HUAWEI P10 and P10 Plus: 5 things that could make them even better

The newly-announced HUAWEI P10 and P10 Plus smartphones certainly look like worthy successors to the HUAWEI P9 and P9 Plus that launched just under a year ago. There are definitely some hardware improvements in the new P10 models, including some with its Leica-branded dual rear camera.

But, as always with these kinds of product reveals, we do think that HUAWEI could have made a few tweaks in the hardware and software specs so the P10 and P10 Plus could have been even better. Here’s what we think could be improved for these phones.

Higher resolution display for the P10

While the HUAWEI P10 Plus will have a 2560 x 1440 resolution for its 5.5-inch display, the smaller 5.1-inch P10 is still stuck in Full HD land with a resolution of 1920 x 1080. We think that it’s time for flagship devices like the P10 to ditch Full HD and go up to higher resolutions, even if it does affect the phone’s battery life a bit.

Because the standard P10’s display at a lower resolution, this is likely the reason why HUAWEI passed on making these phones compatible with Google Daydream. We’ve seen this situation before, too; back at CES 2017, HUAWEI announced that an update would come to the Mate 9 Pro and Porsche Design Mate 9 that would add Daydream support, but the standard Mate 9, with its Full HD display, would not be getting the update.

No word on adding Amazon Alexa

In the US, the HUAWEI Mate 9 is going to get an update in March that will add support for Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant. Yet, there’s no indication that such a feature will also be included with the P10 or P10 Plus. Having such a useful AI feature, especially one that has been in development for a couple of years, could have made these phones stand out from the crowd. The good news is that Google Assistant is coming to all Android Nougat and Marshmallow phones sometime next week, so perhaps that will be enough.

More megapixels for the front-facing camera

While the rear camera setup for the HUAWEI P10 and P10 Plus has two sensors (a 12MP color sensor and a 20MP monochrome sensor), the front-facing camera in both phones is just 8MP.  The good news is that the front camera is Leica-branded, which is a first for HUAWEI devices. The bad news is that 8MP front cameras for flagship phones are starting to become commonplace. We think it would have been better to put in a 12MP front-facing camera on the P10 and P10 Plus to give selfies a little extra boost.

Now, it’s worth noting that we haven’t had much of a chance to check out the quality of the front-facing camera, so we’ll have to let you know our final verdict in our full review.

More memory and storage for P10

Why does the P10 Plus have the 6GB memory and 128GB storage option and the P10 does not? Again, this seems like there’s an opportunity that has been missed by HUAWEI to have the smaller 5.1-inch phone include the higher memory and storage specs. We think the company might even sell a lot more of the P10 if it had such a variant, and it would most likely not affect sales of the larger P10 Plus.

No release date for North America

This might be the biggest head scratcher of all for the P10 and P10 Plus. HUAWEI says it wants to expand the reach of its devices to the US and Canada, but for some reason their new flagship phones are not going to be sold in North America. It will be available in Mexico and all over Europe, Asia and even Australia and New Zealand, but not in some of the biggest smartphone markets. We hope this is just a temporary situation, but quite frankly it does seem odd that HUAWEI has made this decision, especially now that the Mate 9 has finally landed in the US.

Are HUAWEI flagships destined to not come to America until many, many months after arriving elsewhere? We hope not, as that was one of the things that has historically frustrated us about Sony’s smartphone launch plans after all.

Wrapping up

Again, these are just our opinions on what could be done to make the HUAWEI P10 and P10 Plus better, but we definitely don’t think we have all the answers. What do you think? Is the P10 series perfect as it is?