Huawei’s Honor 3C Play Edition has been officially released this past week.
The 3C Play is a lower end version of their popular Honor 3C model. Designating it as “Play” edition rather than the more common additional letter suffix or “Lite” to indicate its low end nature of a previous model, is an interesting move. It calls the attention of consumers, although in a way, it may also be misleading.
Calling it a Play version may lead consumers to believe there is some sort of customization done on the chipset to employ a higher capability GPU, or perhaps put in a better screen resolution to make it a gaming-oriented version of the Honor 3C. Well, straight to the point, it is not that.
Specifications
The new model is employing a MediaTek SoC, with an MT6582 chipset at its core. The CPU is a Cortex-A7, clocked at 1.3GHz; the accompanying GPU is a dual core Mali400-MP2, clocked at 500 MHz. The phone is equipped with 16GB internal storage and a sufficient 1GB RAM. It also supports microSD cards up to 32GB size.
Network connectivity capabilities of the 3C Play cover Tri-band GSM: 900/1800/1900 MHz, Dual band UMTS: 900/2100 MHz, with provision for 2 micro SIM cards, employing dual standby. 3G frequencies aren’t very inclusive – catering only to Asia and Europe networks.
Camera specs are quite satisfactory – 8.0MP, f2.0 for the primary rear camera, and 2.0MP for the front camera.
3C Play features a 5.0” IPS 720p screen display, and a smallish 2000mAH removable battery. Unlike most recently announced phones that come with KitKat, the 3C Play will still be running Android 4.2 with Huawei’s Emotion UI with Remote Assistance enabled. Additionally, the 3C Play will be playing host to MediaTek’s new HotKnot screen transfer technology.
Spec-wise, the phone is not mind blowing. It hovers over the low-to-mid range in various aspects, and definitely has a few glaring weak points – low battery capacity and limited 3G frequencies.
Users may even dub the phone to be a little behind, considering the 4G-KitKat trend going on. However, taking into consideration the significantly low price tag ($97) that comes with the 3C Play, the spec set is still justifiable. And although many other manufacturers may come up with much more powerful and feature-packed phones in the same price range, the build quality behind the Huawei brand is definitely a winning point for some users.
If at all, perhaps Huawei may be faulted for their decision on the 3G frequencies – they sort of dictated their demographic here. But what is really surprising and very curious is that Huawei could not even go for a quad band for the GSM network.
That being said, the 3C Play is a good option to consider for those in the market for a low budget droid. The HotKnot technology, being fairly new, might not be utilized that much initially, (unless you buy two of these or have a buddy get one as well) as very few other phones have the same tech to match with.
In the end, it is an attractive plus-point for the phone, and soon enough, the 3C Play will surely have many other phones to tie that Knot with.
Leave a Reply