Huawei Honor Play

Huawei’s Honor series has established a name for great performance and upscale designs at a mid-range price. With the Honor Play, they look to compete with the year’s latest gaming phones at an affordable price. 

The phone features an aluminum chassis and weighs 176g — light enough for extended gaming sessions but enough heft to not feel cheap and flimsy. The back features a design that looks like a circuit board and an almost matte finish. While not as flashy as many of this year’s high-end releases, reviewers found the finish made for fewer fingerprints and no worries about slippery hands during intense gaming sessions.

Around front, you’re greeted by a 6.3-inch, 1080-by-2340 pixel IPS display with a notch at the top. Reviewers found the screen nice and bright with excellent viewing angles. They found the thinner, longer display ratio great for games as well with visuals filling the screen. Some reviewers found the notch a little large but, otherwise, reviewers loved the phone’s display.

Huawei chose an octa core, 2.4Ghz Kirin 970 processor with 4GB of RAM to power the phone. There is a 6GB variant available in some regions. Their GPU Turbo technology claims a reduction of up to 30% in battery use and boosts gaming performance by up to 60%. While reviewers found GPU Turbo works well, few games support it at the time of writing. Regardless, reviewers had no issue with performance — whether they were playing the latest games, streaming video, or checking email.

There’s also plenty of room for your favorite games, apps, and media. You start with 64GB of internal storage and can add up to 256GB more using the microSD slot on the phone.

While the phone features high-end specs, it includes the older Android 8.1 operating system with Huawei’s EMUI 8.2. Reviews on the software are mixed. As with previous versions of EMUI, Huawei mashes features of Android and iOS together. Most found that this version is less heavy-handed than earlier attempts but if you’re looking for a stock Android experience, this isn’t the phone for you.

Reviews on the 16MP rear and front-facing cameras are also a mixed bag. The rear camera is a dual-lens arrangement using a 16MP and 2MP lens combination. The biggest complaint about the camera was that AI mode tends to over-saturate colors. Otherwise, it captures images with sharp details and well-balanced lighting — though performance dips in low-light situations.

The front-facing lens received an odd complaint — it captures too much detail. So if you’re not used to ultra-detailed selfies, lean on filters or beautification modes to polish your shots before sharing.

The 3750mAh battery used in the phone is good for a full day of standard use. If you’re looking to play games, you’ll get 3-4 hours of play at 50% brightness when connected to Wi-Fi. The only criticism found related to the included USB Type-C fast charging. Most reviewers felt the battery took too long to charge. Still, if you plug it in at night, it should be good to go the next morning.

Overall, the phone punches well above its price — as long as you’re not focusing on camera performance. 

Tech Goondu says, “It may not be the best for photography, despite the promise of being a low-cost Huawei option. However, gamers who care more about game performance that the Kirin CPU offers than the camera might find this mid-range offering appealing.” 

The Next Web praises the phone’s power, saying, “The Honor Play performs pretty well for a mid-range phone, and it certainly can handle demanding games without breaking a sweat. So if you’re looking to get into multiplayer mobile gaming on the cheap — or don’t care for things like RGB lighting and aggressive styling — this is a good way to go.”