After a year of ups (Honor 9) and downs (Huawei P10), Huawei has come out kicking and punching with its latest handsets, the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro.

Although the entry Mate 10 won't be coming to UK Shores - it's Mate 10 Pro only in Blighty, boys and gals - we thought it worth showing you what you gain (and, physically speaking, lose) between these two handsets.

Huawei Mate 10 vs Mate 10 Pro: Design

  • Mate 10 Pro: Fingerprint sensor on the rear, no home key on the front
  • Mate 10: Home key and fingerprint sensor to the front
  • Both: Multi-axis curved glass rear, 6H tempered glass for robust scratch-resistance
  • Both: Mocha Brown, Pink Gold / Mate 10 only: Champagne Gold, Black / Mate 10 Pro only: Midnight Blue, Titanium Gray
  • Mate 10 Pro only: IP67 dust and water resistance

It's been a total overhaul for the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro. Both handsets use robust tempered glass on the rear, in a move that apes the iPhone 8 / 8 Plus and iPhone X to some degree. It looks great, but is very prone to fingerprints.

Speaking of fingers, you'll need to tap the front home key of the Mate 10 to log in with a registered digit; the Mate 10 Pro, on the other hand, does away with any front-positioned buttons, with its fingerprint scanner on the back - which we think is a more natural place for it.

Huawei Mate 10 vs Mate 10 Pro: Screen

  • Mate 10 Pro: 6-inch 18:9 OLED (2160x1080)
  • Mate 10: 5.9-inch 16:9 LCD (2560x1440)
  • Both: HDR10 capable high dynamic range
  • Both: 'FullView Display' with minimal bezel

With that fingerprint scanner around the rear and no buttons on the front, the Mate 10 Pro is all about the screen - there's hardly any bezel at all top to bottom, left to right. Its new 18:9 ratio 6-inch OLED display falls in line with the latest from Samsung, Google, Apple and LG, which makes for comfortable one-handed use.

The Mate 10 sticks with an 16:9 LCD display (at 5.9-inch), but it's not so huge that it's uncomfortable - in a similar fashion to the Mate 9. The 10 maintains the slim bezel of the Pro both left and right, but the inclusion of the front home key and top and bottom bezel means it's the bigger device overall.

Both handsets up the pixel count ante - something we've been waiting for, as the non-Pro Mate series has been stuck at Full HD for some time - at 2560 x 1440 (Mate 10) and 2160 x 1080 (Mate 10 Pro) resolutions. It reads as though the non-Pro model has more pixels, which is true, but that's on account of the wider screen ratio.

Both handsets can also present HDR10 for high dynamic range content sourced from the likes of Netflix. Both are purported to deliver 730-nits brightness.

Huawei Mate 10 vs Mate 10 Pro: Hardware & Software

  • Both: Kirin 970 CPU (2.4GHz) with Mali G72 GPU
  • Mate 10: 4GB RAM / Mate 10 Pro: 6GB RAM
  • Mate 10: 64GB storage, microSD / Mate 10 Pro: 128GB storage, no microSD
  • Mate 10: USB-C and 3.5mm headphone jack / Mate 10 Pro: USB-C, no 3.5mm jack
  • Both: Cat.18 1.25Gb/s LTE 4.5, 4x4MIMO, dual SIM
  • Both: 4,000mAh battery, Huawei SuperCharge, no wireless charging
  • Both: EMUI 8.0 over Android 8.0 Oreo / includes PC docking with just a cable

Hardware wise the two handsets are ultimately similar, with a Kirin 970 chip under the hood, which comprises eight cores total, four of which clock at 2.4GHz. The difference is in RAM: the Mate 10 has 4GB, the Mate 10 Pro has 6GB.

The devil is in the detail, really. Both handsets offer dual SIM (both slots being LTE and VOLTE capable), but only the Mate 10 can use one as a microSD slot - something the Mate 10 Pro doesn't offer. The Mate 10 Pro does double the on-board storage to 128GB as compensate, however.

Battery-wise, it's a capacious 4,000mAh under the hood, whichever model you choose. Just because the Mate 10 is physically larger doesn't mean you get more battery capacity. Both models offer Huawei SuperCharge fast-charging via USB-C, neither offer wireless charging.

And, cheekily, only the Mate 10 has a 3.5mm headphone jack - it's not present on the Pro.

Huawei Mate 10 vs Mate 10 Pro: Cameras

  • Both: Dual Leica Cameras
  • Both: 2x 27mm f/1.6 lenses
  • Both: 12MP colour, 20MP monochrome
  • Both: Colour is optically stabilised (OIS)
  • Both: 4-in-1 Hybrid Focus system (laser, depth, contrast- and phase-detection)

The camera setup is one and the same whether you pick up a Mate 10 or Mate 10 Pro. We think this is a good move, because the variation between P10 and P10 Plus seemed confused and unnecessary.

Ultimately, that means Dual Leica Camera, with one 12-megapixel colour sensor and one 20-megapixel monochrome sensor. The colour sensor is paired with an optically stabilised f/1.6 27mm equivalent lens, while the monochrome sensor is paired with the same lens minus any optical stabilisation.

Autofocus is fast, scene detection has been enhanced by machine learning as part of the Kirin 970's Artificial Intelligence prowess and dual ISP (image signal processors) should mean Huawei's best camera setup to date.

Huawei Mate 10 vs Mate 10 Pro: Wrap-up

It doesn't matter for the UK, as there will be no Mate 10 on these shores - only the slimmer and better Mate 10 Pro will be available for purchase. Which is good news, because the Pro has enough about it to take on the strongest flagship devices from Apple, Google and Samsung. It's a big leap forward for the Mate range in its new 18:9 ratio format, compared to the older-style wide-body 16:9 Mate 10.

Price-wise, Huawei has gone in competitively. The Mate 10 will be priced €699 (64GB+4GB) from late October 2017, the Mate 10 Pro will be priced €799 (128+6GB) from mid November 2017, while a Porsche Design Huawei Mate 10 will also be available for €1395 (no word on UK market availability for that one just yet).