The budget premium smartphone market is becoming an important area for Honor as it plans to launch another smartphone in India. Only days after Honor unveiled the Honor 9N smartphone in India starting at Rs 11,999, Honor is launching a premium flagship gaming smartphone Honor Play next month.
Amazon India spilled the beans on Honor Play's release in India with a dedicated webpage for the handset on its platform. The e-commerce giant confirmed Honor Play's release date in India as August 6, 2018, and said the handset would be exclusively available on Amazon.in.
The teaser page highlights two main features of the Honor Play, which portrays it as a premium gaming flagship. Honor Play was launched in China last month, which means the features and specifications of the phone aren't a mystery to us.
The India launch of the handset will reveal the phone's pricing and availability next month, but here's a look at everything that will make Honor Play an interesting addition to the Honor smartphone portfolio.
Honor Play will come with HiSilicon Kirin 970 chipset - same as Honor 10 smartphone - along with GPU Turbo technology that will boost gaming and overall performance of the device. In China, Honor Play comes in two RAM configurations, 4GB and 6GB RAM, and they are priced at CNY 1,999 (roughly Rs. 21,000) and CNY 2,399 (roughly Rs. 25,100), respectively.
Unlike Honor 9N, which came in cool new colours, such as Robin Egg Blue and Lavender Purple, Honor Play comes in Black, Blue and Violet colours. It remains to be seen which variants and colours will arrive in India.
As for the rest of the spec-sheet, Honor Play offers dual rear camera setup, complete with 16MP (f/2.2) and 2MP (f/2.4) sensors, and a 16MP front-facing snapper with f/2.0 aperture. The handset boasts a 6.3-inch Full HD+ display with 19:9 aspect ratio and a notch. By the looks of it, Honor Play will look identical to its predecessor Honor 10 as well as the Honor 9N.
Under the hood, Honor Play features a 3,750mAh battery with fast charging support, Android 8.1 Oreo-based EMUI 8.2, dual SIM card slots, microSD card slot, USB Type-C port, and supports 4G VoLTE.
Honor strikes a stiff competition to its rivals such as Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Samsung and others. During the second quarter, Honor recorded 188 percent growth to reach 3 percent market share in India, Counterpoint Research had said in its recent report. With new launches like Honor 9N and Honor Play, it remains to be seen how well the company can continue its growth in the competitive market.
