Honor Play

Honor Play was launched in India in August 6, 2020.

Compared to Honor Play 3, the Honor Play has only two cameras on its back while the Play 3 has three, including a 48MP main camera, and 8MP, and a 2MP snapper. The battery on the Play 3 is also bigger, standing at 4000 mAh.

Most people will not realize this phone is a gaming-centric handset, except for the ‘Play’ word in its name. And even when it focuses on gaming, the phone’s overall performance and battery life are still decent, given its price it comes at.

As of June 22, 2020, Honor Play’s price starts at Rs. 25,999 in India. On Flipkart, the 6GB/64GB variant will set you back Rs. 21,999.

Display

Honor Play features a 6.3-inch screen so it is by no mean a large phone. Its aspect ratio is 19.5:9 and that combines with thin bezels, make for a quite immersive experience. There is a notch on top to house the selfie camera as well.

While it has a dimension of 157.9 x 74.3 x 7.5mm, Honor Play is still make you feel comfortable when you hold it in your hand.

While the notch might seem bigger than that of many other smartphones on the market, it should not be a problem to your experience with the phone.

While we have only a Full HD+ screen, Honor Play still offers clearness and good colors.

Chipset

Under the hood, Honor Play runs on HiSilicon Kirin 970 processor, made by Huawei. These chipsets can be found in both Huawei and Honor smartphones. That same processor is powering the Huawei P20 Pro and Huawei Mate 10.

HiSilicon Kirin 970 packs enough power to rival the performance of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845, which can be found on the inside of a range of high-end phones.

What you can expect with this chipset is swift task completion and smoothness even when you open several apps at once.

In benchmark tests, Honor Play’s score is the same with Huawei P20 Pro and Honor 10. The 6,602 score of the Play is higher than the 6,570 of Honor 10 and stands just a little lower than the score of 6,775 of Huawei P20 Pro.

This kind of performance justifies Honor Play’s position as a high-end phone made for intensive gaming titles like PUBG and Fortnite.

In tests, the phone can handle most of the popular titles and the graphics looks as good as that of the best smartphones on the market right now.

However, as a gaming-centric smartphone, this handset’s battery is not exactly durable and the phone heats up quite quickly. We will discuss this matter below in the section dedicated to the battery.

As Honor Play comes with several high-end features, slowdown in gameplay is non-existent. New level loading is as speedy as you expect with top-end phones.

The GPU Turbo update is available on Honor Play, which we have not yet figured out what it actually does. According to Honor, it will improve users’ experience with PUBG, Asphalt, and Mobile Legends. However, we have not yet seen it makes it way to other titles.

RAM

Users have the choice to acquire Honor Play in either 4GB or 6GB of RAM. India has both variants with 64GB of onboard storage.

While Honor has made sure that users have the best gaming experience possible with this handset, 4GB of RAM seems to be too low. If you want, you can opt for the 6GB model, with a little added to the price.

There is no 8GB option, which is unfortunate, as the choice to upgrade will make gamers rest assure that their handset is ready for future updates.

Battery

Honor Play draws power from a 3,750mAh battery. That, combines with a Full HD screen, means you can expect the phone to last for a whole day.

In our tests, the phone can definitely hold up for a day with one charge, under medium to heavy usage with lots of movie streaming and gaming sessions at full brightness.

If you set the screen to below this brightness mark, you will have plenty more power from the battery.

However, in one of the tests when we used it to stream a Full HD video at peak brightness and connectivity on, Honor Play lost 20% of juice after the test, which is quite a drain compared to other phones also released in 2018.

In another test when we played Asphalt on the Play, the battery drained pretty quickly and the back of the phone heated up.

Camera

On the rear, the phone features a dual camera setup following an abnormal pattern to what Honor usually does.

What the brand often does is to add a RGB sensor and a black and white one. So when the phone takes a picture, the two sensors combine to produce a clear image. However, what we have with Honor Play is a 2MP depth sensor and 16MP/ f/2.2 sensor.

What the second snapper does is to allow users to take bokeh shots and enable some other features. This combination cannot offer you what you may have with Honor 10 but the image quality is good enough for most users, in good lighting condition.

With enough light, the cameras can capture plenty of details, giving you sharp and vivid images, even without high tech hardware.

However, when there is not enough light, Honor Play’s camera struggles to maintain that performance so they result in grainy shots.

Overall, what you have is impressive pictures during the day outdoor but nothing much when you go indoor or at night.

The phone offers several settings to choose from, especially the bokeh mode, which can give you pretty nice images. The 3D lighting is also interesting as it allows you to change the way the subject is lit before you take the shot.

On the other side, the selfie camera has 16MP and an f/2.0 sensor, which can click some decent selfie pictures for you to share on social media sites.