Chinese companies have grown very fond of rugged smartphones over the past few years, and – no doubt- Blackview is one of them! Their latest beast may not be IP68 certified, but it surely can be considered (by their standards at least) as their flagship for this year and if you take into account its main specs, price and performance then I guess you can give them some credit.
It’s called Blackview P10000 Pro and its main features are self explanatory if you pay attention to its name: 11000 mAh (yes, not just 10.000mAh!) battery and Premium (Pro) design combined, in order to provide a very decent device that can surely stay far from its charger for more than 3-4 days, while offering premium quality in everyday use and impressive camera performance.
So is it another addition to Blackview’s large portfolio of large battery smartphones or does it truly deliver in terms of usability, performance, camera and – obviously- battery life? Keep reading and you will surely find out what it’s all about…
Blackview P10000 Pro – Main specs
- Display: 6.0 inch 2160 x 1080 pixels IPS screen
- CPU: MTK6763 Octa Core 2.0GHz
- System: Android 7.1
- Storage: 4GB RAM + 64GB ROM
- Cameras: 16.0MP + 0.3MP dual back cameras and 13.0MP + 0.3MP dual front cameras
- Sensors: Gravity Sensor, Gyroscope, Geomagnetic Sensor, Proximity Sensor
- Features: GPS, Glonass
- Bluetooth: 4.1
- SIM Card: dual SIM dual standby, 2 x Nano SIM card and a TF card can be inserted at the same time
- Networks: 2G: GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz – 3G: WCDMA 900/2100MHz – 4G: FDD-LTE B1/B3/B7/B8/B20
- Size: 16.50 x 7.70 x 1.46 cm
- Weight: 293 gr.
- Battery: 11.000 mAh
Basic package
When you first buy the device, you will find it inside a white hard paper box with the band name and it’s main specifications. The box has dimensions 1.50 x 21.50 x 5.20 cm and weights 775 grams. Inside you will find:
- Back Case x 1
- Blackview P10000 Pro x 1
- Earphones x 1
- Earphones Adapter x 1
- English Manual x 1
- OTG Cable x 1
- Phone Holder x 1
- Power Adapter x 1
- Screen Protector x 1
- SIM Needle x 1
- USB Cable x 1
As always, Blackview has once again offered one of the most complete packages you will find in the market, and this can only be good. All of the accessories are in white colour, but what stands out is the large black case that completely covers the huge device, while protecting it from scratches. Don’t forget, this isn’t an IP68 certified phone, so you will NEED a protective case if you’re a bit clumsy like me 😉
Design
The first impression we had from this mobile phone is that it could be a piece missing from… the Batmobile or a Transformers figure. Most large battery phones are usually “ugly”, leaving design in the last place of their priorities. This is NOT the case with P10000 Pro as the phone looks quite impressive and boasts quality. The materials are made to withstand and you will find polycarbonate alloys in the main body “hugging” the phone thus protecting it. For a phone equipped with an 11.000 mAh battery, the Blackview P10000 Pro has similar dimensions to a large 5.5 inch phone, sized at 16.50 x 7.70 x 1.46 cm, but a lot heavier at 293 grams. The device is available in 2 different variants, Mirror Silver and Mirror Grey. Note that the phone we had during the test was the Mirror Grey one and -in my opinion- possibly the best color choice out of the pair.
The front has a 6 inch, 18:9 aspect ratio display, covered with Corning Gorilla Glass 5. An extra protective film is applied upon. There is no physical button in the lower bezel and a very small hole on the left side hides the microphone.
The frame is made from aluminium and magnesium and is exposing only the middle part of each side, with screws that are visible as a design aspect. It looks industrial and good indeed. The right side has four metallic buttons: volume rocker, the power/lock button and the fingerprint sensor that has been moved there. The other side has a cover for the SIM tray and at the lower frame we can see the USB-C charging slot. Due to the depth of the metal cover, the USB-C cable has a long tip, longer than usual cables – in order to reach it. In case you forgot your charger and charging cable, other USB-C charging cables won’t do the job.
The back of the phone has an industrial – business design that looks nice, along with the camera installation/LED flash and the company logo available in plain sight. The 2 main cameras are positioned vertically in the top center with the LED flash right below. All in all it looks great – to me at least 😉
The lower part of the back panel has the brand in a silver texture with angled lines engraved on it. Under it with small black letters one can read: Designed by Blackview Assembled in China. Blackview is a Hong Kong company and probably wants you to notice that for some weird reason 🙂
The bezel sizes are reasonable. To the left and right of the screen they are very thin. The top of the phone houses all of the speakers, cameras, and sensors, and it still manages to keep a fairly low profile. The bottom chin could be a LOT smaller, but it’s manageable.
There is a lot of details and a lot of work done on the exterior of the smartphone and i can only say good words for it.
Hardware
The 6 inch display is the main selling point of Blackview P10000 Pro. It has a FHD+ resolution (2160 x 1080 pixels) that covers a typical percentage of the front side, leaving quite large bezels on top and bottom. It can depict 16.7 million colors with a relatively average PPI. However the display is bright and vivid and comes with a really high contrast. Note that this display is an IPS panel, manufactured by Sharp. It’s a reasonable display that produces a nice image. It would have been nice to see a UHD resolution, but that would significantly impact the battery life.
This business-like smartphone comes with an MTK6763 chipset also known as Helio P23. That’s comprised of eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores, four of which are clocked at up to 2.0GHz while the remaining four are clocked at 1.51GHz. It is accompanied by a dual core Mali-G71 MP2 GPU working at 700MHz. The processor is found on most middle category phones and is quite reliable, having no issues. Blackview added a typical 4GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage, that can also be expanded with a maximum of 128GB microSD card.
It supports dual SIM functionality with two nano-SIMs along with a microSD slot – thankfully!
It also supports 4G: FDD B1 2100MHz, FDD B20 800MHz, FDD B3 1800MHz, FDD B7 2600MHz, FDD B8 900MHz, 3G: WCDMA Band 1 (2100MHz), Band 8 (900MHz) and 2G: GSM Band 2 (1900MHz), Band 3 (1800MHz), Band 5 (850MHz), Band 8 (900MHz).
The smartphone comes with a whole lot of sensors, such as Rotation Vector, Gyroscope, Geomagnetic, Proximity, Light, Gravity, Acceleration, Liner Acceleration and Direction Sensors. There’s also Bluetooth 4.2 compativility, while its navigation features support GPS, A-GPS and Glonass, working fine with all the available satellites being locked on fast with impressive precision.
Compass works flawlessly as well, along with full Wifi 802.11 b/g/n and WiFi Hotspot support. Call quality is excellent and video calls are good without any issues.
Software
The operating system found in the smartphone is based on Android 7.1 but it’s not “vanilla” Android. It’s the typical Blackview – pimped ROM, that has been modified by the Chinese manufacturer in certain features.
After setting up the account – a normal procedure for all phones – the user sees a blacked out skin, with metal looking icons in all system apps. Notification screen and settings are also skinned. The black look is nice and suits the external industrial look.
Notification bar has all the available options someone could ask for. Except from the usual ones found in pure Android Nougat, one can find Eye protection – a functionality that dims the screen to filter blue light, QRcode – opens a qrcode scanner, and Screen Record – records the screen when touched, adding a red circle in the screen that has to be touched to stop the recording.
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More options exist when setting up the bar: Hotspot, Invert colors, Data saver, and Cast. When the user adds Developer Options in the Notification setup the user can also see Android Easter Egg, Show layout bounds, Profile GPU rendering and Nearby (Google Play services).
Long pressing the display in the Home screen reveals the usual menu that allows access to the Wallpapers, Widgets and Settings options. Selecting the Wallpapers we see a Blackview app with options for Themes, Lock and Desktop wallpapers. Themes has only the metallic look and there is no option to download more like in Xiaomi’s MIUI.
One thing that makes this device stand out is the Face Recognition software you will find inside. It promises to accurately recognize your face with very good (but not impeccable) results, especially in out door activities. It doesn’t work well when in dark rooms as it doesn’t have Infra Red sensors (like iPhone X for example). In any case the Face Recognition looks good as an add on, but I wouldn’t rely my phone’s sensitive data on this. You’d better use the fingerprint sensor placed on the side. 
Inside the app launcher, you will find all the pre-installed applications from Google, along with some added from Blackview, such as Browser, a Compass, ETWS (presents alerts and has many options to show these alerts by voice, vibration and sound), a File Manager, a typical FM Radio receiver, Music, Sound Recorder, Torch and System Manager. System Manager has a menu where the user can set a Power Manager, clean Rubbish, Freeze apps, Autoboot apps, Lock apps and Auto clean. There is no bloatware, which is a nice differentiation from other Chinese ROMs.
Next are the Display, Notifications, Sound, Apps, Storage, Battery and Memory. Blackview has added some touches here. Sound has an audio enhancement option that can boost the speaker volume. Battery has a Standby intelligent power saving along with Performance and power saving options. The latter has Sports and Normal mode. Memory has a Background auto clean memory option that cleans up the memory a few seconds after the display turns off.
There are also some other gesture, usability options such as:
- Gesture – has a single option to double click the power button to open the camera
- Full Screen mode – selects the applications the can open in full screen
- SOS call – has settings for a SOS function as to activate calls/sms/flash for help
- Gesture motion – it enables multiple operations using gestures on the display
- Gesture Unlock – similar option to the above
- One-handed mode – enables a smaller UI by sliding sideways on the bottom of the screen
- Fast Capture – uses the volume buttons to fast capture screenshots or video
- Split Screen – a help screen on how to enable split screen on Nougat
- QRCode Scan – a simple barcode scanner etc.
My impressions are excellent from using the software. It is fast, it can handle multitasking and I just loved all the options provided by the P10000 Pro. Not bad Blackview, not bad at all…
Camera
The monstrous P10000 Pro has a really decent camera, one that allows for typical photos during daylight, really adequate shots during night and the same goes for the videos (recorded in 3gp format). Image quality is reasonable enough in strong light or simpler scenes. The front facing cameras have two lenses. One for a wide angle, and the other for a minor zoom. The dual rear cameras work the same.
The double camera setup in the back consists of a 16MP main shooter and a 0,3MP secondary telephoto lens specially-tuned for low-light conditions in a mode Blackview calls “Super Night Shooting”. The main Sony IMX298 camera has f / 2.0 aperture and the secondary f / 2.2. A LED flash helps in low light shots. The dual camera selfie shooter has a 13.0MP + 0.3MP resolution (Sony IMX135 main lens), offering typical selfie/portrait shots with the help of a forward face LED soft-flash alongside the usual ambient light sensor.
[flickr_set id=”72157694962498702″]The included camera app is basic, but it gets the job done. You have several options for “fake bokeh”, or beauty mode. There’s a basic black and white filter provided, as well HDR mode. HDR modes takes multiple pictures at different exposures, then combine the images. You don’t have any additional configuration options, but it does a good job at capturing more detail in the shadows.
Each mode has its own settings. For example, if you want to shoot video, there are options for Scene mode (night, sunset, portrait, night portrait, etc), Video quality (set as FHD), location, shutter sound etc.
I used the aperture mode a lot. Most budget smartphones with a double camera setup create a bokeh effect using the software and blurring the background around the main object. The aperture mode here does a real job focusing and blurring the background having a setting to open-close the camera’s aperture. I really enjoyed it and is one of the best portrait/bokeh setups I have seen. Pro mode has options to alter the white balance, ISO, focus and light. People that like to take manual pictures will appreciate the setup. 
Photo mode has also a filter selection like Sepia, Mon, Negative, and a typical HDR mode.
Selfies have only Video, Photo, Beauty and Mono modes. The main object here is well presented but the surroundings look like it is wider and closer to the screen. It is like looking at a mirror whose angles are closer to you shaped like the inside of a spoon. The image is clear but my head looked very small over a huge chest. Some people might like this setup, but I am not one of them.
While the camera can just about keep up for photos, it cannot for video. There’s no option to shoot in high frame rates, or even any resolution higher than 1080p. Footage struggles to look sharp, even if the colors are good.
Battery
P10000 Pro packs a non-removable, 11.000 mAh battery. This allegedly provides enough power to run the phone for seven days. While seven days might be a bit of a stretch unless you are a very light user, you can realistically expect to achieve 3 to 4 days of solid use.
Blackview suggest the following usage times can be achieved:
- Phone calls: 60 hours
- Listening to music: 80 hours
- Watching videos: 40 hours
- Standby: 1200 hours (50 days)
- Playing games: 18 hours
While some of these times are very optimistic, not all of them are impossible to achieve, especially if you limit the energy heavy usage such as the screen, wireless, or updates.
There’s no need to feel bad about it however, as the device comes with 5V/5A fast charging charger, that is able to charge the phone in -roughly- 70 minutes, heating up at the same time the back panel of the device.
Using the OTG cable you can also charge any other electronic device something very helpful when you are working or having fun outdoors.
Conclusion
This is an excellent large battery phone that offers a nice modern-looking display, equipped with a good set of dual cameras. The processor, combined with 4GB RAM and 64GB of ROM offer a smooth everyday experience without any issues in multitasking or heavy gaming. Battery is great in terms of stand by time and the huge internal storage offers many choices in time spending when no WiFi or data connection exists.
I enjoyed the many features of the UI, especially the camera application. Don’t forget that it’s a true business smartphone, offering an FM radio, a compass, GPS navigation, an alarm receiver and an alarm sender. It comes pre-installed with all the necessary “goodies” from Google and Blackview has added anything missing like extra gesture support, a file manager, a more versatile music player, a system manager application etc.
I have to admit that Blackview’s flagship model provides almost everything one would expect from a mid-range, business-like smartphone – giving a lot of credits to its durability, performance and sturdiness. The Face Unlock feature is good but… not it doesn’t work always so don’t rely on it. No, really don’t!
If you need a large battery phone that has the full pack, then Blackview P10000 Pro can surely cover your needs, at a price that currently sits at 225€ or so at the time this review was published.
