Honor has just announced the rumored Honor Play smartphone, and the device actually comes with new, interesting tech. Before we start talking about the phone itself, it’s worth noting that it ships with “GPU Turbo”, a new technology whose goal is to increase smartphones’ graphics processing efficiency. This should make it possible for smartphones to consume less battery when playing graphics-intensive games. To be more accurate, if Honor’s info is to be believed, GPU Turbo manages to increase graphics processing efficiency by 60 percent, and it also reduces power consumption by 30 percent.
During today’s event, Huawei’s CEO, Richard Yu, said that single-thread performance of Honor smartphones with GPU Turbo (only Honor Play for now) can beat multi-thread GPU performance of some flagship smartphones that are available out there. The technology allows heavy smartphone games to run at higher FPS rates than, which is to be expected, as the graphics processing efficiency is boosted quite a bit thanks to GPU. This technology premiers with the Honor Play, but it will arrive to other Honor devices soon, including the Honor 10, Honor View 10, Honor 9 Lite and Honor 7X. That being said, let’s talk more about the device itself, the Honor Play. The Honor Play is a high-end smartphone, which is kind of surprising following the Honor 10’s announcement, but there you go, it seems like Honor needed a new phone to showcase its new technology, not to mention that the Honor Play is considerably larger than the Honor 10.
The Honor Play is made out of metal, and it does sport a display notch. There are two cameras included on the back of the Honor Play , and a fingerprint scanner sits on the back of the device as well. The device features a 6.3-inch fullHD+ (2340 x 1080) display, along with 4GB / 6GB of RAM and 64GB of expandable storage. The device is fueled by the Kirin 970 64-bit octa-core processor, while a 3,750mAh battery is also a part of the package. You can utilize fast charging to charge up that battery, while the device offers two SIM card slots as well. Android 8.1 Oreo comes pre-installed on the device, with Huawei’s Emotion UI (EMUI) 8.2. 16 and 2-megapixel cameras are located on the back of the device, while a single 16-megapixel camera sits on the phone’s front side. A 3.5mm headphone jack is included in the package, while the phone also sports a 4D gaming experience with real-time recognition of the game scene, all of that will cause your phone to vibrate in specific situations, as it can recognize up to 30 different scenes. On top of everything, the phone also offers 7.1-channel 3D Histen audio in games.
The Honor Play comes in Black, Blue, Red, and Violet color variants, while its 4GB and 6GB RAM variants are priced at 1,999 Yuan ($313) and 2,399 Yuan ($350). The phone is already available for pre-order in China, and it will go on sale starting on June 11.
