Honor play design
The most important feature of Honor Play is its metal unibody which launched last year Honor View 10 Is like If seen Honor 10, Huawei P20 Lite And Huawei P20 Pro The company has used glass back panels. But an attempt has been made to make something in the latest phone. If we talk on the basis of stability and strength, then the glass body cannot compete with the metal. Honor Play is less smooth than Honor 10, but it does not seem so premium. Being a large display and a thin body, the smartphone does not fit easily in the hands.
On seeing Honor Play, you will feel that there is a impression of Honor 10 in the design, there are very thin borders on the edge of the screen. The notch of Honor Play is slightly larger. The lower part of the phone is quite small, but Honor’s logo has found a place. It is a little difficult to hold Honor Play easily in hand, but despite having a 6.3 -inch display, the phone is very compact. Honor Play will be found in Navy Blue and Midnight Black color in India.
The fingerprint sensor in Honor Play is given on the back panel due to the very thin bezel and edge-to-edge design. The phone is very long, due to this, your fingers may have some problem in reaching the fingerprint sensor. If the user holds the phone correctly, then he will be able to use fingerprint sensor easily. To raise and reduce voice on the right side of the phone, you will get more power button. The same, hybrid dual-sim tray is given on the left side of the phone. If you want, you can apply two nano sim or one nano SIM and a microSD card. Honor Play has 64 GB of inbuilt storage, which you can increase up to 256 GB with the help of the card.
A 3.5 mm headphone jack will be available with USB-Type C port on the bottom of the phone. In addition, loudspeakers will be found which may disappoint you a little. We tested the speaker while playing audio files, YouTube videos and games and found that there was a bad sound on the full volume. The thickness of the phone is 7.5 millimeters and its weight is 176 grams. Honor Play has a build quality average.
Honor Play Specification and Display
Honor Play Company’s own flagship processor Hycilicon Kirin is equipped with 970. Let us know that this chipset has also been used in Honor 10, Honor View 10 and Huawei P20 Pro. It is expected that the company will introduce Kirin 980 processor in IFA 2018. Kirin 970 chipset for artificial intelligence processing is accompanied by Neural Processing Unit (NPU). This camera improves performance, battery life and app optimization. Honor Play has GPU Turbo for gaming optimization. It is claimed that it gives 60 percent better performance and 30 percent better battery life while playing games. Honor Play will be found in two RAM variants- 4 GB and 6 GB. A 3750 mAh battery is provided for power backup. Honor Play has 64 GB UFS 2.1 storage. In terms of connectivity, the phone has 4G VoLTE, dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 AC, Bluetooth version 4.2 LE, GPS/A-GPS, Glonas and USB Type-C support. Accelerometer, ambient light sensor, gyroscope and proximity sensor are part of the phone. Honor Play with dual sim supports 4G network.
The smartphone has a 6.3 -inch full HD+ IPS LCD display. Its resolution is 1080×2340 pixels, which has an aspect ratio of 19.5: 9. The phone works in the octa-core Huicilicon Kirin 970 chipset that supports Mali-G72 GPU. You can set full HD+ and HD+ resolution in Honor Play to control battery consumption. For this, you have to go to the battery section of the setting and set the screen resolution. The viewing angles of the Honor Play display are excellent. While reviewing the phone, we had no problem after setting Honor Play on full HD+ resolution. The screen looked extremely reflective when used in Honor Play in sunlight. Some third party apps are not optimized for display notch. While driving the video app such as the display jumps out and starts appearing a black bar.
Honor Play performance, software and battery life
The performance of Kirin 970 processor is no doubt that it is a great chipset. While doing PUBG, Asphalt 8, 4G connectivity and social media multitizing, the 6 GB RAM variant of Honor Play should not be stuck at all. Honor has given a new antenna design in this smartphone which claims to give better call quality. Calling experience was also good in poor connectivity. While reviewing the Honor Play, we did not get any complaint about the earpiece. In the benchmark test, Honor Play surpassed smartphones like Nokia 7 Plus, Oppo F7 and Vivo V9 of this price range.
The gaming experience in Honor Play is its biggest quality. In China, the company has marked its handset as a marketing gaming phone. We have tested the phone’s GPU Turbo Technology by playing PUBG and Mobile Legends. After playing some online matches of PUBG, we saw that the performance of the phone was quite correct. While playing the game, JPU turbo was on, so it is difficult to say what would have been experienced without this technology. The phone is slightly hot after 25-30 minutes of playing continuously. Playing the game, the consumption of battery was getting fast, although there is nothing shocking in view of the need of the game.
We also saw the latest Asphalt 9: Legends game in Honor Play and the result was quite good. The company told us that ‘4D Gaming’ will be added to Honor Play in the update that comes ahead. Honor Play will run on EMUI 8.2, which is based on Android 8.1. We believe that EMUI has been much better in the last few years, now it is ready to compete with Xiaomi’s MUI. It also has some work features such as one-hand mode, navigation gesture, theme catalogs and wifi+(it is capable of easily switching between WiFi and mobile networks).
Many unwanted apps are still present. In Honor Play, you will get games like Asphalt Nitro and Sonic Master in advance. The phone also contains apps like mirrors, compass, phone clone, translator and quick. We did not find some of these apps to any use. There has been some changes in the UI such as Android message default messaging app in Honor Play and Google Chrome Default Browser. Honor Play supports face recognition with a 16 -megapixel selfie camera. We found that the face unlock feature was quite accurate. However, it does not work in low light. When it increases the brightness of the display at night, it detects the face easily. We did not cause any problem while using fingerprint sensor.
Honor Play has a 3,750 mAh battery. The battery runs a day on 30 minutes of gaming, calling calling, quick email check and social media browsing. In the HD video battery test we found that the battery gives 10 hours 45 minutes backup. The phone has fast charging support, the charger found with the phone takes about 2 hours to charge from 0 to 100 percent.
Honor Play Camera
Honor Play will get a vertical dual rear camera setup. There is a 16 -megapixel primary sensor, with an arpchar f/2.2 and 2 megapixel secondary sensor, whose arpchar is F/2.4. The rear camera comes with LED flash. The front camera is 16 megapixels, which comes with F/2.0 aperture. The company needs to work on both its cameras to compete with the camera of Asus and Xiaomi smartphone at this price.
Like Honor 10, Honor Play comes with Artificial Intelligence Capture Mode. This technique sometimes works well or never. In the picture taken in low light, a good color balance was found, while the light was in sufficient quantity, then the picture taken was more exposed. It is good in Honor smartphone that even after taking the picture, you can leave Artificial Intelligence Enhancement. It gives you the freedom to choose from two versions of each shot. When the phone’s camera is kept in the direction of a person, the neural processing unit (NPU) itself activates the portrait mode. Apart from this, we did not see any use of artificial intelligence processing in the camera app. In the camera app, you will get manual archer, portrait mode, photo, video and AR lens feature. Apart from this, you will also get slow-motion recording, night mode, time laps mode, 3D panorama and many other features.
Front and rear camera sensors support real-time bokeh effect. The portrait mode in the front camera works irregularly. While taking a picture inside the house, it could not detect the face correctly. When we took the phone towards the light, it started working properly. The selfie shot is quite sharp in daylight, but the picture taken in low-light may disappoint you. The rear dual camera setup is capable of recording 4K and front camera full HD+ (2280×1080) video. Honor Play Electronic Image supports stabilization. Still the video quality is not very good.
Our decision
Honor Play is an affordable smartphone that comes with Kirin 970 chipset, if seen, it is a handset in a way. The design of Honor Play is quite sleek and it is quite good in appearance. However, some people would not want to buy this handset due to size and average camera quality. Honor Play is launched with GPU Turbo.
Honor Play has come up with GPU Turbo. It is expected that through OTA updates in the coming time Honor 9 Lite, Honor 7x, Honor 10 And Honor View 10 Smartphones will also be equipped with GPU turbo.
In terms of performance, Honor Play’s positioning has been below Honor 10. The breathtaking price goes in favor of this phone. It seems to be a strong contender in a budget of Rs 20,000-25,000. Sadly, it is not being found in the open sale as promised by the company.