[1][2] Versus the predecessor Mate 9, the Mate 10 pro flagship phone has a faster processor with an integrated neural processing unit, a slightly larger OLED screen (6.0") with a taller 18:9 aspect ratio, a significantly longer battery life and a glass back construction (but free of wireless charging).

Huawei phones, including the Mate series, are not sold or financed through U.S. carriers due to pressure from U.S. intelligence agencies, though they are available from independent and online retailers.

Kirin 970 is a 64-bit octa-core 2.36/1.8 GHz mobile ARM LTE SoC with a 12-core Mali G72 GPU and an onboard Neural processing unit (NPU).

The Mate 10 features expandable storage via a micro-SD card supporting up to 256 Gb (uses SIM 2 slot).

All the Mate 10 series phones are factory unlocked, but are GSM only - they do not support CDMA used by U.S. carriers like Verizon, Sprint and U.S. Cellular (the TL00 and AL00 Chinese models support CDMA 800 MHz, but are locked to China Telecom carrier).

It has budget features and pricing ranking below the midrange P and Honor series phones: 2.36/1.7 GHz Kirin 659 with Mali T830 MP2 GPU, with about half the performance of the Kirin 970 on the flagship models and roughly comparable to the older P8 model.

[7] The phones run on Android 8 "Oreo", with Huawei's own custom skin, EMUI 8.0 on top of it.

Huawei decided to upgrade it to EMUI 8.0 to match the latest Android version number, which is 8.0 as well.

The Kirin 970 SoC which powers the Mate 10 series was first unveiled at the 2017 Berlin IFA in early Sept.

The Mate 10 series was initially released to select markets on Oct. 16, 2017, followed by U.K. and Europe in late 2017, then the United States on Feb. 18, 2018.

While it was originally intended to be an OEM/developer feature only, prior to May 24, 2018, Huawei freely supplied a bootloader unlock code to enable users/developers to root their devices.

2018-5-24 Huawei Device Co. Ltd." This was followed in June with an OTA named Patch01 that caused rooted phones to go into a bootloop until the original unrooted image was flashed.

Due to its lower screen resolution, the Mate 10 Pro has a slight advantage especially in graphics intensive applications.

The performance of the Mate 10 Lite, with CPU and GPU 2-3 generations older, falls far below that of the flagship models.

These were not subtle differences, either, with results up to 47 percent higher than they were with private test variants Huawei couldn't catch.

The company has since claimed that AI processes are responsible for allocating resources when heavy workloads are encountered.

The company does not claim that GPU turbo mode increases the maximum frame rate(s).

The Huawei Mate 10 Pro's lack of QHD+ resolution, storage expansion, and a headphone jack also received some criticism from reviewers.

However it was praised in other aspects like including a bright and accurate-color OLED display, LTE Cat.

18,[13] Dual-VoLTE, Dual-SIM, aptX HD, good performance, very fast quick-charge technology, (theoretical) water and dust proofing (IP67), high build quality, exact location determination and excellent voice quality.