It was time to pick a new mobile phone for myself. Not being very happy with the Samsung I have from my employer, I compiled a list of decent Android phones, and looked into each of them. In the end, I settled with the Huawei P10.
All in all, it was a good choice, and I’m happy with the device. It’s fast, has enough memory, USB-C, receives updates, has a headphone jack and a slot for either an additional SIM or an SD card.
The back side of the device is really slippery, like many phones I’ve seen recently. So I bought a transparent case and now I can hold it easily. While shopping, I also ordered a few Micro-USB to USB-C adapters, and placed them around the home and in the car.
There are also a few minor details I don’t like. Nothing really disturbing, but worth mentioning:
The buttons on the right side are elevated. When holding the phone in the left hand while playing Ingress, I often accidentally hit the power button - and in my configuration this will lock the phone instantly. Annoying … especially when hacking items.
When the charger is plugged in, the phone will play a sound. Even when set to silent mode (like at night). There is no option to turn this off - I think this “feature” is a really stupid idea.
The Android Share option is overloaded with the Huawei Share feature. Whenever one hits a share button in any app, it also presents this Huawei Share thing, which no one is using because it only works with Huawei phones. Get a grip on interoperability, guys …
And last but not least, the biggest annoyance I found: Huawei removed the “metered network” option. Every Wi-Fi network is considered unmetered and unlimited, even when it’s just a tethered phone, or a Wi-Fi mobile hotspot. The device will happily use any Wi-Fi connection to download system updated, tell Spotify to update playlists, let Play Store update apps, and in general consume plenty of unnecessary traffic. That is one of the things you only figure out later on, but had I known this before, it is likely a deal-breaker for me.
Now I have to live with the device for 1-2 years.