Many people associate the Honor brand with a company that offers slightly simplified and more affordable analogues of Huawei smartphones. By cutting off all the excess and slightly changing the design, the manufacturer produces fairly competitive solutions in the mid-range and budget price range. True, it was difficult to call them super affordable in their price category. But then the company announces its new phone, which combines flagship characteristics, a high-quality body and trendy features, offering all this for $350. Let's figure out what kind of Honor Play this is.
Introduction
Smartphones specifically for gaming are one of the fastest growing categories in the mobile device market. Devices from the Razer Phone to the ROG and everything in between are trying to offer the best possible performance and gaming experience in a mobile form factor.
The next such smartphone is Honor Play. This is a device with the highest specifications and a large cutout on the screen. It has some smart optimizations, like a thermal management system and enhanced graphics.
So, is this affordable gaming smartphone really as good as it looks on paper? Working with it for more than a week and playing PUBG frequently allows us to give an answer.
Performance
There's no doubt that the Kirin 970 performs great in the real world. Be it heavy gaming like PUBG and Asphalt 8, intense work sessions on a 4G connection, or multitasking on social media, the 6GB RAM variant of the Honor Play we tested didn't slow down at all.
Honor boasts a new antenna design that the company claims improves call quality. Indeed, the signals were excellent, even in areas with poor communications. We didn't have any problems with the headphones and they sounded quite loud and clear.
Gaming is touted to be one of the highlights of the Honor Play smartphone. The smartphone is sold in China as a gaming phone and as far as the global market is concerned, it comes as a premium mid-range offering. However, we tested the new GPU Turbo technology with one of the two games that have been optimized for it so far - PUBG and Mobile Legends.
After winning a few online PUBG matches, we noticed that the performance was smooth. The GPU Turbo feature can't be turned off, so it's hard to say what would have happened without it. However, we did notice that the battery level dropped by a significant amount, which is not unexpected given the challenging nature of the game. The phone also got a little warm after about 25-30 minutes of continuous play.
We even tested the newest game, Asphalt 9:Legends, which delivered great results on Honor Play. Please note that this new mobile game is not yet included in the list of GPU Turbo optimized games. Huawei has announced that the Honor Play game will add a force feedback vibration feature called "4D Gaming" with a future OTA update.
Review of the Honor View 20 smartphone
Specifications
- Dimensions and weight: 157.91 x 74.27 x 7.48 mm, 176 g
- Biometrics: fingerprint scanner
- Material: metal
- Colors: black
- OS: Android 8.1
- Screen: 6.3 inches IPS LCD, 1080 x 2340, 409 ppi, 83.13%
- Cameras: rear 16 MP, f/2.2, LED flash; second 2 MP, f/2.4; phase detection autofocus, 4K 30 fps video. Front 16 MP
- Processor: HiSilicon Kirin 970 8-core 64 bit, ARM Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A73, 2360 MHz, 10 nm, Mali-G72 MP12
- Memory: 6 GB, storage 64 GB
- Battery: 3750 mAh
Design
In terms of appearance, the Honor Play's main achievement is the fact that it doesn't look like a nerd phone. This is an ordinary smartphone, and a sturdy one at that. It has a durable yet sleek metal construction.
There are as many as five color options available: black, blue, purple, red and another black. This review focuses on the red device.
At the front there is a frameless screen with a cutout. The physical buttons are on the right side. This is the power button and volume rocker on the top. At the bottom there is a speaker, microphone, USB-C port and a 3.5 mm jack for wired headphones.
The fingerprint scanner is on the back, it works very quickly. The device unlocks instantly after pressing. This is common for Huawei and Honor smartphones; recognition reliability is also high.
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To unlock, you can also use the front camera, which also pleased me with its speed. The unlocking process is simple and fast. All you have to do is pick up the device and look at it.
At the back there are two cameras with vertical modules. What's missing here is water resistance and wireless charging.
Screen
Whether you like cutouts or not, they're here to stay. Like many devices after the iPhone X, Honor Play received a medium-sized cutout at the top of the screen. You could say it's as elegant as it gets. You can try to hide it with a black stripe if it's annoying. In games, the cutout is hidden automatically so as not to interfere with the interface.
It's good that there is no big frame at the bottom. This adds style to the device and allows for more screen real estate.
This is a 6.3 inch LCD panel. It is even longer than current flagships due to the aspect ratio of 19.5:9. The resolution is 1080 x 2340 pixels, which is enough to get a clear picture.
This is not to say that this is a great screen. This becomes clear immediately after you start comparing it with other high-quality LCD screens, and even more so OLED.
The panel looks dull, lacks saturation and strength, and has too much glare. Because of this, games lose some of their appeal. Despite the high performance of the processor, the screen can ruin the gaming experience.
Honor Play: Games
Huawei is very proud of its GPU Turbo technology. The Chinese company claims it improves graphics processing efficiency by 60 percent and reduces power consumption by 30 percent. We tried to run PUBG Mobile on Ultra-High Graphics settings, but we were unable to do so. The game automatically selects HDR and Ultra Frame Rate settings.
Either way, the game launches very quickly and runs smoothly. We didn't notice any delays or lags.
By the way, the temperature of the smartphone after the first game is about 45 degrees.
Another game that is also optimized for GPU Turbo technology is Mobile Legends. The graphics are amazing, FPS is ok, and it's very comfortable to play.
Let's check the temperature again - 45 degrees again.
We also played Asphalt 9 and Infinity Ops. We didn't notice any problems in either game.
The temperature after 45 minutes of games did not exceed 45 degrees, which is very good.
The performance test showed that the smartphone has good results in synthetic tests such as AnTuTu. The smartphone also runs any Android games with high graphics. On the other hand, we didn't notice any significant benefits from GPU Turbo technology. It may provide low battery consumption while gaming, but we can't test that right now.
Interface and functionality
Honor Play runs EMUI 8.2 on top of Android 8.1. EMUI comes down to two things: good optimization with smooth transitions across the interface and a terribly outdated appearance. You can change the icons and install a different bootloader, but you will still regularly come across the same outdated appearance in key applications. You can't get rid of them and it can be annoying.
As with any smartphone that isn't called Google Pixel, updates are a concern. When will Android 9 Pie be here? Will there even be Android 10 here? There are no answers to these questions now.
To make matters worse, it's full of unnecessary software. A number of unnecessary and duplicate applications are pre-installed on the device.
Software
Honor Play launches Huawei's own EMUI 8.2 image, based on Android 8.1 Oreo. We believe that Emotion UI (EMUI) has evolved a lot over the past couple of years and is almost ready to compete with other custom skins like Xiaomi's MIUI. There are several useful features such as a one-handed mode (handy with this form factor), navigation gestures, a theme catalog, and Wi-Fi+, which makes it easy to switch between Wi-Fi and mobile networks.
However, there is still a problem with several pre-installed games and applications. The phone comes with seven pre-installed games, including Asphalt Nitro and Sonic Master. It also has certain productivity apps like Mirror, Compass, Phone Clone, Translator and Quik, some of which aren't particularly useful just yet. The Settings app is cluttered and badly in need of simplification.
An interesting modification to the user interface is that the Honor Play uses Android Messages as the default messaging app and Google Chrome as the default browser. This is a welcome departure from the past, when Honor used its own apps. Some pre-loaded apps like Facebook and Truecaller have also been removed.
As mentioned earlier, the presence of an NPU should help EMUI make performance optimizations based on user settings. Although spending two weeks with the smartphone was not enough to notice all the changes, the software was functional and offered a good usability throughout the testing period.
Honor 20 mobile phone review
Honor Play supports facial recognition function supported through the 16-megapixel auto-electronics camera. We found face unlock to be accurate and workable from a variety of angles. However, with the lack of infrared radiation, Face Unlock will not work in low light conditions.
Instead, Honor Play displays the display brightness at night to successfully detect your face. Registering your face in the Settings app is a cakewalk. We also had no complaints using the fingerprint sensor, which is fast and accurate.
Processor and performance
Powered by HiSilicon Kirin 970 processor. This is the same chip that is used in the flagship Huawei P20 Pro with a triple camera. We can say that it couldn’t be more premium until the Kirin 980 appeared.
Kirin 970 is manufactured in 10 nm process technology, which means high speed and low power consumption. There are Cortex-A73 cores for demanding tasks and Cortex-A53 for minimal power consumption under light loads. The balance between them allows you to achieve an optimal balance between performance and energy consumption.
There is a technology called GPU Turbo. The developers claim that these are optimizations of software and hardware components. They should increase the efficiency of the GPU by 60% and reduce energy consumption by 30%. The technology was tested in the popular game PUBG. There, the increase in the efficiency of Honor Play was 15%, which will allow you to play longer.
Another new term is AI 4D Smart Shock. The smartphone will vibrate in response to actions within games. An interesting thing for entertainment and nothing more.
The real test is the game PUBG. Honor Play performed well in it. It was possible to set the maximum graphics settings and get a high frame rate without significantly heating the smartphone.
Benchmarks were also launched to compare the device with its competitors. The device is inferior to the best smartphones on Snapdragon 845, but at a similar price it has no competitors.
The storage capacity is 64 GB, there is support for microSD memory cards.
Honor Play: Performance Tests
Before we get into gaming, let's take a look at the synthetic benchmark tests. First we want to launch AnTuTu. As you can see, Honor Play scores about 206 thousand points in AnTuTu. This is a good result for a mid-class smartphone, but not the best. For example, the flagship Huawei P20 on the same Kirin 970 processor has about 206 thousand points, and the Pocophone F1 on the Snapdragon 845 received 265 thousand points.
If we talk about GeekBench 4, our smartphone scores 1900 points in single-core and 6700 points in multi-core testing. Here is a comparison table from the gsmarena website.
Now let's run the 3DMark application and the Sling Shot Extreme test. As you can see, Honor Play has an overall score of 3031.
We also tested the speed of the built-in memory, Wi-Fi speed and GPS.
Honor Play shows very good results in synthetic tests. What about real-world performance and gaming?
Internet and communications
Honor Play is not sold in all countries, so it has limited 4G support. In any case, the device is sold in Russia, so there is nothing to worry about here.
Versions for some countries do not support the NFC standard, but the Russian version does have it. This means you can pay using your smartphone using systems like Google Pay.
There is GPS, Wi-Fi b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.2.
Bottom line
The device frankly surprised me with its combination of equipment, price and capabilities. If it weren't for the average camera, I would confidently switch to Play and use it with pleasure.
For approximately $300, the user can expect a high-quality metal solution with an excellent screen and a set of all the necessary features. There are no critical problems in it.
The smartphone market for this money is very wide and the number of Honor Play competitors is extremely large. But, in my opinion, this is one of the most balanced devices at the moment. So, if you do not consider yourself a mobile photographer, take a closer look at this model.
Please wait…
Cameras
Honor Play has a dual rear camera and a single front camera. The main camera on the back is 16 MP with f/2.2 lenses. The second is only 2 MP f/2.4, it is intended to collect information about the depth of the image. The front camera resolution is 16 MP.
Typically, the camera starts up by double pressing the power button. In this case, double-clicking down on the volume control is used to do the same.
Image quality
The photos look good, but nothing more. Compared to the best cameras, it lacks dynamic range and attractive colors. Bright areas are often faded.
In low light, noise begins to appear, making it difficult to focus and get a clear shot.
In the center of the camera app is an artificial intelligence button. He can recognize flowers, plants, blue skies, food, etc. When this happens, it automatically enhances the colors, but too much. The result is unpredictable and not always correct.
I liked selfies much more. The front camera takes clean, crisp photos with good dynamics and high detail. There is no portrait mode here, but otherwise the quality is very good.
Honor Play: Camera app
The Honor Play camera app has many different features. I'm afraid we won't be able to cover all of them, but let's try!
On the main screen there is a shutter button, a gallery icon and a transition to the selfie camera. You can choose different shooting modes, such as AR lens, portrait, photo and video. But that is not all! If you select the Advanced option, you will get Pro mode, Night mode, Panorama mode, Slide mode, HDR mode, Time-Lapse mode, Slow mo mode and more.
At the top of the main screen there are AI, Moving Picture, Flashlight modes.
The camera settings menu contains the following options: photo resolution, RAW format, GPS, adding a watermark, etc. The video settings menu allows you to select video resolution, GPS tag, object tracking and stabilization.
Video quality
Supports shooting 4K 30 fps video, as well as Full HD at 30 fps and 60 fps. 4K video looks good, but there is no stabilization. As a result, everything in the frame shakes.
There is stabilization at 1080p resolution, but the quality is terrible. Some reviewers are calling this the worst smartphone video of 2018. Bright areas burn out too much, colors are poor, and detail is lacking. In general, people will not buy a smartphone for shooting video.
Honor Play: Video Examples
If we talk about video recording, Honor Play offers 4K and 1080P resolution. However, electronic image stabilization is only available in 1080p. We recommend shooting in Full HD because the video doesn't shake like it does in 4K. The picture has good colors, contrast and high dynamic range.
The Honor Play has a really good camera for a mid-range smartphone. It offers many useful features such as AI, portrait, HDR, aperture mode. Photos in AI mode look more contrasty and saturated, but even without it, images have high detail and natural colors.
The smartphone offers 4K video recording, but we recommend using 1080P with electronic image stabilization.
Autonomy
The large 3750 mAh battery ensures long gaming sessions. In everyday use, the device also does not discharge for a long time. The developers promise 15 hours of video viewing and 95 hours of music playback. Since it is not possible to manually set the brightness to a specific level, the tests failed.
It is unlikely that the device will be able to work for two days, but its autonomy is still solid.
The package includes an adapter for charging up to 18 W. This will quickly replenish the lack of energy. Wireless charging is not supported.
