Got something to hide? You'll love this Honor feature

Security and privacy

Smartphones have become a part of our everyday lives, and can often contain some of our most intimate secrets. Bank accounts online, private photos, videos, work files, scanned identity documents, various account passwords: protecting the information contained in our devices should not be overlooked.

Often we are a bit negligent and forget about the security of this information, surprisingly in 2017, the most commonly used passwords were also the easiest to guess. And too often, some of us leave our smartphone in the hands of friends or colleagues, forgetting about the personal things that they could easily access. For those who want to take every precaution possible to avoid sharing information, private photos or apps: Private Space comes to the rescue.

• How to know if your password has been hacked

Private space: what does it do?

This is an feature that you can find listed in the View 10 settings menu in the Security and privacy section. To go straight to that option, and it allows you to set a password and a fingerprint different from the one you use to unlock the device. After changing this setting, you will have two different access keys to two different "accounts".

The new PIN requires 4 to 16 digits. The first four, for security reasons, do not have to match those of the main account password. Once you have entered and confirmed the PIN, you can also add your fingerprint too, to unlock the device even quicker. In this case of course, the fingers you use must be different. What you will find before your eyes is a clean home screen, as if you had just done a reset of the device. This means that you will have to deal with these 5 annoying functions all over again, but its worth it.

Now you can set it up however you want. You can access your ‘secret’ account, connect it to the Play Store, download apps and use the device as you normally would do. You can add app’s relating to your online banking, e-commerce sites where you are regularly shopping online and saving your payment details, as well as adding personal photographs.

This is a great feature if you have kids. You can use it to download apps that are just for your children, while keeping them away from other content on your device. Don't forget to set up parental controls if you would like to limit their access to the internet.  

Learn more about the Honor 10 in our video:

Some disadvantages to consider

Depending on the finger you place on the fingerprint sensor or the PIN you enter, you can access two different "worlds". Useful, without a doubt. However, you will need to be patient while the device loads the correct account.

If you use a microSD, you will have to remove it or the photos will still appear in the Gallery

128GB of internal memory and 6GB of RAM should be enough to store your apps, photos and files. However some of you may need to insert a microSD, and it’s important to know that if you use one of these, the photos stored here will still appear in your hidden gallery. Therefore you will need to remove this device if you don’t want anybody to see these images in your newly created hidden account.

Another disadvantage: if you use the 2-step verification system on your e-mail account, you will not be able to set up the same e-mail account even on Private Space. This is because once the account is added, the confirmation will arrive on the main home screen. So to access it, you will have to exit Private Space but, when you go back to your normal account, you will be asked again to enter the email address. It’s up to you whether you think this is worth it.

Do you think Private Space could be useful, or do you prefer to rely on other systems rather than creating a private account that requires different access keys?