Introduction
Huawei’s sub-brand Honor launched the Honor 30S 5G smartphone at the end of the previous month. In the coming week, the Chinese firm will be holding a launch event on April 15th to announce Honor 30 5G and Honor 30 Pro 5G phones. Today, the company has announced the budget-friendly Honor Play 4T and Play 4T Pro. The Play 4T duo is equipped with tall aspect ratio displays, large-sized batteries, and ample internal storage. Like the Honor 30S and the upcoming Honor 30 lineup, the Play 4T also features a rectangular camera housing on the rear for the 48-megapixel camera system.
Price and availability
As for the prices, the Honor Play 4T model, which comes in 6GB + 128GB option is priced at 1,199 yuan ($168) and can be bought in colors like Magic Night Black, Blue Water Jade, and Icelandic Fantasy. Its first sale is scheduled to start on April 21st in China. On the other hand, the Honor Play 4T Pro 6GB + 128GB version is priced at 1499 yuan ($211), and the 8GB + 128GB version carries a price tag of 1699 yuan ($239). The handset comes in the same three color options as the Play 4T phone. It will go on sale from today in the home market.
Design and Display
The Honor Play 4T and Play 4T Pro are equipped with polycarbonate bodies with a gradient color finish. The Honor Play 4T Pro houses a water-drop notch on the front panel, while the more affordable Honor Play 4T has a punch-hole at the top left corner. Both devices have a power button and volume rockers on the right side. As for the displays, the Honor Play is the base model, but that doesn’t make it a pushover. The device packs a 6.39-inch display with a punch-hole having a diameter of 4.5mm. The use of the punch-hole and a bezel-less design allows the screen ratio to get up to 82.4%.
The display also bags the TUV Rheinland’s Blu-ray eye certification. On the other side, the Honor Play 4T Pro flaunts a 6.3-inch OLED display with a resolution of 2400×1080 pixels and a 20:9 aspect ratio. The display uses a waterdrop notch design for the front-facing camera. The OLED display is fully utilized with the inclusion of an under-display fingerprint sensor. It offers up to 83.2 percent screen-to-body ratio with 418 PPI density.
Front and rear cameras
In terms of photography, the Honor Play 4T Pro has a triple camera setup on its back. It consists of the 48-megapixel primary camera, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide camera, and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. The Play 4T Pro has a 16-megapixel selfie camera. The dual-camera setup placed on the rear of the Play 4T has a 48-megapixel primary shooter and a 2-megapixel depth sensor.
Upfront, the Play 4T has an 8-megapixel camera. In addition, the Honor Play 4T series also supports Al ultra-clear photography, owl algorithm, with AIS handheld super night scene 2.0, super wide-angle camera and Al magic short video, and other optimizations. The Honor Play 4T Pro records 4k and Full HD video at 30fps, while the standard variant only can record Full HD videos at 30fps. Both front cameras record Full HD videos at 30fps as well.
Software, battery, and processor
The Play 4T is powered by the old Hisilicon Kirin 710 chipset, which is a 12nm chipset. The models start at 6GB RAM and 128GB storage, as there won’t be a 64GB variant. On the other hand, the Honor Play 4T Pro is fueled by a Kirin 810 chipset, which isn’t a 5G SoC. The chipset is still a powerful one, manufactured on a 7nm wafer. It features two large Cortex-A76 cores and six energy-efficient Cortex-A55 cores. The processor teams up with a Mali-G52 GPU to take care of the graphics.
The GPU supports Kirin Gaming+ technology and fully upgrades the game experience through system-level AI FM scheduling technology. It supports 60fps high performance, HD image quality, and GPU load optimization. In terms of AI, the Kirin 810 processor features single-core Da Vinci architecture NPU, which greatly improves the AI computing power per unit area and fully stimulate the computing potential of the end-side AI. In addition, the processor is paired with 6GB / 8GB RAM options and 128GB storage. Both phones have 4,000mAh batteries. The Pro model has support for 22.5W rapid charging (which can charge up to 58% in 30 minutes), while the vanilla model only offers standard 10W charging. The phones run Android 10 flavored with Magic UI 3.0. As expected, these devices lack support for Google Mobile Services.