The $429 Honor Play has rumble, 3D sound, and an optimized gaming mode

The new Honor Play smartphone (official site) is now available in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Priced at S$429, Honor’s mid-range entry matches admirable photo capabilities and gaming chops to a 6.3-inch display, spruced up with AI additions to “make your smartphone smarter.” Interestingly, it also packs a little something called GPU Turbo, which boosts performance and extends battery life for optimized gaming.

According to the press material, GPU Turbo is a “hardware-software integration that delivers a dramatic acceleration in graphics processing.” It does this by reconstructing the traditional graphics processing framework at a lower layer system, improving graphics efficiency by 60% and reducing SoC (System on Chip) energy consumption by 30%. In short, better frame rates, better picture quality, and longer gaming sessions.

Complementing the Honor Play’s “Game ON” standing is a 6.3-inch FullView HD display, a 3750 mAh battery, and Huawei’s Kirin 970 chipset pegged to 4GB RAM. That AI chipset brings other gaming-oriented additions too, such as 4D Smart Shock and 3D Surround Sound.

Smart Shock adds proper rumble to the phone, utilizing “real-time image and audio recognition” to make the Honor Play vibrate in 30 different scenarios – a huge immersive boost compared to the standard vibrate. Similarly, users who plug in wired earphones or headphones stand to benefit from a 3D stereo effect.

Honor directly addresses how Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines have large mobile gaming markets with rising revenues. To capitalize on that, they’ve officially partnered with battle royale PUBG Mobile and arcade racer Asphalt 9, some of the more popular mobile games available today.

According to the head of Honor Malaysia, Zhao Zhi Wei, the Honor Play smartphone is “every gamer’s ideal device to support their daily gaming needs.”

Photos: Honor Malaysia