Huawei P10 review: a fantastic phone due to great build quality, camera, ergonomics, and fingerprint sensor, but screen is too dim outdoors, UI skin has issues
Jordan Palmer / Android Police :
Context & Ripple Effects
Jordan Palmer's verdict continues a pattern reviewers have flagged since the P9 review a year earlier: Huawei builds excellent camera-and-chassis hardware but ships it under an Emotion UI skin that hinders usability. The P10 repeats that split almost line for line — great build quality, camera, ergonomics, and fingerprint sensor against software complaints.
The screen critique also lands awkwardly next to the Mate 9 review from five months prior, which praised a super-bright display; a too-dim-outdoors panel puts the flagship P-series behind Huawei's own larger sibling on one of the most visible specs.
First-order effects
- Buyers choosing between Huawei flagships face a real trade-off: the P10 wins on ergonomics and fingerprint sensor, while the Mate 9 keeps the brightness advantage and longer battery life claims.
- Huawei's flagship pitch now rests on hardware alone — the review gives competitors like Samsung and Google an easy software-superiority talking point at retail.
Second-order effects
- Persistent Emotion UI criticism across the P9, Honor 8, and now P10 raises the cost of Huawei's Android-skin strategy, pushing the company toward cleaner software or closer stock-Android alignment to stop losing reviewer points.
- Display suppliers and component choices come under scrutiny when a flagship ships dimmer than its own Mate sibling, making panel selection a visible differentiator between Huawei lines.
Third-order effects
- If the hardware-strong/software-weak split holds — as it does again in the P30 Pro review two years later — Huawei's brand ceiling stays set by its software, capping premium pricing power no matter how good the cameras get.
- A recurring reviewer template for Huawei (praise the camera and build, dock the skin) hardens into market perception that later models must actively overcome rather than merely match.
The trend: Huawei's flagship reviews show hardware closing the gap with Samsung and Google while its own software skin remains the recurring drag on premium positioning.