Hands-on with the Honor Play

In 2018 it seems Honor is pumping out phones faster than anyone can keep up with. Hot on the heels of the Honor 10, the Chinese company released the Honor Play. While sharing almost exactly the same specs as the Honor 10, the Play adds a larger battery, larger screen, and a different camera. These changes are implemented in Honor’s effort to create a phone designed for gamers.

We have a Violet Honor Play to look at in this hands-on. Here is a rundown of the specs, featuring the Kirin 970 chipset.

Honor Play	Specs
Display	1080 x 2340 pixels, 19.5:9 ratio
Chipset	Hisilicon Kirin 970
RAM	4/6GB of RAM
Storage	64GB
Back Camera	16+2MP
Selfie Camera	16MP
Battery	3750mAh

While sharing most of the same specs as the Honor 10, we also see a return of the AI camera and the GPU Turbo. Other features include a fingerprint sensor, face unlock, EMUI 8.2, Game Suite, party mode ect.

The design of the Honor Play is similar to the Honor 8 Pro and the Honor 7x. Their main flagship line always features a super reflective body with their aroma designs. The Play has a simple metallic uni-body surface that has a soft glow when light hits it. The color scheme here is a two-tone violet theme. The radio antennas and fingerprint sensor have a lighter accent color to the primary violet shade.

The dual back-facing camera is a stacked design now, with one lens sitting over the other. The power button and volume rocker sits on one side of the phone, consistent with all of Honor’s other devices.

The AI camera feature that is found on the Honor 10 makes another appearance in the Honor Play.

This Honor Play is the Violet color option. There are also Navy Blue and Midnight Black colors.

While this feature was not a part of the marketing to push the Honor Play, my favorite thing about this phone is the display. The 6.3″ display has a unique aspect ratio of 19.5:9. This gives you a taller screen than the 19:9 display from the Honor 10. This extra bit of screen space adds a lot to your media consumption. Movies are shown closer to their source ratio and games give you a wider field of view. Even when it comes to the UI, more of what’s on your phone will be visible.

Honor 10 App Drawer

Honor Play App Drawer

These two screenshots show the app drawers from the Honor 10 and the Honor Play. Notice how the extra 60 pixels on the Honor Play show you the titles from the 6th row of apps, when they’re cut off on the Honor 10. It’s a small detail, but adds a lot to the user experience.

The Honor Play features a taller 19.5:9 aspect ratio display.

This is the first Honor device to feature EMUI 8.2 at launch. There isn’t much that is different from EMUI 8.1, but the software is getting a little better with each update. You’ll still find the massive amount of security and management features that you’re used to in other Honor phones.

The Honor Play features a 6.3″ display with a 1080x2340p resolution.

One of the best updates in EMUI 8.2 is the overhaul of the camera app. All of the camera modes are now laid out on a grid, make everything much easy and quicker to navigate.

EMUI 8.1 Camera App (Honor 10)

EMUI 8.2 Camera App (Honor Play)

There’s a lot to talk about when it comes to the Honor Play. We will go over gaming performance, camera quality, the display, and much more in our full video review.

Buy the Honor Play

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