Huawei announces Honor Play gaming phone with GPU turbo boost

Gaming phones are now officially a thing. 

At IFA 2018, Huawei announced that it, too, is courting mobile gamers with the Honor Play.

Like so many Android phones unveiled at the consumer tech show in Berlin, the Honor Play unsurprisingly looks like a clone of the iPhone X.

It’s got a large 6.3-inch display and a sizable notch and a narrow “chin” bezel at the bottom. On the rear, there’s a vertically-oriented dual camera system (16-megapixels and 5-megapixels) that comes equipped with AI scene-detection and is capable of shooting portrait mode photos. The front-facing camera also comes with 16-megapixels. 

There’s also a fingerprint reader on the back and microSD card slot, and a headphone jack.

Inside, the Honor Play’s rocking Huawei’s Kirin 970 processor, 64GB of storage, and 4GB of RAM. There’s also a considerably large 3,750 mAh battery.

These specs are fine for a regular phone, but what sets the Honor Play apart is its gaming capabilities. 

The phone has a special “GPU Turbo” mode that boosts the graphics performance by up 60 percent while reducing power consumption by up to 30 percent. 

With GPU Turbo, Huawei says game framerates should be higher compared to other phones. The company specifically says PUBG Mobile players will see a noticeable performance boost.

Besides this special graphics enhancement, the Honor Play also has an “AI 4D Smart Shock” feature which is supposed to enhance vibrations during gameplay so that you literally feel the action.

And lastly, for gaming, Huawei’s included 3D surround sound to make games a more immersive experience. The only downside to this feature is it only works with headphones.

The phone will be available in several colors in Europe for €329 (about $383 USD). No word on whether the Honor Play is coming to the U.S. 

Unlike the rest of the world, gaming phones aren’t quite as popular in the U.S. That said, if gaming phones like the Honor Play, Razer Phone, and Asus’s ROG phone gain traction, we may see more phone makers try their luck stateside.