Honor has revived the 2-year old Honor Play series in China today. The company has officially unveiled the Honor Play 4, Honor Play 4 Pro with flagship Kirin 990 SoCs and a special edition that features an added IR sensor in the country.
In the past, this series was presented as an affordable gaming line and looking at the new models, it seems that trend will continue. The company has been teasing the arrival of the Play 4 series in China for a while until wrapping the covers finally today.
Honor Play 4 Specifications
Being a lower variant of the bunch, the Honor Play 4 features a 6.81-inch FHD+ LCD display with a single punch-hole on the left. Interestingly, Honor has gone with Mediatek’s 7nm Dimensity 800 5G SoC for the Play 4.
The Honor Play 4 has support for both NSA/SA 5G connectivity. The company promises better cooling on the device with a 12 layer VC liquid cooling structure and 6 layers of graphite on the front and back.
A 64MP primary shooter, alongside an 8MP ultra-wide, 2MP macro and 2MP depth sensors, make up the quad-camera setup on the back. Honor says the device has support for 4K videos with EIS built-in. The front has a single 16MP selfie shooter. There is a dual-tone LED flashlight as well.
All of this is backed up by a 4,300mAh battery with support for 22.5W fast charging. Storage Variants include a 6/8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB. It also has an expansion slot to extend the storage up to 512GB.
The Honor Play 4 comes in three colourways- Midnight Black, Phantom Blue, Iceland Illusion White.
Honor Play 4 Pro Specifications
The larger of the bunch, Honor Play 4 Pro has a smaller 6.57-inch LCD display with a dual-punch hole on the front and a resolution of 2400x1080 pixels. Honor says the display covers 96% of the NTSC colour gamut and depicts up to 16.7 million colours.
As expected the higher Pro model features a flagship Kirin 990 SoC with support for both NSA/SA 5G connectivity.
As for the cameras, Honor has included the Sony IMX 600Y RYYB 40MP sensor on the back. The quad-camera setup also includes an 8MP telephoto lens with support for up to 3X optical Zoom. Honor has also included a laser auto-focus for sharper images.
Honor says the rear camera can shoot up to 4K 60fps video with OIS and a unique Anti-shake EIS feature on-board. Apart from the optical zoom Honor has also included a 5X hybrid zoom and up to 30x digital zooming on the Pro variant.
On the front, there is a 32MP primary selfie shooter and an f/2.2 8MP sensor and can shoot up to 4K and has EIS anti-shake feature. Apart from this, it has a lower 4,260mAh battery and support for 40W fast charging.
The Play 4 Pro comes in Mecha Blue, Iceland Illusion and fantasy Night black. Storage variants include 8GB of DDR4X RAM and 128 GB of UFS 3.0 storage.
Special Temperature Sensor
Apart from launching the Play 4 and the Play 4 Pro, Honor surprised everyone with a special variant that has an IR sensor for temperature measurement. At a time when the world is reeling with the Covid-19 virus, the sensor is likely to be a nifty add-on.
According to Honor, the sensor is an IR receiver which means it receives the energy rather than emitting a ray. It is claimed to operate in a range of -20 to 100-degree celsius.
Pricing and Availability
Both the devices will run the latest Magic UI 3.1 based on Android 10 out of the box while the Play 4 Pro has additional NFC support. They will be available to purchase on Huawei’s Vmall and all e-commerce platforms soon.
Honor has continued the aggressive pricing of the Play Series. The latest Play 4 starts at CNY 1799 for the 6GB/128GB and costs CNY 1999 ($280/€250) for the 8GB/128GB variant.
On the other hand, the Play 4 Pro starts at CNY 2899 ($410/€365) for the 8GB/128GB variant and the special temperature sensor version is priced at CNY 2999.
The Honor Play 4 and Play 4 Pro is available for registration on Huawei’s Vmall starting today and users have to deposit 100 yuan to book the device. Starting June 9, the devices will be available for sale and start shipping from June 12.
