Huawei P10 Plus Vs Samsung Galaxy S8+ - Flagship Comparison

The Huawei P10 Plus and Samsung Galaxy S8+ are two of the most compared premium Android smartphones right now. Why? Simple. They're both excellent on paper.

Huawei P10 Plus or Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus?

The Huawei P10 Plus highlights an all new build with 4.5G internet support (first in the world), high-end overall specs, an improved Android skin with deep-learning AI, legit Leica Dual Camera 2.0 Pro Edition sensors, and Leica selfie camera.

On the other hand, the Samsung Galaxy S8+ is a re-imagined phablet. It has a HUGE 6.2 inch screen on a 5.7 inch like frame. It highlights the company's new near border-less Curved Infinity Display, powerful specs, improved Android skin, and better Dual Pixel cameras.

Both looks super good on paper! But, the question is, who's the better buy? Let's find out!

Read: Huawei P10 Plus Vs Samsung Galaxy S8+ Specs Comparison

Build Quality / Design

Premium craftsmanship!

The Huawei P10 Plus has the more traditional smartphone aesthetics except for its new Antenna band design. It highlights a slim 6.88 mm metal clad body that could come with hyper diamond-cut finishing for added strength and scratch prevention. It's a solidly machined flagship with Gorilla Glass 5 protection for better screen scratch resistance as well. Grip, hold, and feel ranks among the very best today.

Both are curvy and slim

The Samsung Galaxy S8+ is an absolute stunner in person! The 6.2 inch curvy phablet with 8.1 mm slimness is arguably the best looking smartphone yet. It has metal sandwiched in glass construction, class leading Gorilla Glass 5 protection, and IP68 water and dust resistance rating. In comparison, the Huawei P10 Plus only has IPX3 water resistance.

Both are very well crafted, the Galaxy S8+ is simply stunning in person.

The Curved Infinity Display is near bezel-less as well. Another thing, the phablet also sits perfectly in our hands. The Galaxy S8+ also has a dedicated button to launch its assistant, Bixby. 

However, it is very prone to fingerprint smudges. The fingerprint scanner also has a WEIRD, awkward, and a little hard to reach placement on the right side of the camera. The curved glass design also made it scarier to drop.

Display Quality

Crazy sharp screens

The Huawei P10 Plus carries the smaller 5.5 inch WQHD 2.5D curved screen. But it has a tad sharper 534 pixels per inch compared with Samsung's offering. Huawei also uses the "photography grade" WQHD IPS-NEO panels with the realest colors possible on a smartphone yet. For us, this is also the only screen that can go toe to toe in quality against Samsung's latest AMOLED panels.

Neil our teammate called the screen on the Galaxy S8+ the very looking best in the world today for a reason. Why? It has a bigger 6.2 inch WQHD Super AMOLED display with 18.5:9 movie grade aspect ratio is also very sharp at 529 ppi. Blacks are a tad deeper and contrast is stronger. Saturation and colors are also punchier.

Pound per pound, purist will go for the natural looking screen of the P10 Plus. But, regular consumers would go for the WOW factor of the S8+ screen.

Both are very bright and legible even under direct sunlight.

Battery Life

The Huawei P10 Plus has a capacious 3,750 mAh of battery capacity on a smaller 5.5 inch screen. On the other hand, the Samsung Galaxy S8+ with bigger 6.2 inch screen only has 3,500 mAh of battery capacity.

Specs-wise, the P10 Plus is the clear winner. But in actual usage, the difference is minimal.

The Samsung Galaxy S8+ scored almost 9 hours and 30 mins and the Huawei P10 Plus clocked a score of 9 hours and 40 mins on PC Mark's work battery life test. This simply means that Samsung did a fine job in optimizing the battery of the S8+.

Charging time, P10 Plus with 5A Super Charge technology got the better result. Huawei charged the 3,750 mAh of battery in 90 mins. The S8+ recorded the same score, but it has a smaller 3,500 mAh of battery. It means that the Quick Charge tech of Galaxy S8+ is a tad slower than P10 Plus.

Audio Quality

Speaker below

Unfortunately, both phones doesn't have a stereo speaker setup like the Nexus 6P or the Apple iPhone 7 Plus. Both are decent in quality and has clean output with less distortion even on max volume. The P10 Plus has the slightly punchier speaker for us.

For headphone audio, both has the ability to play HiFi lossless audio tunes. The Huawei P10 has one of the quietest and cleanest audiophile grade output on a smartphone around. It can go pretty loud as well. But, Samsung's offering took it to LG G6's level. It's a RARE smartphone that can play UHQ 32 bit / DSD audio.
Both phones are great for calls and recordings on quiet places.

Camera

Single or dual cameras?

The Huawei P10 Plus is the one most talked about photography centric smartphone for a reason. It has 20 MP monochrome sensor + 12 MP RGB sensor at f/1.8 bright and wide aperture. Not only that, it has Leica's Summilux lenses, a high-end lens from the legendary German camera brand. It's also complete with w/ 4-in-1 Hybrid AF, OIS, 2x zoom, and dual tone LED flash.

On the software part, the P10 Plus also has one of most robust camera software we've ever seen on a smartphone yet. The pro camera mode is complete with up ISO 50 to ISO 3200, 1/4000 to 30 secs shutter speed, and other controls. Huawei also has a light painting mode that can capture scenes with very long exposure times. It also has variable aperture adjustments, portrait mode, monochome with bokeh, and up to 2x lossless zoom!

On the other hand, Samsung has an improved 12 MP f/1.7 w/ Dual Pixel, OIS, multi-frame, and dual tone LED flash for the Galaxy S8+. It also has manual camera mode, but only has ISO 50 up to ISO 800. But, it has fastest shutter speed is at a whopping 24000th of a second with the slowest shutter release being 10 seconds meaning this can truly freeze the fastest of motions and can be used well at extremely bright conditions.

Read: Huawei P10 Plus Vs Samsung Galaxy S8+ - Point & Shoot Camera Comparison

Quality of both camera setups are punch in colors and sharp in details. Lowlight performance are also great on both sides. Sometimes the P10 Plus has the better result, but there are times that the S8+ can do better. The difference is in color character. Huawei has the slightly blueish, a tad darker, but closer to natural colors. The S8+ is slightly brighter, but has a yellowish tint especially in lowlight.

See also: Samsung Galaxy S8 / Galaxy S8+: First Camera Samples!

Huawei also has a lot of camera tricks that aspiring smartphone photographers will surely like. Some of them is Huawei's expertise on bokeh shots that can be achieved via wide aperture mode or portrait mode. Have a look!

Huawei P10 Plus Bokeh Camera Samples

Bokeh mode at  f/0.95

Monochrome bokeh mode at f/0.95

Portrait mode

For selfies, Huawei has a Leica 8 MP f/1.9 aperture w/ wide angle lens, AF, and screen flash. It also has portrait mode and an auto wide angle feature. Samsung has a brighter 8 MP f/1.7 w/ AF, wide angle lens, and screen flash. Both are also very detailed. We just find the colors on the S8 punchier.

Some Selfie Camera Samples

Huawei P10 Plus portrait mode with good background blur

Left P10 Plus, right Galaxy S8+

Galaxy S8 and S8+ has cool selfie stickers

For videos, the Huawei P10 Plus can shoot up to 4K videos on 30 frames per second. Then it has up too 60 frames on Full HD mode. Quality is better and more stabilized than any other Huawei in the past.

But, when compared with Galaxy S8+, the difference in video quality is significant. Samsung's flagship has faster focus on videos and has lesser jello effect.

Performance

On synthetic benchmarks, the Galaxy S8+ running on the latest 10 nm 2.3 GHz 64 Bit Exynos 8895 octa core processor and Mali G71 GPU got the higher scores than Huawei's own Kirin 960 chip with Mali G71 GPU.

EMUI 5.1 boasts machine learning algorithm that always stays fast

But, the P10 Plus has more RAM than Galaxy S8+ at 6 GB for better multitasking compared with 4 GB. Both has 128 GB of expandable base storage.

This is the best TouchWiz UI yet. It's cleaner and faster than ever!

In real life, the difference in speed and general performance is hardly noticeable. Opening of apps and multitasking is even a tad faster on P10 Plus at times. Gaming performance is identical as well.

Both are very good and blazing fast!

Note: Huawei has Alexa while Samsung has Bixby AI. Both are still not mature. Google Assistant is still better. The Dex by Samsung isn't also useful all the time. It's more of a gimmick for now.

Connectivity-wise, the P10 Plus has a more advanced 4.5G mobile data support and has an IR Blaster that can be used as a remote control. On the other hand, the Samsung Galaxy S8+ is the first Bluetooth 5.0 powered device. Both has OTG. Signal quality is strong on both as well. Huawei P10 Plus is the slightly warmer phone.

Huawei P10 Plus advantages - Better ergonomics, Slightly sharper screen, bigger battery capacity, faster charging tech, robust camera features, 4.5G ready internet, machine learning, IR blaster, lower price
Samsung Galaxy S8+ advantages - Bigger screen on a small body, DSD HiFi audio support, brighter front camera, Bluetooth 5.0, IP68 water / dust resistance

Verdict

Samsung's very best and Huawei's finest are near equal in real life performance. If you have the PHP 46K to spend, choosing between Samsung Galaxy S8+ and Huawei P10 Plus would be a very hard task. They're neck to neck in real life usage and has their own strengths to highlight.

Get the Samsung Galaxy S8+ if you are the type of person who's in need of a "sexier" and more flaunt-able device with bigger screen, better resistance to water, and more fluid video recording performance.

But, if you have less than PHP 40K to spend (PHP 36,990 to be exact), the Huawei P10 Plus is there offering more RAM, robust camera tricks, IR blaster remote control, and an Android skin that's sleek and always fast.

You can't really go wrong with both!