Hands on: Honor Play review
Honor is well known for making mobile phones that use top-end tech at a more affordable price than a lot of the flagship phone manufacturers, and the new Honor Play is no exception.
The phone has already been announced and released in China, but now the device is coming to the UK and we've had the phone for a few days to test out what it's like.
Below you can read our initial thoughts on the phone, but we'll soon have a full review put together for you to get the full verdict on whether the Honor Play is suitable as your next device.
Honor Play price and release date
An exact release date for the Honor Play has yet to be announced, but we know it will be coming to the UK in the near future. We’ve yet to have confirmation from Honor on whether the phone will be available to buy in the US or Australia.
Pricing is currently unclear as well, but we’re hoping to learn at least the European price at the brand’s official IFA 2018 show on August 30.
Design and display
The Honor Play has a full-metal unibody and a look that has been heavily influenced by the design language of the Honor 10. This feels even easier to hold in your hand as it doesn’t have a glass back, although it is a touch heavier than the Honor 10 at 176g.
In fact, this isn’t a particularly large phone considering it has a 6.3-inch screen in its center. That’s because it has a 19.5:9 aspect ratio display with thin bezels around the edges. That means there’s a notch at the top of the phone to house the front camera and more.
The dimensions of the Honor Play are 157.9 x 74.3 x 7.5mm but it’s remarkably comfortable to hold in your hand.
If you’re not a fan of a notch at the top of your display, you can cover it up so the phone makes the whole section a black bar, but that does feel like a waste of the extra screen real estate. The Honor logo is cheekily snuck into a thin bezel along the bottom of the screen.
The display itself is a Full HD+ panel, but we’ve found the viewing experience to be quite impressive. Colors are good and the screen is clear with 409 pixels-per-inch. This isn’t going to give you as clear a picture as the Samsung Galaxy Note 9or S9 family, but it still looks great considering the market this sits in.
The rear of the Honor Play feels premium to the touch and your grip may be better on this metal than with some glass-backed devices that you can buy right now.
The edges of the phone are nicely rounded on the rear, although there are some visible antenna bands to allow for the connection to get into the metal body.
Along the bottom edge there's a USB-C port in the middle with a 3.5mm headphone jack – yes, there is one on this phone – to the left of it and a single speaker to the right hand side. That’s the only speaker on this device, so it won’t sound good if you cover it up.
The fingerprint scanner is on the back of this phone, and while it may not look particularly attractive we found the position made it easy to reach and tap.
OS and specs
Inside the Honor Play sits a HiSilicon Kirin 970 chipset, which is the tech made by Huawei (and shared by its sister brand Honor for powering its smartphones) and that’s the same smarts that was powering the Huawei Mate 10 series and the Huawei P20 Pro too.
That’s a powerful chipset that almost rivals Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845, which is running in a selection of other top-end phones, and this is why we’ve found it a smooth experience opening up multiple apps on the phone and speedily completing tasks.
You’ll have the option of either 4GB or 6GB of RAM in the Honor Play, but some markets are limited to just one variant. In the UK you can only buy the 4GB of RAM version with 64GB of storage on board, for example.
Our benchmarking tests found the Honor Play scoring similar levels to both the Honor 10 and Huawei P20 Pro. In fact, the phone’s score of 6,602 beat the Honor 10’s score of 6,570 and was just a little behind the P20 Pro’s score of 6,775.
That makes this a top-end phone for performance in terms of benchmarking, and reflects well on the phone considering this is being marketed toward those who want to play Fortnite, PUBG and other intensive gaming titles on their phone.
The interface for the Honor Play is called Emotion UI 8.1, which is the company's own reworking of Android 8 Oreo. We'd expect Android Pie on this phone in the future, but Honor has yet to confirm the update.
Battery and camera
Inside the Honor Play there's a 3,750mAh cell, which we've not yet had the full opportunity to test. We'll be able to provide you with some accurate information on how it performs at the time of our full review.
There are no wireless charging features here, but the Play does come with fast charging, which should allow you to pump your phone up in the quickest time possible.
As for the camera, you'll find a dual-sensor shooter on the rear of the device but this doesn't follow the normal Honor techniques. There's a 16MP sensor with an f/2.2 aperture paired with a 2MP depth sensor.
That second sensor is just to allow you to take bokeh shots as well as enabling a few other smarts on the device. This isn't likely to give you photography that's as good as the Honor 10, but we expect it to perform okay in good lighting.
The selfie camera however is an impressive 16MP with an f/2.0 sensor that should be able to take some good selfie shots for you to share with friends and family.
Early verdict
Although the Honor Play has yet to blow us away in terms of revolutionary new features, it looks to fill a gap for those looking for an affordable alternative to the top-end devices on the market.
Gaming phones are typically expensive, so it will mostly come down to the pricing of the Honor Play. We won't be able to judge the phone fully until we learn the pricing Honor decides to go with, so expect our full review soon after we hear about that.
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