Honor Play launched in India: Price, specifications, features

Honor Play comes with AI-enabled Kirin 970 processor and GPU Turbo for improved graphics performance. The phone goes on sale in India via Amazon India at 4pm today.

Honor Play goes on sale today: Here’s everything you need to know (HT Photo)

After Razer Phone and Xiaomi Black Shark, smartphone companies have once again become interested in building gaming phones. The latest to join the fray is Honor, which launched its Honor Play in India on Monday.

Honor Play is available in two variants - 4GB RAM + 64GB storage and 6GB RAM + 64GB storage.  The two variants are priced at ₹19,999 and ₹23,999 respectively. The phone will go on sale in India via Amazon India at 4pm today.

Honor Play comes with top-end specifications, placing special emphasis on gaming and AI capabilities. To supplement these two elements, the phone comes with the in-house Kirin 970 processor and GPU Turbo technology under the hood. Kirin 970 SoC - also touted as the world's first AI-capable chipset - is made with the 10nm manufacturing process, which involves cramming 5.5 billion transistors into 1sqcm of silicon.

Honor claims that "Kirin 970's NPU is trained with 100 million pictures to enable its AI Camera to detect 22 different scenes from 500 different scenarios and apply the best camera settings for that perfect shot".

The dedicated NPU is said to consume only 2% battery as compared to CPUs capable of performing similar AI tasks. "AI-based app prioritisation makes applications open quickly as the most-used apps are stacked on the very top of the priority list. AI Noise reduction improves call quality even in the noisiest environment," Honor says.

GPU Turbo is essentially an integrated hardware-software graphics processor acceleration technology that helps reimagine the traditional graphics framework at a lower layer system. The company says the technology significantly improves graphics performance, bringing about a much smoother gaming experience.

Honor Play comes with a 6.2-inch full HD+ display with 19:9 aspect ratio. (Honor)

Honor Play comes with a 6.2-inch full HD+ display with 19:9 aspect ratio. (Honor)

"Honor Play has been devised with a key technological breakthrough with GPU Turbo, improving graphics processing efficiency by 60% and reducing SoC (System on Chip) energy consumption by 30%, setting new records in smartphone performance and energy consumption balance," the company says.

Honor Play full specifications
The smartphone comes with a 6.2-inch full HD+ display with 19:9 aspect ratio. The phone runs on Android 8.1 Oreo-based EMUI 8.2 layered. It is powered by the in-house Kirin 970 processor along with GPU Turbo out-of-the-box. The phone comes with 6GB/4GB of RAM and 64GB built-in storage.

Honor Play sports a 16-megapixel and 2-megapixel dual-camera setup on the back with PDAF. On the front, it has a 16-megapixel selfie camera. Other key features of the phone include a fingerprint sensor, microSD support up to 256GB, and a 3,750mAh battery.