Huawei has been a huge player in the midrange market in recent years — their ever growing market share in Europe and Asia is evidence that their influence is climbing, and there’s little sign of a slow down. In the era of phones costing closer to the £1,000 mark than ever before, a phone with a price tag below £300 is becoming more and more appealing - especially when considering how it fares against its much higher-priced rivals. I’ve been using the Honor Play for a a few months now as my daily driver, putting it through the paces in what I would consider to be some pretty intense usage — here’s what I think.

Design and Display

The materials used on the Honor Play are fairly standard for a cheaper phone from 2018 — you’ll find a curved aluminium casing propping up a display which is missing the ‘Gorilla’ branding, which would be disappointing if the phone was any more than the £249.99 price tag. The Honor Play comes in three standard colours — Midnight Black, Navy Blue, and Violet — along with a ‘Player Edition’ Black and Red, which sports decals on the back I can only assume are designed to make observers immediately think ‘gaming’. Normally I’d opt for the black so as to not stand out, but I felt I needed to get one of the ‘Player’ editions to get the full experience. In hand the red is great looking, and although the metal casing means wireless charging is absent it takes with it the smudgy fingerprints that a glass back would inevitably lead to. On the back of the device there’s a vertical dual camera set-up on the upper left of the case, unfortunately raised on a slight bump that causes a little wobble when placed back down on a table. Beneath this sits a flash that is happily flush to the aluminium, and in the middle of the back is a circular fingerprint sensor in an ideal position for natural unlocking. So far, so good.

On the right side of the display we have a satisfyingly clicky metal power button and volume rocker, and on the bottom we have a USB-C port, mono speaker grill, and 3.5mm jack — again, not bad for a phone that costs less than £250, especially when compared to the Honor 8X which has micro-USB at a similar price. The rest of the curved sides are bare, aside from a single microphone at the top and plastic antennae bands visible on all 4 sides.

Up front we have a notched 6.3 inch IPS panel covering, reportedly, 83% of the front of the display. It’s 19.5:9 aspect ratio makes it a pretty tall device, and reaching the top of the display even with larger hands may be a struggle for a lot of people — but with my smaller hands I’ve had little issue in day to day usage. It’s a 1080p panel that clocks in at 409ppi, which cannot be complained about given its price and the battery life that comes with it, and is absolutely fine for most people. The notch houses a metal speaker grill for phone calls, alongside the selfie shooter — we’ll talk more about that later — and an ambient light sensor. Finishing up the front is the ‘Honor’ branding sitting on the chin. It’s a shame that this is present, especially given that the Honor 8X omits the front logo, and is in my eyes the only downfall of this devices appearance. Again, I hesitate to complain at this price but — come on, Honor, no one wants a tramp stamp.

As far as build quality goes, I’ve had zero issues despite my clumsy drops. Honor even includes a clear gel case in the box to give further peace of mind — a nice touch at this price point, but cases just aren’t my thing. The glass has gained some micro scratches on the front probably from pocket dust, but the rest of the device has no visible usage marks. Impressive.

Credit: info-android.com

Design: 8/10

Performance and Software

Performance is where the Honor Play really makes you wonder how Samsung and Google can charge quadruple the price of this device. The Honor Play packs a HiSilicon Kirin 970, an octa-core 10nm chip making use of ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture, meaning the device has four low-power cores to push it through light usage, with four high-power cores that come into play with more intense usage such as games. For the most part, the 970 allows you to fly through every task you throw at it; the Honor Play has no problem handling photo editing, streaming and recording HD video, and even playing graphically intensive games.

The Play lives up to its name, too — it’s the first device from Honor or Huawei that makes use of the GPU Turbo, which is intended to give you high frames in graphically intensive games whilst not having a detrimental effect on battery life. It’s difficult to measure it’s effectiveness though, and all I can personally vouch for is an almost stutter-free experience in every game I’ve tried on the device. The battery life is another plus point here, as the 3750mAh cell is enough to push you through a couple days of light usage or a full day of relatively intensive usage. As someone who finds themselves on their phone probably too often throughout the day, I tend to last a full 16 hours normally with some spare charge, with a healthy 7 or 8 hours of screen on time. Nice.

However, as always is the case with Huawei and Honor devices, the software still isn’t quite there. My phone is running the latest EMUI 9 skin on top of Android Pie, and whilst it’s clear EMUI has made great strides over the years it’s been a difficult adjustment coming from a Pixel. The software is fast, but it just isn’t smooth, and small annoyances keep making themselves visible the more I use the phone. Despite having a decent 4GB of RAM, my music player will fall out of memory if I try to use the camera at the same time. I wanted to use Nova Launcher on the phone, but for some reason the RAM situation only worsens if the stock launcher is replaced by a third party one. The navbar gestures are annoying to use and really add nothing to the experience — I found myself returning to the old style 3 button layout almost immediately. You can hide the status bar through software, but this doesn’t play nice with apps such as Snapchat. EMUI has improved, absolutely, but there are so many small annoyances that I would take stock Android, Oxygen OS, or even Samsung Experience back in a heartbeat, even if it means losing useful features such as screen recording. Huawei needs to focus on improving the smoothness and stability of EMUI before pushing additional features — it’s reminiscent of Samsung back in the TouchWiz days, and that isn’t a compliment.

Performance: 8/10

Software: 6/10

Camera

Although the Honor Play packs a flagship processor in its budget cost, the money has to be saved somewhere — and here we are. It’s a 16mp shooter on the back paired with a 2mp depth sensor; a set up we’ve become accustomed to on budget devices, but not bad at all. However, the Honor Play camera is okay at best, and this differs wildly depending on the scenario. Skip to the bottom if you want to see some samples.

Let’s start with the good: the experience is fast. Although the camera can’t be launched with the ever-useful double-click of the power button, launching it from the app drawer or lock screen is decently quick, and there’s little waiting for the view finder to load. In light dayit Shutter lag is minimal as well, even in relatively low light conditions — although EMUI will suggest you hold the camera steady after taking a photo in darker areas to aid with sharpening the photo. The camera also comes with several shooting options and settings, including a full manual mode — something that the Pixel still sadly lacks. So far, so good.

I have two major gripes with the camera on the Honor Play. The first is, in my opinion, excusable: the low-light performance. Once indoors or under dim light, the camera crushes blacks and loses details and brightness in auto mode. The built in night mode helps slightly, but is really nothing compared to night sight on the Pixel or on the Mate 20 Pro. You can use the manual mode to get a decent shot, but the times I wouldn’t choose to switch to a DSLR over this option are extremely few and far between. However, this is a budget phone — low light was never going to be fantastic. It’s a flaw, but not unexpected.

Here is where the camera becomes interesting; AI. The magic buzzword of a futuristic device, and Huawei loves to use it. The camera has an AI mode that is turned on by default and it’s effects are, to put it nicely, not fantastic. Take a look at these samples