Software

The P10 comes loaded with Android 7.0 and Huawei'south EMUI 5.1 skin out of the box. The software offer hither is largely the same as I used on the Huawei Mate 9, which came with EMUI v.0, and in full general I'm not a massive fan of Huawei'south software skin here.

EMUI still comes with heaps of annoying and pointless duplicate apps. At that place is no need for two electronic mail clients, two gallery apps, and ii music apps on this phone. It just bogs down the telephone with crap and forces you to choose an app through irritating popular-ups. Duplicate apps still aren't a proficient experience on Android and it's something OEMs need to accost.

At that place are also a number of spam apps included here. Weather, wellness, notepad and backup apps are unnecessary as near people already have a preferred 3rd-political party app and would rather download one through the Play Store. HiGame is also completely useless when there's the Play Store and Play Games already included. On tiptop of this, in that location'due south an entire 'flashlight' app when there's a flashlight shortcut in the notification pane.

Some aspects of the notification pane are decent, such as the pick of quick toggles for settings which gets its own expandable section. Others, like the notifications themselves, are a scrap of a step backwards from stock Android that gives you lot more data through expanded summaries and ameliorate grouping of multiple messages. I'm not sure why Huawei needed to alter these features, just they did.

The settings screen is still a fleck of a mess. I'g not sure why the engagement and time settings are subconscious under the "advanced settings" folio as it isn't really an advanced feature. In that location are a lot of separate pages here that I experience could be condensed, which would brand the unabridged settings screen easier to navigate.

There are some good features available in the settings, though. The ability to change the order of the navigation bar is ever welcome, equally is the highly customizable condition bar. If you don't want to display the carrier proper name and would like to run across network speed, you tin through customization. The battery page includes lots of information and tools to help optimize battery life, which could come in handy for the times when you're feeling battery anxiety.

The visual style of EMUI is okay, only it differs significantly from the style of vanilla Android, which tin create a disjointed feel between outset-party apps and everything else available for Android. Huawei seems to straddle the boundary between Android and iOS with their pattern, and some choices take clearly been made to make the software more similar iOS: the lack of an app drawer, and a familiar settings screen design come to mind.

Luckily, with EMUI 5.1, irresolute the way of the Bone through themes is very easy, so if you don't like what the P10 brings out of the box, yous tin can modify it with ease.

I don't hold much organized religion that the P10 volition receive prompt updates to new versions of Android, or when security patches are available. It's currently July, and my P10 review unit is still on the April security patches and the telephone isn't running the latest version of Android (7.one.2). Huawei doesn't have a great track tape in this regard, so y'all should stick to a Pixel if you demand fast updates.