Huawei Launches Honor Play, an AI and Gaming Focused Phone

Chinese smartphone manufacturing company Huawei-owned brand, Honor, has launched a new smartphone in India called Honor Play, the first sale for which, will start today on the e-commerce platform Amazon.

With the slogan ‘Crazy Fast Crazy Smart’, Honor Play will bring the user Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) experiences through the flagship Kirin 970 processor with built-in Neural Processing unit (NPU) for AI capabilities, such as an AI camera and AI support for gaming. Huawei’s high-end phones, like the P20 Pro, uses this same processor.

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Honor, which is a sub-brand of Huawei, was recently launched in China. The phone will be available in two colors, Midnight Black and Navy Blue. The phone also has two variants in memory, 4GB RAM, priced at INR 19,999 and 6GB RAM at INR 23,999. Both variants come with an extensible memory of 64 GB.

Catering to the young generation with the slogan, ‘For the Brave’, Honor’s sales have risen to 2 million units in the beginning of 2018 from 0.6 million units in 2017.

“The brand with its India-first-approach registered an unprecedented growth of over 300% owing to strong performance of its recently launched smartphones. As a brand born for the young generation, Honor wants to inspire and motivate the soul of our users to see and to enjoy the world with their own interpretations. With our commitment to choice, Honor provides a world of possibilities for digital natives, allowing them to explore their way of life without limits,” a Huawei statement said.

Honor’s global shipment value of USD 2.5 billion in the online smartphone market has made it the number one online smartphone brand, as per International Data Corporation (IDC) in Q1 2017. Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, which includes its dual brands, Huawei and Honor, shipped 139 million smartphones globally in 2016, presenting a spike of 44% in its annual revenue.

According to the BusinessLine, Suhail Tariq, Chief Marketing Officer, Huawei India, highlighted the company’s ventures in innovations and research, emphasizing the 14 R&D centres located around the world. Huawei’s investments in R&D have been as much as USD 13.8 billion on 2007, and since 2008, around USD 60 billion have been invested. In fact, investment in R&D innovation has put Huawei at the top, dethroning Apple in smartphone sales.

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The Honor Play smartphone’s focus on mobile gaming is sure to lure in young cell phone users. It boasts of features such as 3D surround gaming sound and GPU Turbo, which augments gaming performances and enhances battery life. Its use of AI for image and sound recognition also heightens the gaming experience of users.

This year, Honor has come up with several phones in the sub-INR 20,000 price range, looking to target consumers seeking high-performance cell phones. “The launch of Honor Play marks the beginning of innovative technology with Kirin 970 and AI technology, making consumers shift from smartphones to ‘Intelligent phones’,” the Business Line quoted P. Sanjeev, Vice President Sales, Huawei India.