Honor Play review: a quality Android phone that excels at mobile gaming

 The Honor View 10 and Honor 10 received 5 stars in our reviews at T3.com, so I was eager to get my hands on Honor's third major phone of the year, the Honor Play. I was not disappointed.

Honor's GPU Turbo technology is integrated into this phone, which is targeted towards mobile gamers. What would it take for the Honor Play to make it onto T3's list of the best gaming phones?

Here's what I thought of the Honor Play after seeing it.

HONOR PLAY REVIEW: RELEASE DATE, PRICE AND MODELS

The Honor Play is available for a retail price of £299. In the UK, the Honor Play is available in Midnight Black or Navy Blue (the model reviewed).
It's worth noting that the worldwide market offers a wider range of colorways than just the standard black and red options.
Honor's official web store sells the Honor Play.

HONOR PLAY REVIEW: DESIGN AND BUILD QUALITY

It's worth noting, though, that while the Honor 10 and Honor Play share many features, the Honor Play has a matte metal backplate and the Honor 10 has a glossy, reflecting one.

In addition to a USB Type-C charging connector and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the right side of the gadget, there are power and volume rocker buttons.

The left side of the device features a microSD card slot for up to 256 GB of additional storage.

You'll discover the phone's vertically arranged twin rear cameras at the phone's very top left. The fingerprint scanner is located exactly in the middle of the phone's backplate.

HONOR PLAY REVIEW: SCREEN AND HARDWARE

I can confirm that the notch on the Honor Play may be filled up with a solid black bar if desired.

The screen has a high resolution of FHD+ 2,340 x 1,080. When it comes to gaming or video consumption, the vast quantity of screen real estate is appreciated, even though the brightness isn't as good as on the LG G7 ThinQ.
In addition, the screen-to-body ratio is a whopping 89%.

The Kirin 970 CPU featured in the Huawei P20 Pro powers the Honor Play's quick and responsive performance. This is a high-end CPU that can compete with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 in terms of speed.

The Kirin 970 is paired with 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage (which can be expanded by an additional 256GB with a microSD card), and a 3,750 mAh battery to create a powerful smartphone.

HONOR PLAY REVIEW: PERFORMANCE AND GAMING

Because the Honor Play is a performance-oriented phone, I was curious to see how well it performed in the computation benchmark. 

When it came to GeekBench 4, the phone scored an impressive 8,525 points overall, with multi-core scores of 6,561 points and single-core scores of 1,888 points.

These results are excellent when compared to other high-end Android phones, but they fall short of the highest-scoring devices we've seen this year, such as the OnePlus 6, HTC U12+, and the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, which is the finest Android phone in the world.

Because of the Honor Play's competitive benchmark results and GPU Turbo technology, mobile gaming is now a no-compromise situation.

I tested the Honor Play with a slew of graphically taxing mobile apps, including Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, DBZ Legends, Asphalt Nitro, and Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition, and they all ran like butter. 

In addition, I had no problems with latency or poor frame rates, and I had no problems accessing in-game menus.

It's true that GPU Turbo on the Honor Play improves a number of technical aspects like jitter rate, but I was more impressed by how effectively the phone actually ran mobile games.

Aside from being able to record games and lock navigation keys and bars to avoid inadvertent use, the Honor Play's Game Suite mode also allows users to silence alerts.

HONOR PLAY REVIEW: OS AND CAMERA

The Honor Play comes pre-installed with Android 8.1 Oreo with EMUI 8.2 skin. Because of it, this skin's UI lacks a bit of the finesse found in prior iterations.

On the rear of the Honor 10, there is a 16MP + 2MP dual camera setup with AI features like scene and object recognition, which identifies 22 distinct object categories and more than 500 different scenarios. 

The camera system's back also features a bokeh-tastic portrait mode and AIS for pictures and videos.

On the front of the phone, there is an AI-enhanced selfie camera with 3-dimensional facial recognition and 3-dimensional portrait lighting.

As expected from a 2018 phone, the Honor Play has an AR camera option that allows you add various wackiness to selfies and images in general.

HONOR PLAY REVIEW: VERDICT

With the Honor Play, you get a well-specced Android phone that's particularly designed for gaming. 

On that front, it succeeds admirably, bringing in cutting-edge technology and performance-enhancing features that make playing mobile games a blast.

Dedicated Game Suite mode and the Honor Play's strong audio credentials (7.1 Channel Histen audio, 3D game sound effects) help sustain immersion, while GPU Turbo is a nice technical feat and from my comparison testing with other devices, it clearly adds an extra gaming level of power.

However, for me, the Honor Play's ability to look, feel, and perform like a premium Android phone, even if you're not into games, is what makes it a game changer.

With its large and crisp 6.3-inch FHD+ screen, slim and light design in the iPhone manner, and wide range of camera settings, the LG G6 is a strong contender. It also has a competitive battery life and a very low price point when compared to other phones with similar specifications.

If you're looking for an Android phone in the low to mid-range price bracket and are also a gamer who likes to play games on the move, I'd say the Honor Play is a great choice.