Tag Archives: NPU

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Photography Review!

Take a look at the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra’s photography performance, and find out why it’s such an awesome smartphone for photographers!

 

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra : Flagship Class Photography!

The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is their flagship smartphone for the year 2022, and it boasts the best cameras money can buy.

Headlining its top-of-the-line quad-camera system is a Dual Pixel camera, which is built around the 108 MP ISOCELL HM3 sensor, and optically-stabilised lens with a large f/1.8 aperture.

You can seamlessly switch to its ultra-wide camera, with a 12 MP sensor and a f/2.2 aperture; or optically zoom up to 10X with its dual telephoto and periscope cameras.

In this review, we are going to take a look at the photography capability of Galaxy S22 Ultra, and show you just how well its cameras perform!

 

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Photography Review

The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra boasts a super-high resolution 108 MP main camera, built around the same ISOCELL HM3 sensor used in the Galaxy S21 Ultra.

However, this camera features improved AI optimisations. Thanks to the improved performance of its GPU and NPU, it now runs approximately 60 new AI models through its Neural Processing Unit (NPU) to optimise the final output.

Here are six shots I took around Ipoh Old Town, using the 108 MP main camera, and the 12 MP ultra-wide angle camera.

They are 4000 x 3000 pixels in size, with a JPEG file size of between 4 MB and 15 MB – it all depends on the amount of detail in the picture. To save space, I definitely recommend that you enable HEIF – the High Efficiency Image Format.

By default, the 108 MP camera takes 12 MP photos, combining nine pixels into one super-large 2.4 µm pixel. Coupled with the new AI models, the final photo is not only much brighter, but has significantly lower noise.

When you take shots at night, the Galaxy S22 Ultra combines images taken using both the 108 MP main camera, and the 12 MP ultra-wide camera. The 12 MP camera provides the rough details, while the fine details are provided by the 108 MP camera.

Here are four shots to show you the incredible amount of detail you can capture at just 12 MP. If you need greater detail, you can always increase the resolution to the full 108 MP, but frankly – these pictures should show you that you don’t really need to.

Its digital zoom has also been improved by the new AI models and the faster processor. For images taken above 30X digital zoom, the camera actually takes 10-20 shots at once, and processes them to improve the details in the final photo.

Finally, the Galaxy S22 Ultra features a new AI portrait model that uses two cameras to accurately differentiate the depth between the person and the background.

This is critical because the 108 MP camera has a very wide f/1.8 aperture, which makes for very narrow depth-of-field (DOF). If you do not accurately focus on the subject, you could end up with a blurry photo even though it looks sharp on the phone.

In these four shots, you can see just how narrow of depth of field you have to work with. This makes for better photos – you just need to make sure the subject is really in focus.

 

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Photography Summary

If you want the best cameras on a smartphone money can buy, you should definitely consider the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra.

Ignore the 108 MP marketing hoohah. What you are really getting is an awesome 12 MP camera with super-large pixels for really great noise-free images, and better low-light photos.

You may be wary about Samsung reusing the ISOCELL HM3 sensor from last year, but it has better photographic capabilities, thanks mostly to software and AI improvements.

For one thing, I noticed that it is now much better at accurately focusing on the subject, resulting in far fewer wrongly-focused shots.

It also does a better job of correcting for disparate lighting conditions, although some of you may find the photos oversaturated.

But there is no doubt that the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra has some of the best smartphone cameras I’ve tried this year.

 

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra : Price + Availability

Samsung is offering the Galaxy S22 Ultra in four colour options – Burgundy, Green, Phantom Black and Phantom White.

I had the opportunity to attend an exclusive Samsung preview event, to check out all four colours for ourselves.

Note : Samsung only allowed us to use digital cameras, so the video is not stabilised as it would be with smartphones that I generally use.

Here in Malaysia, it is available starting 10 February 2022 in three variants, at these price points :

  • 8 GB + 128 GB : RM 5,099 (about US$1,219 / £899 / A$1,699 / S$1,629)
  • 12 GB + 256 GB : RM 5,499 (about US$1,314 / £969 / A$1,829 / S$1,759)
  • 12 GB + 512 GB : RM 5,899 (about US$1,409 / £1,039 / A$1,959 / S$1,889)

Here are some online pre-order options :

 

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NXP iMX 8M Plus To Use Kingston eMMC Memory!

Kingston just announced that their eMMC memory has been selected to be used in the NXP iMX 8M Plus reference board!

 

NXP iMX 8M Plus To Use Kingston eMMC Memory!

On 8 April 2021, Kingston Technology announced that their eMMC embedded memory will be featured in NXP iMX 8M Plus evaluation kits.

Although Kingston did not reveal which eMMC part was selected, the picture they released appears to show the EMMC08G-MB29, which boasts these key features :

  • 8 GB capacity
  • 3D TLC in pMLC NAND memory
  • eMMC 5.1 standard
  • 11.5 x 13 x 0.8 mm package size

They will be used as storage in the NXP iMX 8M Plus reference boards, which will be used for development and engineering verification.

 

NXP iMX 8M Plus : What Is It?

The NXP iMX 8M Plus is an application processor – a System-On-a-Chip (SoC) designed for infrastructure solutions like smart home, intelligent city and industrial IoT devices.

  • two or four ARM Cortex-A53 processors (up to 1.8 GHz)
  • a neural processing unit (NPU) operating at up to 2.3 TOPS
  • ARM Cortex-M7 controller (up to 800 MHz)
  • 32-bit DDR4 and LPDDR4 interface (up to 4.0 GT/s)
  • dual image signal processors (ISP) : up to 12 MP, up to 375 MPixels per second
  • two MIPI CSI camera interfaces
  • two Gigabit Ethernet LAN interfaces
  • two USB 3.0 / 2.0 with Type C PHY
  • PCI Express Gen 3 support
  • 14 nm FinFET process

 

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The Alibaba Hanguang 800 (含光 800) AI NPU Explained!

At the Apsara Computing Conference 2019, Alibaba Group unveiled details of their first AI inference NPU – the Hanguang 800 (含光 800).

Here is EVERYTHING you need to know about the Alibaba Hanguang 800 AI inference NPU!

Updated @ 2019-09-27 : Added more details, including a performance comparison against its main competitors.

Originally posted @ 2019-09-25

 

What Is The Alibaba Hanguang 800?

The Alibaba Hanguang 800 is a neural processing unit (NPU) for AI inference applications. It was specifically designed to accelerate machine learning and AI inference tasks.

 

What Does Hanguang Mean?

The name 含光 (Hanguang) literally means “contains light“.

While the name may suggest that it uses photonics, that light-based technology is still at least a decade from commercialisation.

 

What Are The Hanguang 800 Specifications?

Not much is known about the Hanguang 800, other than that it has 17 billion transistors, and is fabricated on the 12 nm process technology.

Also, it is designed for inferencing only, unlike the HUAWEI Ascend 910 AI chip which can handle both training and inference.

Recommended : 3rd Gen X-Dragon Architecture by Alibaba Cloud Explained!

 

Who Designed The Hanguang 800?

The Hanguang 800 was developed over a period of 7 months, by Alibaba’s research unit, T-Head, followed by a 3-month tape-out.

T-Head, whose Chinese name is Pintougehoney badger in English, is responsible for designing chips for cloud and edge computing under Alibaba Cloud / Aliyun.

Earlier this year, T-Head revealed a high-performance IoT processor called XuanTie 910.

Based on the RISC-V open-source instruction set, 16-core XuanTie 910 is targeted at heavy-duty IoT applications like edge servers, networking gateways, and self-driving automobiles.

 

How Fast Is Hanguang 800?

Alibaba claims that the Hanguang 800 “largely” outpaces the industry average performance, with image processing efficiency about 12X better than GPUs :

  • Single chip performance : 78,563 images per second (IPS)
  • Computational efficiency : 500 IPS per watt (Resnet-50 Inference Test)
Hanguang 800 Habana Goya Cambricon MLU270 NVIDIA T4 NVIDIA P4
Fab Process 12 nm 16 nm 16 nm 12 nm 16 nm
Transistors 17 billion NA NA 13.6 billion 7.2 billion
Performance
(ResNet-50)
78,563 IPS 15,433 IPS 10,000 IPS 5,402 IPS 1,721 IPS
Peak Efficiency
(ResNet-50)
500 IPS/W 150 IPS/W 143 IPS/W 78 IPS/W 52 IPS/W

Recommended : 2nd Gen EPYC – Everything You Need To Know Summarised!

 

Where Will Hanguang 800 Be Used?

The Hanguang 800 chip will be used exclusively by Alibaba to power their own business operations, especially in product search and automatic translation, personalised recommendations and advertising.

According to Alibaba, merchants upload a billion product images to Taobao every day. It used to take their previous platform an hour to categorise those pictures, and then tailor search and personalise recommendations for millions of Taobao customers.

With Hanguang 800, they claim that the Taboo platform now takes just 5 minutes to complete the task – a 12X reduction in time!

Alibaba Cloud will also be using it in their smart city projects. They are already using it in Hangzhou, where they previously used 40 GPUs to process video feeds with a latency of 300 ms.

After migrating to four Hanguang 800 NPUs, they were able to process the same video feeds with half the latency – just 150 ms.

 

Can We Buy Or Rent The Hanguang 800?

No, Alibaba will not be selling the Hanguang 800 NPU. Instead, they are offering it as a new AI cloud computing service.

Developers can now make a request for a Hanguang 800 cloud compute quota, which Alibaba Cloud claims is 100% more cost-effective than traditional GPUs.

 

Are There No Other Alternatives For Alibaba?

In our opinion, this is Alibaba’s way of preparing for an escalation of the US-Chinese trade war that has already savaged HUAWEI.

While Alibaba certainly have a few AI inference accelerator alternatives, from AMD and NVIDIA for example, it makes sense for them to spend money and time developing their own AI inference chip.

In the long term, the Chinese government wants to build a domestic capability to design and fabricate their own computer chips for national security reasons.

Recommended : The HUAWEI Trump Ban – Everything You Need To Know!

 

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Honor Play In-Depth Review – Mobile Gaming FTW!

The Honor Play debuted in China last month as a gaming-centric smartphone, and it’s coming to a store near you. Read our In-Depth Review of the Honor Play, and find out why it’s designed for mobile gaming!

 

The Honor Play – Designed For Mobile Gaming

The Honor Play is specially-designed for mobile gaming. From the front, it looks like the Honor 10 (Price Check, with a display notch and an ultra-wide FullView display. Instead of an Aurora Glass back panel, it features a metal unibody design and a larger 6.3-inch display.

Like the Honor 10 (Price Check), the Honor Play is powered by the Kirin 970 SoC, which features a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) that speeds up certain AI functions. To ensure that you get to play your games for hours on-end, it comes with a larger 3,750 mAh LiPo battery that supports 18 W fast charging.

 

Honor Play Full Specifications

Here are the specifications of the Honor Play (US Price Check | MY Price Check), compared against the Honor 10 (Price Check) smartphone.

SpecificationsHonor PlayHonor 10
Display6.3 inch Full HD+ IPS display
- 1080 x 2340 pixels (409 ppi)
- 83% screen-to-body ratio
5.84" Full HD+ IPS display
- 1080 x 2280 pixels (432 ppi)
- 19:9 aspect ratio
Operating SystemAndroid 8.1 Oreo with EMUI 8.2Android 8.1 Oreo with EMUI 8.1
System PlatformHisilicon Kirin 970Hisilicon Kirin 970
Processor4 x ARM Cortex-A73 (2.4 GHz)
4 x ARM Cortex-A53 (1.8 GHz)
4 x ARM Cortex-A73 (2.4 GHz)
4 x ARM Cortex-A53 (1.8 GHz)
Graphics ProcessorARM Mali-G72 MP12ARM Mali-G72 MP12
Memory4 GB RAM4 GB RAM
Storage64 GB internal flash storage
microSD card slot (up to 256 GB, shared with SIM 2 slot)
128 GB
No microSD card slot
Front Camera16 MP sensor with f/2.0 lens
- 1080p video recording @ 30 fps
24 MP sensor with f/2.0 lens
Rear CameraDual Lens Camera with LED flash
- 16 MP PDAF sensor with f/2.2 lens
- 2 MP depth sensor with f/2.4 lens
- 4K / 1080p video @ 30 fps
Dual Camera System
- 16 MP RGB sensor with f/1.8 lens
- 24 MP monochrome sensor
- single LED flash
SIM CapabilityDual SIM, Dual Standby
Hybrid SIM Card Slot (shared with microSD)
Dual SIM, Dual Standby
ConnectivityWiFi : 802.11a/b/g/n/ac dual band
Bluetooth : BT v4.2
USB 2.0 Type C
WiFi : 802.11a/b/g/n/ac dual band
Bluetooth : BT v4.2
USB 2.0 Type C
GPSYes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, BDSYes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS
FM RadioYesYes
Fingerprint SensorYes, Rear-MountedYes, Front-Mounted
Other SensorsAccelerometer, Gyro, Proximity, CompassAccelerometer, Gyro, Proximity, Compass
Infrared EmitterNoYes
Battery3,750 mAh Li-Po battery (non-removable)3,400 mAh Li-Po battery (non-removable)
Dimensions74.3 mm wide
157.9 mm tall
7.5 mm thick
71.2 mm wide
149.6 mm tall
7.7 mm thick
Weight176 g153 g
Available ColoursBlack, Blue, VioletPhantom Blue / Phantom Green / Midnight Black / Glacier Grey

 

Unboxing The Honor Play

The Honor Play (US Price Check | MY Price Check) comes in a plain white box. It is, after all, a mid-range smartphone. Don’t expect bling.

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Once you fully unbox it, you will find the following items :

  • One Honor Play smartphone
  • One soft TPU bumper case
  • One SIM tray extractor pin
  • One 18 watt Huawei Quick Charge USB adaptor
  • One USB Type C cable

The package may be sparse but practical. Who needs cheap earbuds? What’s more important is that it comes with a free TPU bumper case so you can protect your new smartphone right out of the box!

Next Page > Honor Play Up Close, Cameras + Fingerprint Sensor

 

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The Honor Play Smartphone Up Close!

Designed for mobile gaming, the Honor Play (US Price Check | MY Price Check) is powered by the Kirin 970 SoC, which features a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) that speeds up certain AI functions. To ensure that you get to play your games for hours on-end, it comes with a larger 3,750 mAh LiPo battery that supports 18 W fast charging.

Because it is a larger device, the Honor Play is heavier than the Honor 10 (Price Check). But surprisingly, it is slightly thinner even though with a 10% larger battery!

 

Front + Rear Cameras

The Honor Play (US Price Check | MY Price Check) comes with a high-resolution selfie camera in the front. It has a 16 MP sensor, paired with a fast f/2.2 lens. There appears to be a laser diode on the other side, which is probably used for their AR emoji and 3D face lighting features. It doesn’t have a flash, but uses screen flash instead.

The camera at the back uses a dual-lens system that consists of a 16 MP camera (with a PDAF sensor and f/2.2 lens), and a 2 MP depth-sensing camera. The depth-sensing camera helps the main camera differentiate between the subjects in a photo and its background, allowing for more accurate software bokeh effects.

Please note that the main camera lens module will protrude through the TPU bumper case. The bumper case, therefore, cannot prevent damage to the main camera.

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Fingerprint Sensor

Honor opted to go with a rear fingerprint sensor with the Honor Play (US Price Check | MY Price Check). It is very fast and accurate, and allows you to trigger specific actions with different fingers.

The only downside? You can’t use it to unlock the device while it’s attached to a car mount. That’s when you need to use the Face Unlock feature. It uses the front camera and facial recognition algorithms to authenticate your identity, so it will work even with the Honor Play mounted on your car’s dashboard.

Next Page > Hybrid SIM, Display Notch, GPU Turbo, AI Game 4D Experience, Game Suite

 

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Hybrid SIM Tray

Unlike the Honor 10 (Price Check), the Honor Play has a hybrid SIM tray. This means the SIM 2 slot doubles as a microSD card slot. You can either use a second nanoSIM card, or a microSD card for extra storage capacity.

Its 64 GB internal storage capacity is plenty for many people, but microSD storage offers additional peace of mind – even if the phone is physically damaged or destroyed, you can still recover your data or photos and videos from the microSD card.

 

Display Notch

The Honor Play (US Price Check | MY Price Check) has a Full HD+ display with an aspect ratio of 19.5:9, and a resolution of 1080 x 2340 pixels. It features a display notch that is noticeably larger than that of the Honor 10 (Price Check).

The display notch allows for notifications to be confined to the top, giving you more space for your work… or really, your games. Heh… In games or apps that do not support the notch, it will simply “disappear” by turning black.

 

GPU Turbo

GPU Turbo is a hardware and software combination that increases the “efficiency” of the GPU by up to 60%. It does not mean you get a 60% boost in frame rate, although Honor says it will greatly reduce the jitter rate (variance between the highest and lowest frame rates), while appreciably increasing the overall frame rate.

Honor also claims that it will reduce the Kirin 970 SoC‘s power consumption by 30%, extending its battery life.  In a specific test using King Glory 1.34.1.11, the Honor Play lasted 4.5 hours – 30 minutes longer than the Apple iPhone X (Price Check).

How does GPU Turbo work? From what we understand, it uses a proprietary algorithm in the graphics driver to detect the change between the current frame being rendered, and the next one. This allows the Honor Play to boost CPU and GPU performance for completely new frames, and reduce them for frames with few changes.

The only downside? GPU Turbo support is currently limited. Extremely limited. From what we understand – it will only work with PUBG Mobile, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and King Glory. Naturally, game support will be extended to more games over time.

 

AI Game 4D Experience

The Honor Play also offers an “AI Game 4D Experience” with a feature they call Smart Shock. In certain games (like PUBG), Smart Shock will vibrate the device according to the type of weapon used in the game.

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The AI Game 4D Experience also includes the 3D Gaming Audio capability. Basically, it’s a 3D spatial surround sound effect that helps you to judge the azimuth of a particular sound effect (like footsteps or an explosion).

 

Game Suite

This is a software feature that reduces network latency and game lag, and offers an uninterrupted gaming experience. Turning it on restricts the notifications that you receive, and allows you to play your game while receiving calls simultaneously.

You will only receive notifications for incoming calls, your alarms and low power alerts. Even these notifications will appear smaller, so they won’t disrupt your gaming experience.

Next Page > Setting Up The Honor Play, Ergonomics, Available Memory + Storage

 

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Setting Up The Honor Play

Setting up the Honor Play (US Price Check | MY Price Check) is easy, and takes no more than 10 minutes if you are setting it up as a new device. Take a look at a video of the initial setup process.

 

Ergonomics

The Honor Play (US Price Check | MY Price Check) is definitely much larger than the Honor 10 (Price Check). In fact, it is about the same size as the Samsung Galaxy S9+ – they both have similar-sized displays. It is a phablet that is a better fit for those with bigger hands and pockets.

The 6.3-inch IPS display is bright and brilliant even in daylight, which means you get to play your games wherever you go. The non-standard 18:9 aspect ratio of the main display section gives you more screen space for gaming, but you will get some pillarboxing while watching movies.

 

Available Memory + Storage

For a mid-range smartphone, the Honor Play (US Price Check | MY Price Check) comes with rather large memory and storage capacities. It has 4 GB of memory, of which 1.52 GB (38%) is available for use. That is a considerable amount of bloat, but still enough to run several memory-guzzling apps at the same time.

The Honor Play comes with 64 GB of internal storage, of which just under 51.2 GB (80%) is available for use. That’s enough for over 12,000 photos, or 5.5 hours of 1080p videos, or 2.5 hours of 4K videos.

Next Page > Honor Play Camera Performance – Photos + Videos

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Camera Performance – Photos

The Honor Play (US Price Check | MY Price Check) has a depth-sensing dual-lens camera, with a 16 MP image sensor paired with f/2.2 lens.  Photos from this camera have a 4:3 aspect ratio, with 4608 × 3456 pixels and an average file size of between 2 MB and 3 MB.

Photos from the wide-angle secondary camera have a 4:3 aspect ratio, with 3264 × 2448 pixels and an average file size of between 6 MB and 7 MB.

Here are 10 high-resolution samples from this 16 MP camera for you to check out. Click on them to load the full-sized photos, which you can also download to examine.

As you can see, the Honor Play’s main camera can take really great photos, with bright, vivid colours. And the software bokeh effect is much more accurate, thanks to its depth-sensing camera. However, note that its dual-lens design requires a greater distance to work, so it won’t be able to focus if the object is very close – less than 10 cm or so.

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Camera Performance – Video Recording

Despite its humble price point, the Honor Play (US Price Check | MY Price Check) supports 4K video recording. There is a 10 minute limit, and each clip is also limited to 4 GB in size. It even supports the newer and more efficient H.265 (HEVC) codec.

The Honor Play also supports electronic video stabilisation. However, it is disabled for videos that are recorded in 4K or 1080p at 60 fps.

Video Recording Test #1 : Piano (1080p)

The video stabilisation while recording at 1080p was very good. It’s not quite gimbal-level of stabilisation, but close enough. The Honor Play also showed good control of the highlights – you can see deep into the Padini Concept Store in the background. The recorded audio though was overly bright and lacks dynamic range.

Video Recording Test #2 : Piano (4K)

The 4K resolution is amazing, but there is noticeably less control of the highlights. The video is also jerky, because the Honor Play does not support video stabilisation at this resolution.

Video Recording Test #3 : Street Market (1080p)

The Honor Play’s video stabilisation is very good at this resolution. It felt like it was attached to a gimbal. There was minimal jerkiness even when we panned. There was also good control of the highlights. Very good!

Video Recording Test #4 : Street Market (4K)

Switching to 4K recording disabled video stabilisation, so the end result was a very jerky video. If you really want to record in 4K using the Honor Play, you should do so when it’s attached to a tripod or a gimbal.

Next Page > Work Performance, Battery Life + Recharging Speed

 

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Work Performance – PCMark

We tested the Honor Play’s performance using PCMark, which simulates work applications like web browing, playing video, writing text and editing photos.

Work 2.0 Honor Play Honor 10 ASUS ZenFone Max Pro M1 Samsung Galaxy S9
Performance Score
(Average)
7361 7106 6118 5618
Web Browsing 7695 7295 5815 5357
Video Editing 5499 5159 4898 5265
Writing 6649 6752 5722 4673
Photo Editing 13326 12910 10041 7560
Data Manipulation 5764 5524 5240 5616
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The HiSilicon Kirin 970 is a flagship SoC and it shows. Powered by the Kirin 970, both Honor Play and Honor 10 (Price Check) devices beat the ASUS ZenFone Max Pro M1 as well as the Samsung Galaxy S9 (Price Check)!

 

Battery Life – PCMark

We then tested the Honor Play’s battery performance using PCMark. It basically ran the PCMark work tests until its battery capacity dropped to 20%.

Work 2.0 ASUS ZenFone Max Pro M1 Honor Play Samsung Galaxy S9 Honor 10
Battery Life 14 hours 12 mins 9 hours 56 mins 9 hours 6 mins 8 hours 56 mins
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Despite its large 6.3-inch display, the Honor Play (US Price Check | MY Price Check) managed to deliver a battery life of just under 10 hours!

Thanks to its larger 3,750 mAh battery, it will last about one hour longer than the Samsung Galaxy S9 (Price Check) or Honor 10 (Price Check) smartphones. Only the ASUS ZenFone Max Pro M1 (Price Check), with its phenomenal 5,000 mAh battery, lasted longer.

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Battery Recharging Performance

The Honor Play supports 18W fast charging, and comes with an 18W quick charger. Take a look at how fast it recharged its 3,750 mAh battery.

It took the Honor Play (US Price Check | MY Price Check) just 92 minutes (1 hours 32 minutes) to recharge its battery from 20% to 100%. This gives it a battery life : recharging ratio of just under 6:5.

Next Page > Gaming Performance, Our Verdict + Award, Price + Availability

 

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Gaming Performance – 3DMark

We tested the Honor Play’s gaming performance using 3DMark, using the Ice Storm Unlimited test.

Ice Storm Unlimited Samsung Galaxy S9 Honor Play Honor 10 ASUS ZenFone Max Pro M1
Gaming Score 39588 31622 30560 19752
Graphics 45577 37351 34801 20707
Physics 27116 20576 21423 17008
Graphics Test 1 267.9 fps 208.9 fps 206.2 fps 113.5 fps
Graphics Test 2 157.2 fps 132.8 fps 119.5 fps 74.6 fps
Physics Test 86.1 fps 65.3 fps 68.0 fps 54.0 fps
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As expected, the 12-core ARM Mali-G72 used in the Honor Play (and Honor 10) is fast, flagship-class GPU. The faster Samsung Galaxy S9 (Price Check) actually uses the same GPU, just with 18 cores.

 

Our Verdict

As Huawei’s sister company, Honor has a reputation of offering similar models with better features at an even more affordable price point. The Honor Play (US Price Check | MY Price Check) is yet another example of the incredible value for money that Honor always offers.

The Honor Play is really an improved version of the HUAWEI nova 3i smartphone. They both have the same 6.3-inch FullView display with a notch, and the same 16 MP + 2 MP depth-sensing dual-lens main camera.

Where they differ though are mainly in five aspects.

  • The HUAWEI nova 3i has a 24 MP + 2 MP depth-sensing dual-lens front camera, while the Honor Play only has a 16 MP front camera.
  • The Honor Play features a flagship-class HiSilicon Kirin 970 SoC, while the nova 3i only uses a mid-range Kirin 710 SoC.
  • The HUAWEI nova 3i comes with 128 GB of internal storage, while the Honor Play only comes with 64 GB of storage.
  • The Honor Play comes with a larger 3,750 mAh battery, while the nova 3i only has a 3,340 mAh battery.

This is why Honor is far from being Huawei’s little brother. They are a key driver of Huawei’s phenomenal growth. By offering devices with even better features at a lower price point, Honor always has a price-performance advantage over its bigger brother.

We earlier reviewed the smaller Honor 10 (Price Check), which is a great smartphone in its own right. It too is great for gaming and comes with a gorgeous Aurora Glass back panel. The Honor Play is, in a way, a larger version of the Honor 10.

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Powered by the same flagship-class Kirin 970 SoC, which features a Neural Processing Unit (NPU), it offers a much larger display for greater enjoyment of movies and games. It also comes with a larger battery that gives you longer battery life.

The Honor Play (US Price Check | MY Price Check) also comes with GPU Turbo and “AI Game 4D Experience” with Smart Shock built-in. While both features currently have very limited reach, so don’t expect much from them just yet. However, they are steps in the right direction towards a more immersive gaming experience.

Overall, the Honor Play (US Price Check | MY Price Check) offers a great combination of a large high-resolution display with flagship-class performance and a large battery, in a svelte metal-glass chassis. In fact, when compared to the HUAWEI nova 3i, the Honor Play is obviously the better choice.

This is why we believe the Honor Play deserves our Reviewer’s Choice Award. Congratulations, Honor!

 

Honor Play Price + Availability

The Honor Play launched in China in June at RMB 1,999, which is about US$ 293 / MYR 1,189. Honor started rolling it out globally in August, with the following countries being first :

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  • Malaysia : RM 1,249 (10 August 2018)
  • Singapore : SGD 429 (8 August 2018)
  • Philippines : PHP 15,990 (13 August 2018)

You can now purchase the Honor Play at these online stores :

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The Top 5 Reasons Why The Honor 10 Is Awesome!

The Honor 10 smartphone is one of the best smartphones Honor ever made. Here are the top 5 reasons why the Honor 10 is amazing!

 

Reason #1 : Exquisite Aurora Glass

The first thing that strikes you when you pick up the Honor 10 (US Price Check) for the first time is the spectacular Aurora Glass design. Inspired by aerial net sculptures and first introduced in the Honor 8, the Aurora Glass is painstakingly crafted using 15 layers of membrane and glass in a Class 100 dust-free workshop.

Creating the Aurora Glass is a laborious affair that takes twice as long to fabricate, with a high failure rate. But all that hard work and sacrifice is rewarded with the exquisite Aurora Glass design that is literally out-of-this-world.

 

Reason #2 : Large True Colour Display

You will be amazed by the Honor 10’s large 5.84″ display, with an incredible 86% screen-to-body ratio. Thanks to its bezel-less design, the Honor 10 (US Price Check) is only about the size of a traditional 5.2″ smartphone. You will love how it fits in your hand and pocket. Now you can have your cake and eat it too – a large display in a small package!

You will also be amazed by the display’s true colour capability. The Honor 10 (US Price Check) has an improved FullView 2.0 display with a wide 96% NTSC colour gamut. Once you see your photos and videos appearing exactly as they would in real life, you can never go back!

 

Reason #3 : AI Camera

The Honor 10 (US Price Check) has an amazing dual-lens AI camera that combines a 16 MP RGB camera with a 24 MP monochrome camera to capture photos with less noise and greater detail.

The RGB sensor captures the colour data; while the monochrome sensor captures the details, with less noise and greater sharpness. Both cameras then combine their sensor data to create a final image that is sharper and with greater detail than would be possible with a single RGB camera

But its photographic capabilities go beyond its dual-lens setup.

The Honor 10 AI Camera can recognise more than 500 photographic scenarios in real-time, identifying the outlines of objects and separating them from the background using the world’s first Semantic Image Segmentation technology.

Semantic Image Segmentation is game-changing because it allows the Honor 10 to literally take apart the picture, and dynamically enhance each element separately for the best results possible. You can take great photos, but the Honor 10 will make them amazing!

 

Reason #4 : Flagship CPU With AI Capabilities

The Honor 10 (US Price Check) runs on the most powerful platform from HiSilicon – the Kirin 970. This is a flagship-class platform that is fabricated on the latest and most power-efficient 10 nm process.

The Kirin 970 does not only boast a fast octa-core CPU and a 12-core GPU, it supports the latest LPDDR4X memory, and comes with the best-in-class network capabilities – LTE Cat18 for download speeds of up to 1.2 Gbps, with 4×4 MIMO, 5CC carrier aggregation and 256-QAM.

The HiSilicon Kirin 970 also boasts a dedicated NPU (Neural Processing Unit) that delivers 25X the AI processing performance, at half the size! The Kirin 970 NPU is more than twice as fast as the Apple iPhone 8 Plus, and 21X faster than the Samsung Galaxy S8.

The AI processing capability of the Kirin 970 NPU is important because it allows the Honor 10 AI Camera to quickly identify the scene and apply the appropriate settings for the best picture possible. Take this motion capture demo, for example.

The Kirin 970’s ability to identify and predict the motion in the scene allows it to better capture a sharper image. Without the AI predictive capability, it will be virtually impossible to capture a clear image of an object in motion.

 

Reason #5 : Unbelievable Price!

Flagship smartphones always feature the best technologies possible. However, they are often priced in the stratosphere for the same reason. The Honor 10 (US Price Check) is one of the few exceptions.

Price at only RM 1,599 / ~US$ 399, the Honor 10 (US Price Check) offers flagship capabilities at a fraction of the cost. Can you find another flagship smartphone with the same features at this price point? No, you cannot!

 

Honor 10 Price & Availability

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The Honor 10 is available in three colour options – Phantom Blue, Glacier Grey and Midnight Black – at a low, low price of RM 1,599 / £299 / US$ 403! You can get them from :

Don’t forget to check out our comprehensive Honor 10 Review!

 

Disclosure

This post was sponsored by Honor Malaysia.

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The Honor 10 AI Camera Smartphone Reviewed!

Officially launched on 15 May 2018 in  London, the Honor 10 is one of the most eagerly-anticipated mid-range smartphone of 2018. It offers a flagship processor with an AI chip, a full HD+ display and large memory and storage capacities at an affordable price point.

In this review, we will take an in-depth look at the Honor 10 – its key features, specifications and performance. We will also look at the quality of the photos and videos its AI Camera takes.

 

Honor 10 Specifications

SpecificationsHonor 10
Display5.84" Full HD+ IPS display
- 1080 x 2280 pixels (432 ppi)
- 19:9 aspect ratio
ProtectionCorning Gorilla Glass
Operating SystemAndroid 8.1 Oreo with EMUI 8.1
PlatformHisilicon Kirin 970
Processor4 x ARM Cortex-A73 cores (2.4 GHz)
4 x ARM Cortex-A53 cores (1.8 GHz)
Graphics ProcessorARM Mali-G72 MP12
Memory4 GB
Storage128 GB
No microSD card slot
Front Camera24 MP sensor with f/2.0 lens
Rear CameraDual Camera System
- 16 MP RGB sensor with f/1.8 lens
- 24 MP monochrome sensor
- single LED flash
SIM CapabilityDual SIM, Dual Standby
ConnectivityWiFi : 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (dual band)
Bluetooth 4.2
USB 2.0 Type C
GPSYes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS
NFCYes
Fingerprint SensorYes, front-mounted
Infrared EmitterYes
Battery3,400 mAh lithium-ion polymer battery (non-removable)
Dimensions71.2 mm wide
149.6 mm tall
7.7 mm thick
Weight153 g
Available ColoursPhantom Blue / Phantom Green / Midnight Black / Glacier Grey

 

Unboxing The Honor 10

The Honor 10 (Price Check) comes in a white cardboard box with a simple 10 printed in blue. Let’s unbox it, and see what we find inside!

To keep costs low, Honor provided only the essentials in the Honor 10 package :

  • One Honor 10 (Price Check) smartphone
  • One clear TPU bumper case
  • One 22.5 W Huawei SuperCharge charger
  • One USB Type C cable
  • One SIM tray extractor pin
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The Honor 10 Smartphone Up Close

The Honor 10 (Price Check) is built around the powerful Kirin 970 SoC with a dedicated NPU, with a 5.84″ Full HD+ display with a “notch”. It also comes with a dual-camera system, and large memory and storage capacities.

And you might have noticed it by now – the Honor 10 (Price Check) boasts the really great-looking Aurora Glass back that was first introduced in the Honor 8. What you might not have noticed – the Honor 10 does not come with a microSD card slot. More on that later…

Next Page > The Honor 10 Key Features

 

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The Honor 10 Cameras

The Honor 10 (Price Check) comes with a very high-resolution selfie camera in the front. It has a 24 MP sensor, with a fast f/2.0 lens. That allows it to better handle low-light conditions – important since the front camera does not have any flash.

Its killer feature is the AI Camera at the back. It consists of a 16 MP RGB camera with f/1.8 lens, and a 24 MP monochrome camera. This dual-camera set-up does not only improve depth perception (for more accurate bokeh effects), it also creates sharper, more detailed pictures.

The RGB sensor captures the colour data, while the monochrome sensor captures the details, with less noise and greater sharpness. Both cameras then combine their sensor data to create a final image that is sharper and with greater detail than would be possible with a single RGB camera

 

Fingerprint Sensor

The Honor 10 (Price Check) uses a front fingerprint sensor. The sensor is completely flat, which looks great because it merges seamlessly with the black bezel. Placing it in the front makes it is great for those who want to use their Honor 10 while it’s attached to a car mount.

The sensor is quite accurate but is rather hard to train, as our setup video will show. It is also relatively slow to detect your fingerprint. For best results, you’ll need to press your finger against the sensor with some force.

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No MicroSD Card Slot

The Honor 10 (Price Check) is the first Honor smartphone to do away completely with the microSD card slot. The tray you see below fits up to two nano SIM cards, but there is no microSD card tray.

Honor could have given it a hybrid SIM slot, as Samsung has done with the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ smartphones. Instead, they chose not to include a microSD card slot, and give the Honor 10 a large storage capacity of 128 GB.

 

Display Notch

The Honor 10 (Price Check) has a Full HD+ display, with an aspect ratio of 19:9 and a resolution of 1080 x 2280 pixels. It features the display notch made popular by the iPhone X.

Although the notification icons nearest to the notch can appear “cut-off”, the Honor 10 is smart enough to work around the notch. In games and applications that don’t support the notification area, it just displays the main 1080 x 2240 section.

Next Page > Initial Setup, Ergonomics, Available Memory + Storage

 

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Setting Up The Honor 10

Setting up the Honor 10 (Price Check) is quite easy, and takes no more than 10 minutes if you are setting it up as a new device. We only faced some issues in registering our fingerprints. Honor needs to look at that fingerprint sensor…

 

Ergonomics

The Honor 10 (Price Check) is an amazingly small smartphone, even though it sports a display that is almost 6″ is size. It is just over 7.1 cm wide, and under 15 cm tall, and weighs just 153 g. This is despite sporting the multilayer Aurora Glass back. It naturally fits very well for those with small hands, and small pockets.

The IPS display is very bright and vivid indoors, and does a decent job outdoors despite not being an AMOLED display. The non-standard 19:9 aspect ratio, while useful in giving you more screen space, will result in some pillarboxing for movies.

 

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Available Memory & Storage

For a mid-range smartphone, the Honor 10 (Price Check) comes with rather large memory and storage capacities. It has 4 GB of RAM, of which 1.62 GB (40.5%) is available for use. That’s plenty to run several memory-guzzling apps at the same time. Interestingly, the Honor 10 has more free memory than the Samsung Galaxy S9!

Honor chose to give the Honor 10 (Price Check) smartphone a TON of storage – 128 GB, with a whopping 115 GB of free space. That is enough to store about 28,750 photos, or 18 hours of 1080p videos, or 8 hours of 4K videos.

Next Page > Honor 10 Camera Performance – Photos + Videos

 

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Camera Performance – Photos

Honor did not reveal the sensors used in their dual camera system, but the final photos have a 24 MP resolution with the 4:3 aspect ratio, with 5632 x 4224 pixels. Despite the high resolution, Honor appears to use a more efficient (or lossier) compression algorithm, resulting in a file size of between 3 MB and 4 MB.

Here are 8 high-resolution samples for you to check out. Click on them to load the full-sized photos, which you can also download to examine.

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Camera Performance – Video Recording

Despite having 24 MP sensors on both front and rear cameras, the Honor 10 (Price Check) is only capable of recording 4K videos from the main AI camera. The 24 MP front camera can only record 720p videos. The 4K video recording by the main camera is also limited to just 10 minutes. This was likely done to prevent sensor overheating.

Video Recording Test #1 : Piano (1080p)

First off – we can see that there is no optical or electrionic image stabilisation, so the video can get very jerky. The audio, while clear, is very thin and overly bright (too much emphasis on treble).

Video Recording Test #2 : Piano (4K)

The 4K resolution is amazing, and there is good control of the highlights. You can see right into the Padini Concept Store. The audio recording is, however, quite a letdown. Honor should try to tone down the emphasis on the high frequencies, and boost the lower frequencies for a more balanced sound.

Video Recording Test #3 : Street Market (1080p)

There is absolutely no image stabilisation, so you get to experience every shake and jolt. Remember – we recorded this in the two-handed mode.

Video Recording Test #4 : Street Market (4K)

When recording at 4K, there appeared to be somewhat more noticeable jerkiness. Overall – not a very pleasant video to watch!

Next Page > Honor 10 Work Performance, Battery Life + Recharging Speed

 

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Work Performance – PCMark

We tested the Honor 10’s performance using PCMark, which simulates work applications like web browing, playing video, writing text and editing photos.

Work 2.0 Honor 10 Samsung Galaxy S9 Samsung Galaxy S9+ Samsung Galaxy A8 2018
Performance Score
(Average)
7106 5618 5303 5197
Web Browsing 7295 5357 5155 5035
Video Editing 5159 5265 4998 4433
Writing 6752 4673 5158 5607
Photo Editing 12910 7560 7082 7238
Data Manipulation 5524 5616 4458 4183
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The Kirin 970 powering the Honor 10 (Price Check) is a true flagship SoC. Look at how fast it was at Work 2.0, beating the Samsung Galaxy S9 (Price Check) by 26%, and Galaxy S9+ (Price Check) by 34%.

 

Battery Life – PCMark

We then tested the Honor 10′ battery performance using PCMark. It basically ran the PCMark work tests until its battery capacity dropped to 20%.

Work 2.0 Samsung Galaxy S8 Samsung Galaxy S9 Samsung Galaxy S9+ Honor 10
Battery Life 10 hours 32 mins 9 hours 6 mins 9 hours 5 mins 8 hours 56 mins
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The Honor 10 (Price Check) has a slightly smaller 3,400 mAh battery than the 3,500 mAh battery of the Samsung Galaxy S9+ (Price Check). It managed to last just under 9 hours in this stress test.

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Battery Recharging Performance

The Honor 10 (Price Check) comes with a Huawei SuperCharge fast charger with a power output of 22.5 W. Take a look at how fast it recharged its 3,400 mAh battery.

It took the Honor 10 (Price Check) about 107 minutes (1 hour 47 minutes) to recharge its battery from 20% to 100%. This is 11.5 minutes longer than Samsung Galaxy S9+ (Price Check) with its 18 W fast charger.

This gives it a rather poor battery life : recharging ratio of 5:1, even with a high-powered fast charger. Honor really needs to look into addressing this issue.

Next Page > Honor 10 Gaming Performance, Our Verdict

 

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Gaming Performance – 3DMark

We tested the Honor 10s’ gaming performance using 3DMark, using the Ice Storm Unlimited test.

Ice Storm Unlimited Samsung Galaxy S9+ Samsung Galaxy S9 Honor 10 Samsung Galaxy S8
Gaming Score 42489 39588 30560 29509
Graphics 49852 45577 34801 33279
Physics 28009 27116 21423 21130
Graphics Test 1 308.6 fps 267.9 fps 206.2 fps 173.1 fps
Graphics Test 2 167.0 fps 157.2 fps 119.5 fps 124.3 fps
Physics Test 88.9 fps 86.1 fps 68.0 fps 67.1 fps
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While the Kirin 970 was very fast at work applications, it did not do so well in games. Its ARM Mali-G72 GPU only has 12-cores, while the ARM Mali-G72 GPU used in the Samsung Galaxy S9 (Price Check) by 26%, and Galaxy S9+ (Price Check) has 18 cores.

Even so, the Honor 10’s gaming performance was more than decent for a mid-range smartphone. It was slightly faster than the Galaxy S8, which uses the older ARM Mali-G71 GPU (with 20 cores).

 

Our Verdict

The Honor 10 (Price Check) is a rather impressive smartphone. It is a mid-range smartphone based on the Kirin 970 flagship platform, with 4 GB of RAM and a whopping 128 GB of flash storage. And it looks really good, thanks to its Aurora Glass back, and the almost bezel-less design.

It was no surprise to see the Honor 10 power through our benchmarks like a champ. It was especially fast at work applications, while offering good flagship-class gaming performance. And with so much RAM and storage space, there’s really nothing it cannot handle.

The Honor 10 (Price Check) is also one of the smallest smartphones with a 6″ display. Ergonomically, this is great for those with smaller hands, or small pockets

Its AI camera also worked as advertised, producing really high-quality 24 MP photos. This is yet another flagship feature Honor packed into this mid-range smartphone. However, its video recording capabilities are rather dismal.

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The Honor 10 AI camera does not support optical image stabilisation, and for some reason, Honor neglected to enable even electronic image stabilisation. So the video we recorded were shaky, even when recorded with two hands. The recorded audio was also too thin and overly bright.

Finally, it has a rather lacklustre battery life, lasting just under 9 hours in our stress test. While not the worst we have seen, it could be better.

Now, it is easy enough to criticise the Honor 10’s shortcomings, but we have to remember that this is a mid-range smartphone that is 30-40% cheaper than flagship smartphones with equivalent features. That itself is Honor’s chief accomplishment with the Honor 10 (Price Check).

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Honor 10 Price, Availability & Presentation Revealed!

Wondering how much the Honor 10 will cost? You’re in luck! Here are the full details of the Honor 10 price and availability details, including its launch presentation by George Zhao!

Don’t forget to read our Honor 10 review!

 

Honor 10

Officially launched in London on 15 May 2018, the Honor 10 is one of the most eagerly-anticipated mid-range smartphone of 2018. Here was its launch presentation by George Zhao Zhiwei, Head of Honor Malaysia.

It is built around the powerful Kirin 970 SoC with a dedicated NPU, and boasts a 5.84″ Full HD+ display with a “notch”. It also comes with a dual-camera system, and large memory and storage capacities. Here are its key specifications :

SpecificationsHonor 10
Display5.84" Full HD+ IPS display
- 1080 x 2280 pixels (432 ppi)
- 19:9 aspect ratio
ProtectionCorning Gorilla Glass
Operating SystemAndroid 8.1 Oreo with EMUI 8.1
PlatformHisilicon Kirin 970
Processor4 x ARM Cortex-A73 cores (2.4 GHz)
4 x ARM Cortex-A53 cores (1.8 GHz)
Graphics ProcessorARM Mali-G72 MP12
Memory4 GB
Storage128 GB
No microSD card slot
Front Camera24 MP sensor with f/2.0 lens
Rear CameraDual Camera System
- 16 MP RGB sensor with f/1.8 lens
- 24 MP monochrome sensor
- single LED flash
SIM CapabilityDual SIM, Dual Standby
ConnectivityWiFi : 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (dual band)
Bluetooth 4.2
USB 2.0 Type C
GPSYes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS
NFCYes
Fingerprint SensorYes, front-mounted
Infrared EmitterYes
Battery3,400 mAh lithium-ion polymer battery (non-removable)
Dimensions71.2 mm wide
149.6 mm tall
7.7 mm thick
Weight153 g
Available ColoursPhantom Blue / Phantom Green / Midnight Black / Glacier Grey
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Honor 10 Price & Availability

The Honor 10 launched in London with an official price of £399 for the 128 GB model. This works out to be around RM 2,139 as of 18 May 2018. However, we have good news!

The Honor 10 will be available for sale in Malaysia for a low, low price of RM 1,699 / £318! But if that’s not enough, Honor Malaysia is giving a RM 100 cash back, which means the Honor 10 will cost only RM 1,599 / £299!!!

The Honor 10 goes on sale on 24 May 2018, and the special RM 1,599 price ostensibly lasts from 24 May to 31 May. On 1 June 2018, it would be priced at RM 1,599. This basically removes the 6% GST tax concern from everyone’s mind.

The Honor 10’s price of RM 1,599 / £299 / US$ 403 is the lowest price globally. It’s a whopping 14% cheaper than the Chinese launch price of RMB 2,999 / RM 1,869 / £336 / US$ 471!

The Honor 10 will be available in three colour options – Phantom Blue, Glacier Grey and Midnight Black.

Don’t forget to read our Honor 10 review!

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The honor View10 Preview, Price & Specifications Revealed!

Right after honor launched the honor 7X FullView Display smartphone, they gave us an in-depth preview of their first AI smartphone – the honor View10 (also known as the honor V10). Check out their 26-minute long presentation, and see for yourself what you can expect from the honor View10 AI smartphone!

Updated @ 2018-01-05 : Added the retail price, and pre-order offer for the honor View10.

Originally posted @ 2017-12-19

 

The honor View10 AI Smartphone

As honor’s first AI smartphone, the honor View10 boasts a plethora of AI functionality, or so the marketing pitch goes. First and foremost, it is powered by the Kirin 970 SoC  – the first to have a dedicated NPU (find out how fast it is!).

The Kirin 970 with its dedicated NPU is what enables its AI functionality, delivering 25X better neural processing performance at 1/50th the power consumption of a traditional CPU. Let’s take a look at its key features.

AI Camera

Photos taken with the honor View10 will be adjusted automatically to create a final output that looks like they were taken professionally. In addition to recognising the subject in focus, it has the ability to intelligently recognise up to 13 different scenes.

AI Motion Detection

The main camera also has the capability to predict motion in order to improve the focusing response. This allows it to better capture moving subjects with less motion blur.

AI Front Camera

The front camera uses the machine learning results from millions of portraits to improve the look of the portraits you take. It also attempts to intelligently adjust the brightness of the front flash to better capture your selfie without overblowing the highlights.

NPU Driven Translation

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The honor View10 comes with NPU driven translation, running on Microsoft Translator, and powered by the Kirin 970 NPU. It allows you to take a picture of foreign words and have it translated into your language of choice.

AI Gaming

The honor View10 will intelligently adjust graphics settings and system resources for better gaming performance.

Sync Play

Using NFC Connect, multiple devices can be linked as mobile speakers, delivering synchronised surround music. Note that these devices must support honor Sync Play.

 

The honor View10 Specifications

Specificationshonor View10
Display5.99" FullView Display
- 1080 x 2160 pixels
- 18:9 aspect ratio, 402 ppi
BuildAluminium body with front glass
Operating SystemAndroid 8.0
PlatformHiSilicon Kirin 970
Processor4 x ARM Cortex-A73 cores (2.4 GHz)
4 x ARM Cortex-A53 cores (1.8 GHz)
Graphics ProcessorARM Mali-G72 MP12
Memory4 GB LPDDR4 SDRAM
Storage64 / 128 GB internal flash storage
microSD card slot (up to 256 GB)
Front Camera13 MP sensor with f/2.0 lens
Rear CameraDual-Lens Camera System
- 20 MP main camera with PDAF and f/1.8 lens
- 16 MP sensor with f/1.8 lens
Battery3,750 mAh LiPo battery (non-removable)
ConnectivityWiFi : 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (dual-band)
Bluetooth 4.2
USB 2.0 Type C
Size74.98 mm wide
157.0 mm tall
6.97 mm thick
Weight172 g
Available ColoursNavy Blue / Midnight Black / Beach Gold / Aurora Blue / Charm Red

 

The honor View10 Price & Availability

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The honor View10 will be made available in Malaysia on 12 January 2018, with pre-orders beginning on 8 January. It will be offered in only two colours – Aurora Blue and Midnight Black.

Despite its official price of 500 Euros and 450 Pounds in Europe, honor is selling the View10 for only RM 2,099 / ~US$ 509 – about 15% cheaper!

honor has a pre-order offer for the first 1,000 units, that will be sold on Lazada, Vmall, Shoppee and 11Street. These pre-order purchases will come with an honor band A2 and a Final Fantasy redemption card.

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How Fast Is The Huawei Kirin 970 NPU?

Arguably the most interesting feature in the Huawei Kirin 970 SoC is its NPU. The Kirin 970 NPU allows for much faster AI processing, with lower power consumption. But just how fast is the Kirin 970 NPU? And does it really matter that the Kirin 970 has an NPU? Read on and find out!

Learn more about the Kirin 970 SoC in The HUAWEI Kirin 970 Deep Dive Tech Report!

 

The Huawei Kirin 970 NPU

The Kirin 970 NPU offers 25X the AI processing performance of the CPU, at half the size. More importantly, it only consumers 1/50 the power of the CPU. It allows the Kirin 970 to recognise about 2005 images per minute, or about 33 per second. That is more than twice as fast as the new Apple iPhone 8 Plus, and 21X faster than the Samsung Galaxy S8.

Here is another video demonstrating how fast the Kirin 970 is compared to the Samsung Galaxy S8+ smartphone in AI image recognition :

Although Huawei is reticent about what apps will actually use the NPU, since it is not an industry-standard implementation (there are none so far). But they revealed that one feature that would use the NPU, and presumably appear in the Huawei Mate 10, is the AI Noise Reduction feature. They promise that it would increase the voice recognition rate from 80% to 92% even with background car noise.

Another feature they showcased was a Samsung Bixby-like app which uses AI algorithms to “guess” the size and weight of a food object, in order to give you an estimate of its caloric content. While this certainly is an interesting use of artificial intelligence, it is far from accurate, as the video shows:

 

Does It Matter?

While the Huawei Kirin 970 NPU speed is impressive, we have to point out that it is a proprietary implementation because there is no industry standard at the moment. Huawei has also stated that the NPU will be restricted to their flagship SoCs, and will not be added to lower-end SoCs.

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In other words, there will be little impetus for developers to spend time and effort to develop apps specifically to make use of the Kirin 970 NPU.

Huawei has offered their HiAI API, as well as the HiKey 970 developer’s kit, so developers can quickly add AI computing capability to their apps. But until there is a substantial number of smartphones with the Kirin 970 NPU, we will not likely see third-party NPU-optimised apps being developed.

The Huawei Mate 10 will definitely ship with some built-in apps to make use of the Kirin 970 NPU, of course. However, it is more than likely they will be the only Kirin 970 NPU-optimised apps most users will be able to enjoy. It will take a few more years before NPU-optimised apps become commonplace.

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The HUAWEI Kirin 970 Deep Dive Tech Report

Huawei is pitching their Kirin 970 SoC ahead of the Huawei Mate 10 launch in Munich on 16 October 2017. This will be their first SoC to include a Neural Processing Unit (NPU). What is an NPU? What other advantages will the new Huawei Kirin 970 bring with it? Let’s take a deep dive into the technical details and find out!

Find out just how fast the Huawei Kirin 970 NPU is at performing AI tasks!

 

The HUAWEI Kirin 970 Deep Dive

Eric Zhou (Huawei Chipset Product Marketing Director) presented this in-depth “deep dive” presentation.

The new Huawei Kirin 970 is an astonishingly small chip. Fabricated on the latest 10 nm process technology, it packs 5.5 million transistors into a square centimeter of silicon. In addition to the NPU, it packs an octa-core processor, and a 12-core GPU with support for LPDDR4X memory.

The Kirin 970 also boasts a slew of improvements in network capabilities like LTE Cat18 for download speeds of up to 1.2 Gbps, with 4×4 MIMO, 5CC carrier aggregation and 256-QAM. It will also support dual 4G SIMs with VoLTE, albeit only one can be used for data at any one time.

Although Huawei is reticent about what apps will actually use the NPU, since it is not an industry-standard implementation (there are none so far). But they revealed that one feature that would use the NPU, and presumably appear in the Huawei Mate 10, is the AI Noise Reduction feature. They promise that it would increase the voice recognition rate from 80% to 92% even with background car noise.

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Better Motion Capture

In the photography department, the Huawei Kirin 970 improves the camera response time, auto-focus capability and motion detection speed for better motion capture. It also promises improved noise reduction for low light photography. On the audio front, the Kirin 970 will have a full 32-bit @ 384K audio path for high-definition audio capability.

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