In a press conference in New Delhi, Honor announced the launch of its latest smartphone, the Honor Play.

First unveiled as a gaming smartphone in China a couple of months ago, the Honor Play boasts of top-of-the-line Kirin 970 processor that is made from 10nm manufacturing process and packs in onboard AI capability (via built-in Neural Processing Unit (NPU)) as well as the company’s new GPU Turbo technology to increase processing efficiency and reduce power consumption when playing games.

The Honor Play comes in two memory variants – 4GB as well as 6GB RAM – while the internal storage on both variants is the same – 64GB. It sports a large 6.3-inch Full HD+ display with a 19.5:9 aspect ratio – yes, there’s a notch.

Honor Play Specifications

Honor Play Display 6.3-inch Full HD+ IPS LCD

2340 x 1080 resolution

19.5:9 aspect ratio

2.5D curved glass display SoC Huawei HiSilicon Kirin 970 octa-core (4 x 2.4GHz A73 + 4 x 1.8GHz A53), 10nm

Dedicated NPU GPU Mali-G72 MP12

GPU Turbo RAM 4GB/6GB

LPDDR4X Storage 64GB (UFS 2.1)

Expandable up to 256GB with microSD Cameras Rear cameras:

Primary: 16MP with LED flash, f/2.2 aperture, PDAF

Secondary: 2MP secondary camera with f/2.4 aperture

Electronic Image Stabilization (EIS)



Front camera: 16MP, f/2.0 aperture Audio 3.5mm headphone jack

Single bottom-firing speaker Battery 3,750mAh IP rating None Sensors Fingerprint sensor

Digital compass

Ambient light sensor

Gravity sensor

Gyroscope

Proximity sensor Network 4G LTE TDD: B38/B40/B41

4G LTE FDD: B1/B3/B5/B7/B8/B20

3G WCDMA: B1/B2/B5/B8

2G GSM: B2/B3/B5/B8

Connectivity USB Type-C (USB 2.0)

Wi-Fi 2.4GHz: 802.11 b/g/n

Wi-Fi 5GHz: 802.11 a/n/ac

Bluetooth 4.2

GPS/AGPS/Glonass SIM Nano-SIM Software Android 8.1 Oreo

EMUI 8.2 Dimensions and weight 157.91 × 74.27 × 7.84mm

176g Colors ultra violet, navy blue, midnight black, player edition red/black

GPU Turbo

Honor Play is the first smartphone from the company to pack GPU Turbo out of the box. The graphics processing technology is an integrated hardware-software graphics processing acceleration technology that reconstructs the traditional graphics processing framework at the lower layer system, greatly improving the efficiency of GPU graphics processing and user gaming experience.

According to the company, it allows improving graphics processing efficiency by 60% and reducing SoC (System on Chip) energy consumption by 30% on Honor Play thereby delivering improved smartphone performance with energy consumption balance.

At the launch though, the GPU Turbo supports only PUBG Mobile, the widely popular ‘Player Unknown’s Battlerounds’ game.

Pricing and Availability

The Honor Play is available in two color variants – Midnight Black and Navy Blue – and includes a 9V/2A fast charger as well as a TPU protective case bundled in the box.

Priced at 19,999 rupees ($291) for the 4GB variant and 23,999 rupees ($349) for the 6GB variant, the Honor Play will go on sale exclusively on Amazon.in starting August 6 at 4PM India time.

Honor Play packs in flagship-grade specifications in a good looking chassis while sporting a mid-range price-tag. What are your thoughts on Honor’s new device, and would you like to pick one up? Tell us in the comments!