Honor Play: Impresses with its price
30.8.2018
Translation: machine translated
Pictures: Ramon Schneider
Honor presents the Honor Play, which wants to be a gamer phone, but isn't. Nevertheless, it's worth taking a look at the phone. Because Honor is once again coming out of Shenzhen with a challenge.
The Honor Play has just been launched at the IFA in Berlin. I received the phone for testing a week ago. I've been looking forward to it for a while, as no device from Honor has disappointed me so far. As the name suggests, the Honor Play is a smartphone for gamers.
Everything is known about the Honor Play since Gamescom except the price. This remained a secret until IFA. And not everyone knew that only the version with 4GB RAM was coming to the European market. But in the end, the price is exactly what always surprises me about Honor.
The Honor Play doesn't look anything special from the front. It has a notch - opponents of the notch must remain strong - and the discreet Honor lettering at the bottom. But the matt metal back, on which you won't see your fingerprints from afar, comes in three colours: boring black, less boring Honor blue and purple.
Violet in a gamer smartphone is something that no other manufacturer has dared to do. Usually, gamer phones are always in the colours black, white or red. Honor is breaking away from this. And it works. In the week that I've been carrying the purple Honor Play around with me, I've received several compliments on the phone. Even from men. The Honor Play in purple is an eye-catcher and a statement of honour at the same time.
I learnt that the purple phone will not be included in our range. What a load of rubbish.
GPU Turbo: Everywhere, but not for all games
With the GPU Turbo graphics processor, the Honor Play is supposed to be for gamers. However, GPU Turbo is also coming to most other Huawei and Honor phones via an update. This means that all Honor and Huawei phones that receive the update will also be gamer phones from now on. This means that the Honor Play no longer really stands out as a gamer phone. Honor should have specialised the phone more or kept the features exclusive to the Honor Play. The gaming functions are too vague and can be found in too many other phones.
With GPU Turbo, Honor promises you 60 per cent more graphics performance with 30 per cent less power consumption. A claim that is difficult to verify.
Honor itself explains the figures on its website, in which it draws a comparison with the now three-generation-old Kirin 960.
The GPU Turbo is a graphics processing technology that is based on Kirin chips and incorporates mutualistic software and hardware interaction. And it supports some particular games. Results are based on comparison with the previous generation chip, the Kirin 960.
Translation: GPU Turbo is a graphics processing technology based on Kirin chips and incorporates mutualistic software and hardware interaction. It supports some specific games. The results are based on a comparison with the predecessor chip, the Kirin 960.
The Honor Play is equipped with the second latest system-on-a-chip (SoC) Kirin 970. This means that Honor's comparison with the previous version is flawed. According to Honor, the performance of the Kirin 970 is already 20 per cent higher than the Kirin 960 and power consumption is 50 per cent lower. In purely mathematical terms, Honor's comparison, or rather the stated values, do not add up here.
In general, Honor's statement sounds to me like Apple, where everything is always better, faster and the latest wonder anyway.
Furthermore, the GPU turbo performance is not available for all games. At the moment, only PUBG Mobile and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang are supported. The software does not yet support other games. But there should be more soon.
I played the mobile game PUBG with the Honor Play to test the 4D gaming experience advertised by Honor. Well, it consists of your phone occasionally vibrating like a controller. It's nice, but not revolutionary - the phone also vibrates when someone calls.
Also: A D is still missing for real 4D.
The advertised 3D gaming sound effect only works with wired headphones. That's fine, but the phone does have a headphone jack on board. Thanks to the AI technology, you should hear the sound from the place where it actually comes from. This basically worked for me, but I didn't find the feature particularly noteworthy. It's a shame that Honor hasn't equipped the phone with stereo speakers.
The screen that pleases
The Honor Play comes with a large screen: You get a 6.3-inch screen diagonal with a 19:9 ratio. That's quite large. Nevertheless, I think the phone feels good in the hand. The screen-to-body ratio - i.e. the screen compared to the size of the phone - is 83 per cent. This is actually a good value, but the side edges should be a little narrower.
Honor's display has a resolution of Full HD+ (2340×1080 pixels). As always with Honor, an IPS LCD screen is used instead of an OLED display. The fact that this is not always the best is particularly noticeable outdoors, where you can simply see more with OLED. But the colours on Honors IPS-LCD are displayed very nicely and, unlike some OLED displays, I never had the feeling that they were oversaturated.
The large display may speak in favour of an Honor Play as a gamer phone - although explicit gamer mobiles usually have a higher resolution, such as at least QHD.
The only thing that really bothers me about the display is that Honor has installed a glass that is noticeably reflective. Outside in the sun, it's sometimes almost impossible to read the display because of all the reflections. I didn't find out what kind of glass Honor has used before finishing this article. It's probably not Gorilla Glass - compared to the Honor 10, savings were probably made here.
The camera has a lot of room for improvement
In contrast to the previous Honor models, I don't particularly like the camera on the Play. It looks as if Honor has simply slapped something on the back just to have something there. As usual, it's a dual camera. One lens has 16 megapixels with an f/2.2 aperture, while the other has a whopping 2 megapixels with an f/2.4 aperture. Luminous looks different.
After all, as with all newer Huawei and Honor phones, the AI camera function is also included here, which recognises 22 different scenarios and optimises your shots with artificial intelligence.
For the selfie camera, Honor also relies on 16 megapixels and portrait functions. These are similar to Apple's; you can take pictures of yourself in stage light or with different backgrounds. Nice, but not absolutely necessary.
Android 8.1 with Emui 8.2
As one of the first in the fleet, the Honor Play comes with Emui 8.2 (Android 8.1). The update is still being rolled out to the rest of the fleet.
What I noticed straight away is that Honor has greatly improved the face recognition function. While this was still very immature on the Honor View, it works quickly and reliably here. I rarely have to unlock the phone with the fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone. Except in the dark. The face recognition doesn't work then.
The fingerprint can also be used as a control. For example, you can swipe down the notification bar or swipe through the picture gallery. This is practical, especially because the Play is so large.
The navigation bar is also new. Similar to Android Pie, you can only swipe through your phone with one bar. In contrast to Android's bar, the Emui bar is significantly wider and there is no back arrow.
If you want to go back, you can press once briefly. To get to the home screen, you need to long press, and if you swipe the bar to the left, the last opened apps will appear.
In previous versions of Emui, you could tap the screen with your fingertips, just like knocking on a door, and the phone would take a screenshot for you. This function no longer exists. Instead, you have to swipe down with three fingers.
There's also a Bluetooth bug in Emui. Previously, you could change the Bluetooth codec in the developer options. This is important if, for example, you have headphones that transmit with AAC codec. At the moment, my Honor Play only transmits with the standard SBC codec. You can hear the difference in quality compared to AAC with any better headphones. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.
Other than that, the 3750 mAh battery delivers what it promises. I have to charge the phone about every day and a half with intensive use. Thanks to the fast-charging technology, called Honor SuperCharge by Huawei, this is quick as usual.
Conclusion: A nice phone, without much innovation
In the end, it's the price that makes the difference with this phone. And it's an announcement. Someone should imitate such an affordable phone with so much performance.
What I'm missing with this phone is an innovation. Something that would make this phone unique. It doesn't have that. The Honor Play is made up of various parts from Huawei and Honor. It's nothing new and it's not a gamer phone. But it is a price announcement.
Testing devices and gadgets is my thing. Some experiments lead to interesting insights, others to demolished phones. I’m hooked on series and can’t imagine life without Netflix. In summer, you’ll find me soaking up the sun by the lake or at a music festival.
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