Check out Honor’s metal-clad budget flagship
Impressed at the budget, gaming-centric Honor Play that the company announced a few weeks ago? Well, we have good news: the new phone sporting GPU Turbo Tech is arriving in Philippine shores this weekend. We’ve managed to grab a retail box of the promising budget flagship from the Huawei sub-brand, and today we’re going to unbox it for you guys.
What’s in the box?
Honor keeps things simple with the Honor Play’s packaging. You get a white box with the Honor Play branding in electric blue on the front.
Inside the box, you get the phone itself (our review unit is in Black), a SIM ejector pin, a TPU case, a USB-C cable, and a Quick Charge charger. Expect the retail package to come with documentation.
How’s the build?
In a sea of glass-backed phones, the Honor Play’s aluminum unibody design is a refreshing change. While we like seeing beautiful, multicolor glass-backed smartphones, aluminum-clad devices are simply tougher and more scratch resistant.
In addition, having a headphone jack complete the Honor Play’s reputation of being an entertainment-centric, gaming-centric phone: no need to fumble over dongles if you want to use your pair of cans. The said port is also essential for users to appreciate the Honor Play’s Histen sound enhancement tech.
The notch houses a metal-clad earpiece, an ambient sensor, and a 16-megapixel f/2.0 camera with 3D portrait lighting and portrait mode for those bokehlicious selfies.
On the back, you have a 16-megapixel f/2.2 and 2-megapixel rear cameras with AI tricks. The Honor Play can record in 4K and comes with EIS. However, EIS is limited to Full HD footage at 30FPS.
Speaking of internals, you get a Kirin 970 processor paired with 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage. We are very much familiar with the Kirin 970’s performance, and we expect it to perform well—or even better since it comes with GPU Turbo out of the box.
The Honor Play comes with a 3750mAh battery and Android 8.1 with EMUI 8.2.
How much is it?
The Honor Play retails for Php 15,990. While it has to undergo our usual tests for the full review, the Honor Play is a promising and strong contender for the budget flagship segment. You can pre-order the Honor Play on August 11 at the at the ‘Game with the Brave’ event at SM City Fairview.
Honor Play Specs
- HiSilicon Kirin 970 octa-core processor
- 4GB RAM
- 6.3-inch Full HD+ display, 2160×1080 resolution
- 64GB of expandable storage (up to 128GB)
- 16-megapixel f/2.2 and 2-megapixel rear cameras with PDAF, Dual Tone LED flash, and AI Camera
- 16-megapixel f/2.0 front camera with 3D Portrait Lighting
- Dual SIM (Hybrid Tray)
- 4G, LTE, VoLTE
- WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC
- GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS
- Fingerprint sensor, GPU Turbo, Histen audio
- USB Type-C
- 3750mAh battery