The affordable, shimmering Honor 10

At £399 (converts to about $540 or AU$720), the new Honor 10 is certainly affordable. But that cheap price doesn't mean skimping out on the essentials. 

As well as a shimmery design, it's got a big edge-to-edge screen (complete with optional notch), a powerful processor and a dual camera on the back. 

Not bad for a midrange phone.

The phone is available now in Europe although wider availability is yet to be announced.  

The back is all glass and in some lights will have this nice blue colour. 

Move it about and that blue transforms into a rich purple hue. Lovely stuff.

The Honor 10 has a notch at the top of the display for the speaker and the front-facing camera. Much like every other phone, then.

Like Huawei, LG and others, you can turn the notch off in the settings by having virtual black bars appear either side.

There's a 24-megapixel monochrome sensor and 16-megapixel colour sensor on the back. 

I'm not impressed with the Honor 10's shots. Outdoor images can sometimes lack contrast, looking dull and lifeless. 

It uses artificial intelligence to detect what scene it's seeing and adjusts settings accordingly. I didn't always like the result as the phone tended to boost saturation to unnatural levels.

You can turn off the AI mode if you're not keen.

There's a headphone jack on the bottom. Hooray! 

It runs Android Oreo and it won't slow you down thanks to its top-end Kirin 970 processor.

Notch on or off?

I love the shimmering effect.

There's a fingerprint scanner under the glass, leaving the top layer entirely flat. I like the seamless look but it can make the scanner a bit difficult to find in a hurry. It's quick to recognise my prints once I've found it, though.

There's no waterproofing, so keep it safe from spilled drinks.

It charges with USB-C

The 5.84-inch display has a 2,280x1,080-pixel resolution.