The HONOR View10 includes powerful new AI features

Sponsored by HONOR

Looking for a high-end handset without paying top dollar for the experience? That might sound like a tall order, but it’s exactly what you get with the new HONOR View10, which  is now up for pre-order priced at just $499.

The View10 runs on the powerful Kirin 970 SoC, with its Mali-G72 GPU and all-new AI-specific chip, the Neural Processing Unit (NPU). This chip brings with it a ton of new features which allow the View10 to “learn” about its owner’s habits so it can become even more useful.

Here’s a look at the many features of the NPU, and how it improves your phone experience with the HONOR View10.

The Kirin 970 and the NPU

The Kirin 970 inside the View10 was created in-house by HONOR parent company HUAWEI. Its NPU AI processor includes a heterogeneous computing architecture. Compared to ARM-based processors, which use four Cortex-A73 cores, the NPU can handle the same AI tasks with a 25-times faster, along with a 98 percent decrease in power consumption.

Using the Kirin 970 and its NPU, the View10 can process about 33 pictures per second. In fact, according to In China Mobile’s 2017 quality report on smartphones, the Kirin 970 scored the highest in overall performance, ahead of competitors like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, and Apple’s A11 chip in the latest iPhones.

The NPU improves photos

The HONOR View10 includes a dual-camera setup on its back, with a main 16 MP color sensor and a 20 MP monochrome sensor. The NPU uses intelligent photography algorithms to recognize scenes and objects like blue skies, flowers, plants, beaches, sunrises/sunsets, performances, food, text, nightscapes, snow, cats, dogs, and portrait. When you take a picture with the rear camera on the View10, the NPU automatically changes to the right mode so you can perfectly capture the scene without having to mess with any menu options.

The cameras also include a 1x digital zoom with features like phase detection, depth, and contrast focusing. The use of AI-powered real-time scene and object features allows the View10 to use the best and fastest focusing mode and take better, more dynamic photos.

The View10 also comes with a 13 MP front-facing camera, and a portrait mode to boot. The View10’s portrait mode uses the NPU to separate the portrait from the background, creating a bokeh effect. The front camera on the View10 can also use its software to even out the position of fingers and arms in selfie photos, along with group photos scenes.

The NPU can help with gaming

Playing games on the HONOR View10 should be a much better experience than on other phones, thanks once again to the phone’s NPU. The View10 has a special Gaming Suite which adds several features meant specifically for hardcore mobile gamers.

If you want to play a game and not be interrupted by calls or messages, the Gaming Suite on the View10 can be set up so calls and message notifications don’t come in while you are playing. On the other hand, if you want to take a call, but keep playing, the View10 can also answer calls in hands-free mode without stopping your quest to fight the dragon. You can even lock the View10’s fingerprint sensor so it doesn’t activate if accidentally pressed.

The Kirin 970 has eight cores; four Cortex-A73 cores and four Cortex-A53 cores, with a maximum clock speed of 2.4 GHz. It also includes the Mali G72 GPU with 12 cores, which increases the 970’s processing speed and power efficiency for graphics by 20 percent and 50 percent respectively. Using AI, the View10 can allocate system resources in complex game scenarios, based on its ability to identify graphical demands and frame rates. This means the gaming experience on the View10 should be as good, if not better, than phones with the same level of hardware, many of which cost hundreds more.

The Kirin 970 inside the HONOR View10 is a powerful processor on its own. But combined with its NPU, the phone can do things no other current phone can, and at hundreds less than the most expensive phones on the market.