There’s no escaping the continuing appeal of Apple’s smartphones, and whilst they continue to push the camera capabilities of their premium devices, such as the iPhone X, there are alternatives in the market like the Honor View 10 and OnePlus 5T that cost roughly half the price yet still offer high-end features and contemporary design. We took the Honor View 10 out, to put the camera through its paces

Honor View 10 camera key points

• Dual rear camera
• 2x zoom
• Impressive image quality

To kick off, the Honor View 10 possesses more megapixels within its camera system than pretty many phones in the current market – 49 in total. Overall it possesses excellent all-round features [for the price tag] with 128GB of storage, the advanced Kirin 970 chipset which can also be found in the Huawei Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, and a 20MP/16MP dual-camera system on the back, giving low-loss 2x zoom. One of the main points to make about the View 10’s camera set up is that it’s a great deal of fun to shoot with. There’s virtually zero shutter lag, focusing is fairly quick and it’s possible to shoot in Auto mode, knowing that you can achieve [mostly] great shots each and every time.

As a smartphone brand, Honor come from the same camp as Huawei products and as such, know a thing or two about camera capabilities. On the rear of the View 10 you’ll find a pair of slightly odd-looking a bug-eyed pair of camera lenses; one of which employs a 16-megapixel colour sensor, the other a familiar 20-megapixel monochrome sensor.

Both Huawei and Honor have adopted a similar setup before the Honor View 10 with the higher-resolution [20MP] camera being used to allow for zooming in to 2x, giving greater detail than you would naturally gain from cropping into the standard 16-megapixel image. There’s no specific Auto HDR mode, but even with this in mind, it’s apparent that the Honor View 10 makes notable dynamic range improvements with every shot by employing the application of artificial intelligence [AI].

As we’ve seen with the Huawei handsets, Honor also bigs up the application of AI in their camera’s functions, and as a result, it’s rare to find blown highlights in the images and, as long as you choose your subject correctly, photographs should usually impress, being bright and sharp.

Shooting modes The Honor View 10 has a good deal of shooting modes, and more than most of its higher-priced competitors. From the main shooting screen you can use the familiar ‘shallow depth of field’ effect, which lets you blur out the foreground or background, giving a dramatic effect to your images. There’s also a Portrait mode [both front and rear cameras] and a ‘Moving Picture’ mode that, as with the iPhone, takes a mini video clip with each shot.

There are so many clever applications within the Honor View 10 that you have to ask yourself if they’re all necessary. Most people are already used to applying ‘cartoon-esque’ filters using other, third-party applications, aren’t they?

Scroll left to right in the camera app and you’ll open up a bank of extras with some classics, such as ‘Panorama’, ‘Pro Mode’ and ‘HDR’ with others inspired by popular apps like Prisma and Snapchat. The ‘Artist’ mode applies clever filters that will transform your photographs, making them look like paintings. In fact there are so many clever applications within the Honor View 10 that you have to ask yourself if they’re all necessary. Most people are already used to applying ‘cartoon-esque’ filters using other, third-party applications, aren’t they?

The Honor View 10 camera’s image quality overall is very good. The software does a solid job of balancing various light conditions and scenes, letting you be pretty casual about how you shoot with it. However, it does trade image impact rather than realism at times with its exposure metering often being higher than it should really be, and we found that the greens were often rendered too bright. In fact, with certain scenes, the View 10’s inclination to ramp up brightness until the highlights get near to clipping, which can spoil the image contrast.

Video Video-wise, the View 10 shoots at up to 4K res [with the rear camera], and up to 1080p with the front camera. It can also produce 60fps 1080p footage with the main camera. Pricing and availability Available since Jan 2018, the Honor View 10’s face-value is £449 in the UK although it can be found for considerably less now. Find out more HERE