Having a gaming-focused smartphone in your arsenal seems to be the trend for manufacturers this year. Joining in the ranks with Razer, Xiami and ASUS is honor with its hot-off-the-press announcement for the Honor Play.
Similar to the brand’s current flagship honor 10, the honor Play comes equipped with the flagship Kirin 970 chipset, as well as neural-network processing unit (NPU) and AI technologies. The honor Play comes in two RAM variants, 4GB and 6GB, with 64GB of expandable storage.
In offering smoother gameplay by dramatically increasing the graphics processing efficiency in smartphones, honor is introducing the GPU Turbo technology in this gaming device. Huawei’s consumer products division CEO, Richard Yu believes with the GPU Turbo, single-thread GPU mid-range honor smartphones may even surpass the performance of multi-thread flagship smartphones in the market. That said, it’s entirely unclear what this feature actually does.
The technology allows for longer gameplay when it comes to graphic-heavy games, thanks to this improvement in efficiency. This means stretching its 3,750mAH battery life even further. It also boasts of the ability to run heavier games at higher FPS, while bringing HDR-quality pictures. Pairing this with a 4D haptic feedback, the Honor Play aims to deliver a rich and fluid gaming experience.
Following in the footsteps of its honor 10 flagship, the honor Play comes equipped with the brand’s rendition of an AI-powered camera. That said, the latter features a lower spec camera hardware. It is fitted with a dual 16-megapixels f/2.2 + 2-megapixels f/2.4 rear camera, and a 16-megapixels f/2.0 front camera. Videos or low-light shots might be a challenge as the device doesn’t come with an optical image stabilisation feature.
The honor Play current runs on the brand’s EMUI 8.2 OS atop of Android 8.1. It is currently available on Vmall China from pre-order, priced at 1,999 yuan (~RM1,243.40) and 2,399 yuan (~RM1,492.04) for the for the 4GB + 64GB and 6GB + 64GB variants respectively. No announcement of availability in Malaysia has been made as yet.
[Source: GSM Arena, Android Authority, GizmoChina]
