Honor View 10 puts focus on AI with host of new features

Honor View 10 is the new flagship phone from Huawei’s brand, and the focus with this phone is on artificial intelligence or AI. Of course, AI has become the buzzword for most smartphone companies, with Samsung, Apple and Google also claiming to offer a slice of machine learning and AI on their phones. In case of Honor View 10, there are a host of new features which the company claims rely on artificial intelligence.

Honor View 10 will be coming to the Indian market. Honor View 10 will launch on January 8, 2018 and this is one of the first flagship, AI-driven phones from the company which is coming to India. Phones like Honor Magic, which was also about AI vision were not actually launched in the Indian market. Honor View 10’s price is Euros 499, which means in India it could be around Rs 37,000 plus.

In terms of specifications, the key feature with the Honor View 10 would be the Kirin 970 processor from Huawei itself. Just like Samsung’s Galaxy S and Note series is powered by its own Exynos processors, Huawei and Honor rely on Kirin processors. According to Honor, the Kirin 970 which is an octa-core processor, also comes with its own dedicated NPU or Neural Processing unit in order to carry out the dedicated AI related tasks.

Like other flagship smartphones of 2017, Honor View 10 gets a big 18:9 aspect ratio display which is 5.99-inches in size. Interestingly Honor has managed to squeeze in a front fingerprint sensor on the phone as well, while retaining the 3.5 mm headphone jack.

Coming to the AI related features, Honor is introducing Facial Unlock on the View 10 as well. Based on the launch presentation, the working of facial unlock system is very similar to what Apple does with the iPhone X. Honor View 10 will also rely on 3D mapping of the face to unlock the phone, though the company has not added extra hardware on the front for this purpose. Just like on Apple iPhone X where details of notifications remain hidden until the user relies on Face ID to unlock the device, Honor View 10 will also hide details of the incoming notifications.

Honor has also introduced an AI-powered translator into the camera of the View 10 smartphone. A user can just point the camera to text written in a different language and the camera will be able to translate the same. Honor says some of these features will be pushed via an OTA (Over the Air) update to the phone.

The Honor View 10 also takes another cue from the iPhone X with a feature similar to the animoji, which the company says is also driven by AI. Just like on iPhone X users can create their own animoji, the Honor View 10 will have a similar function, though the animoji characters will be different. Honor also claims theirs is much more accurate when it comes to capturing the expression of the user, than the iPhone X.

Honor View 10 will only be available in India from January 2018, but as the launch event showcased, the focus with the company’s phone will be on adding AI-elements to the devices. Of course some features like instant translate are being offered by apps like Google Translate which are quite popular in India. Still with the View 10, Honor hopes that like other flagship players in the market, its phones too will stand out in the Indian market, where specifications tend to overshadow the debate.