battery life than my current P10 that barely gets me through two days of very minimal use. Further more, my Huawei P10 (running factory Android 7.0) shows sudden drops of battery percentage when the phone is idle, or during nighttime even though I carefully configured all apps to be deactivated when screen is off etc. I have a very certain feeling that the idle power consumption of this device is absolutely ridiculous and maybe Huawei should tone down the performance of their processor for every day use in future updates for this phone and let users opt for an extreme/gaming performance mode only when necessary... So far, both camera performance and battery stamina have been dissapointing in comparison to the previous model (P9) which was an excelent device overall...Matt Humrick - Saturday, May 13, 2017 - link
Sorry to hear about your battery life issues. Do you see the same drop overnight if you put the phone in airplane mode? Maybe there's a signal strength issue causing the phone to burn more power.Trixanity - Saturday, May 13, 2017 - link
According to Notebookcheck, both P10 and P9 have an average idle power consumption of 2.1W and 2.37W respectively whereas Galaxy S7 (Exynos) and iPhone 7 have 1.02W and 1.51W respectively. Average load being 6.57W, 3.09W, 4.73W and 3.75W in the same order.It seems like Huawei/HiSilicon have problems with power management and I'm not referring to the out-of-control overclocked Mali G71 on the K960 (I'd bet the maximum of 9.32W would be considerably lower if clocked below 800 MHz or even 900).
Can you corroborate that? Does HiSilicon have a problem that other chip manufacturers do not? Or is it just bad software optimization causing unnecessary load? Do you have other power consumption figures?
Matt Humrick - Sunday, May 14, 2017 - link
It looks like the idle power numbers you quote were measured with the screen brightness set to maximum, so they are not very useful. The Kirin 960 SoC does draw more power than the Kirin 950/955 as our analysis showed, though. There are several reasons for this that are specific to this SoC and are not software related.Trixanity - Sunday, May 14, 2017 - link
Hmm, that appears to be the case but it seems odd that both the P9 and P10 reviews would have maximum brightness and the others would not. Makes no sense to me but of course that's something to critique the author of and not you :)I don't recall there being device power consumption averages in your analysis. I would like to see how various devices do. We all see how the iPhone pulls incredible idle/standby numbers (in hours) but starts to falter during load (probably due to the smaller batteries) and we also see how Samsung generally does well in load scenarios due to reasonably efficient internals including advances in AMOLED efficiency giving them an edge while getting flak for poorly optimized software (Snapdragon variant especially) that ruins the user experience with stutters.
ePambos - Sunday, May 14, 2017 - link
Dear Matt, thanks for your suggestion. Haven't tried putting the P10 in Airplane mode overnight, cause I still need to have access to phone calls. But keep in mind that the P9 was operating in the very same conditions. I will try to test force-using other bands than 4G and check wether it is a signal strenght issue related to one specific band...ePambos - Friday, July 7, 2017 - link
Hi... Just an update. After the latest firmware update -which clearly stated right at the top "enchancement in battery life- I can attest to enormous difference in the battery life of my P10. Now it is directly comparable to the battery life I was getting from my P9. Latest version is VTR-L09C432B150... Is there any chance to re-run some test (including idle power consumption)? It would surely make for a pretty intereting read to see how just a firmware update affects battery life or performance...ePambos - Friday, July 7, 2017 - link
Hi... Just an update. After the latest firmware update -which clearly stated right at the top "enchancement in battery life- I can attest to enormous difference in the battery life of my P10. Now it is directly comparable to the battery life I was getting from my P9. Latest version is VTR-L09C432B150... Is there any chance to re-run some test (including idle power consumption)? It would surely make for a pretty intereting read to see how just a firmware update affects battery life or performance...rubene66 - Sunday, May 14, 2017 - link
I am still waiting for the complete galaxy s8 exynos review !tuxRoller - Sunday, May 14, 2017 - link
F2fs shouldn't be noticably faster than ext4 except when a program forces an fsync.The fs mount options matter more than the fs when it comes to these two.
asfletch - Wednesday, May 17, 2017 - link
Late to the party I know, but P10 just arrived in Australian stores, so I got to play with one yesterday. It does seem snappy, but I had more missed touches than I've had with any other (expensive) phone. The factory screen protectors were left on, but they're pretty thin so shouldn't have been the problem.I checked YouTube and some reviewers are also experiencing this - did you experience it at all Matt?
JohnLinc - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
This phone is very good based on performance registered12345 righttehranbarbary - Tuesday, June 6, 2017 - link
<a href="http://tehranbarbary.com" >باربری تهران</a>mimi013 - Thursday, June 15, 2017 - link
Now a days people depends on technology. Mobile Phone is one of them. New smartphone comes with different sensors and great features. Now world’s have many new brands mobile phone. Now all young people are more interested to phone. Recently Huawei released it’s new phones specification that is Huawei honor 9. Again In june 2017 Oppo R11, Oppo R11 Plus and Oppo F3 Plus was officially announced. And recently released a phone in Bangladesh called Walton Primo X4 Pro. Local product Walton Primo X4 Pro price in Bangladesh is 28,990 Taka. Again OnePlus also comes with its new phone oneplus 5. Have some Technology blogging site that provides all recent information about latest mobile phone and specification. To know about latest phone visit http://bit.ly/2tp41B7s.yu - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link
"Huawei...'stated' that it never committed to using any specific type of NAND", well, the more accurate word would be "lied", though that's no surprise coming from Huawei, with its long history of dishonesty and shameless marketing tactics.Dersrr - Tuesday, August 8, 2017 - link
I remember reading that anandtech had to tweak chrome because the brightness is dimmer when opening chrome for some reason. I would sincerely appreciate it if some from anandtech could tell me what they did. I have a P10 plus. When I open chrome, the standard messaging app and contacts the screen dim down. When opening the multitask to se all apps running or pressing the home key, the brightness goes back up again.I have searched every setting in the phone but cannot find some setting to fix it. Had the same problem with the mate 9 pro. (No, I have no apps causing this and battery saving is off)
All the best. Dan.
alhsou - Sunday, August 20, 2017 - link
I've received my P10 yesterday and it seems like they have added a 3rd type of NAND to the device.I don't know if anadtech is running G the androbench with default settings but I get consistently over 714 MB/s in the Sequence read and also have double the performance in the random write test.