Gadgetory

so I don't know if anyone actually asked for it but it seems that gaming phones are now a thing we have the razor phone we have the ROG phone and now we have beyond a play but whereas those two devices were quite premium expensive high performance devices the honor play is a gaming phone that's aimed at a slightly more budget-friendly audience so the question is though can it still game I'm Adam Snitsky and in this on a play review we'll be finding out GPU turbo is what honor is calling a set of firmware customizations that aim to enhance performance and frame rates delivered by the Kiran 970 processor during gaming we're also bringing a 4d experience via smart Rumble support and this device will acts as a kind of reference hardware for that concept on the claims that gamers can expect to enjoy a 60% increase in GPU efficiency and a 30% reduction in single frame CPU energy consumption thanks to this technology to this end you should be able to enjoy smoother frame rates on higher graphical settings GPU turbo also claims to reduce power consumption during gaming by 15% providing a solution to one of the biggest challenges of gaming on mobile this is also helped along by very generous 3,750 million power battery otherwise it's a fairly standard affair the UK variant comes with four gigabytes of RAM though a six gigabyte model is available elsewhere and 64 gigabytes of storage which is expandable by up to 256 gigabytes the screen is a 6.3 inch full HD plus IPS LCD display with a 19 point 5 by 9 aspect ratio and that takes up 89% of the front of the device there's a notch which will be off-putting to some but that can be turned off in the settings camera wise you get a 16 megapixel rear shooter backed up by a secondary 2 megapixel lens for bouquet effects and a 16 megapixel camera around the front there's a headphone jack a very quick fingerprint sensor around the back and USB type-c down the bottom no IP rating the honor play will ship with Android 8.1 and anyway 8.2 on top of that that unfortunately means you get all the usual bloatware and ugly aesthetics that the skin is named for but hey ho you can hide most of that with customizations gone is the Aurora glass found on the honor tenant code and instead you get a map to the unibody metal design which honor says was chosen to improve I like the way it looks it feels pretty premium actually but I have found that the back panel scratches fairly easily it's available in blue and black here in the UK you can also get a play Edition version in either black or red from the website that brings more of a gaming a static okay so that's the honor play on paper but what is it actually likes a game with can you expect to see improved performance over non-gaming phones at this price so in theory the ki-rin 970 SOC is already a flagship chipset it's the same one that's found in the wild way p20 pro and it's the one found in all of honor and Huawei's flagship devices it's more equivalent to these Snapdragon 835 than the 845 however and it's due a generational update one thing to keep in mind as I have found in testing the honor 10 and other devices that on the phones seem to underperform in benchmark tests and it's probably translates the gaming as well so you might be getting a boost that just brings you back up to normal lack of software optimization or bloat whatever it is it left me with relatively low expectations for the play in terms of gaming but I'm very happy to report that in geek convention and to two scores to play mash to perform around the same pace as a Galaxy Note 8 that puts it way ahead of the honor tens original scores and when actually playing games this performance is felt frame rates are stable even with graphics turned up and it all looks great unfortunately it couldn't quite manage my own personal benchmark emulating GameCube games but it came surprisingly close I was actually very surprised by this actually and GPU turbo should affect anything that uses your phone's GPU just keep in mind that only pub G and mobile legends are actively optimized for the feature meaning that you won't get things like the rumble effect with other games that said I didn't really notice it whilst playing pub G anyways and there are more software tricks that also aim to improve the gaming experience you can disable the navigation buttons to prevent accidentally exiting to the home screen for instance and easily record gameplay snippets with the shortcut tools keep in mind that these features are also available on older honor phones though and GPU turbo has already landed on a few via an OTA update the large screen is unique to the play though and it's immersive for gaming but I would have liked to have been able to turn the brightness up a little I was also surprised at the choice to go with such a glossy screen which doesn't make much sense for a gaming device combined with a relatively low brightness this led to a case no issues with daylight visibility this was also a problem during general use such as when browsing the web the UK variant doesn't come with the professional gaming screen protector that honor claims can help to alleviate glare and also the stress felt on the fingers when gaming or diddums the Wi-Fi radio could also be a bit stronger which might become an issue if you plan on using steam link that actually kept crashing out for me when I try to use it anyway but keep in mind that the app is very much in the early stages still it runs much better on samsung devices and those have fantastic Wi-Fi reception that's one of the subtle benefits you can get by buying a more expensive device the lack of dual front-facing speakers is also a bit of a disappointment on a gaming phone honest says that the honor play has a 3d sound field available via 7.1 channel hist an audio and that should provide more realistic sound effects by our headphones or the speaker I don't know about that but I can say that the sound quality here is decent and actually better than many other devices with a similar setup overall then this thing can gain and for the money it games really well it's not going to compete with other gaming phones or flagship devices but it's well suited to the job as a mid-range handset and performance is great elsewhere to your honour play powers through Android really well even with the break that comes from UI I've experienced one or two bugs on occasion but these were rare and in terms of sheer performance it's pretty great with no complaints the camera is also precisely what I've come to expect from on our phones and has all of the fun features that make these really good shooters to play around with including my absolute favorite star tracking and light painting modes and Pro Mode AR effects etc the actual camera performance is somewhat middle-of-the-road though not in the so average it's not worth talking about way but in the this has so many strengths and so many weaknesses I don't know what to think about it way there are all those options and features in the camera which I really enjoy 16 megapixels is a decent amount of resolution especially for the front-facing camera but then photos have a tendency to come out really warm for some reason giving a lot of scenes a kind of orangey tint almost and then there's AI scene recognition you know the story by now is supposed to be able to detect whether you're pointing your camera a person a cake or a cloudy sky and then older things like saturation exposure shutter speed etc to give you the perfect shot it'll also turn on the portrait mode automatically when pointing a human subject I thought this was something of a gimmick at first but it has improved with each update on the honor 10 and as a result I managed to get great photos with it imagine the same will be true here the aperture is f 2.0 and there's no optical stabilization only a is I guess the thing about these cameras is that they're fun and they can pull off some incredible photos but they're also not terribly reliable they're still good going for a gaming phone though and finally when it comes to the day to day experience it's also worth mentioning that 3750 milliamp hour battery again because it really is good and at the end of a full day of pretty intense usage I'd have 15% of my battery left gsm battery monitor calculated an average of nine hours screen on time and that's a big win for a gaming phone but also for those power users out there oh and call quality was perfectly good too now drop calls and my voice carried through loud and clear so to conclude I've really enjoyed my time with you on a play more than I expected to in fact like other mid-range honor devices you get a lot of bang for your buck and a surprising number of high-end features and specs only this time the real-world performance lives up to the specs on paper it's well-made it's fast and it lasts forever the performance doesn't quite compete with top-end flagships despite honest claims and things like dual facing speakers and stronger Wi-Fi are missed but it's still great for gaming and can handle whatever you throw at it so I'd say honor was achieved what it set out to hear and what's more is that a lot of those gaming centric design choices also carry over for an excellent day-to-day experience so thanks a ton for watching guys hope thanks video useful and interesting if you did then please leave likely around that helps us out immensely comment down below and let us know what you think of the on a play and head over to andrew authority comm we are your source for all things Android