Honor Play vs Huawei Nova 3i: Specs Comparison

The Huawei Nova 3i instantly became a hit when was launched in the Philippines more than a week ago. It continues the company’s winning streak, which was actually started by the Nova 2i.

Huawei equipped it with some of the best specs and features that you can find for the price. Not to mention its really attractive and premium design. These all made the Huawei Nova 3i a huge success.

But now, someone is trying to steal the spotlight from Huawei. And surprisingly, it’s their own sub-brand, Honor.

The Honor Play already caught our attention when it was officially introduced back in June. As the name suggests, the Honor Play is meant for gaming, which also means that it’s rigged with really powerful hardware. It also has a slew of interesting features to back up the excitement that was built around it.

Now, the Honor Play has been introduced in the Philippines. To everyone’s surprise, it only retails at the same exact price as the Huawei Nova 3i — Php15,990.

So we were wondering, is there still a reason for consumers to get the Nova 3i? Is the Honor Play’s price tag too good to be true? Well, we are here to find the answer to those questions in our Honor Play versus Huawei Nova 3i specifications comparison.

In all fairness, the Huawei Nova 3i was able to take the edge from the Honor Play in some areas. For one, it has larger 128GB of storage, while the latter only has 64GB. In addition, there are the quad-camera setup and the more appealing design.

But then, I think we gotta hand the trophy to the Honor Play. Probably the biggest reason why it won is because of its flagship-caliber processor. The Honor Play has a Kirin 970 chipset, the same chipset found on high-end Honor and Huawei smartphones.

For a perspective, the highly-praised Huawei P20 Pro uses this chipset as well. That’s a device worth Php44,990. Before the Honor Play, the cheapest device that runs on the 970 was the Honor 10 which is priced at Php23,990.

But that doesn’t mean that the Huawei Nova 3i is a slouch in performance. It is the first-ever device to come with a Kirin 710 processor, a chipset that was geared for high-performing midrange smartphones. But at the end of the day, it has nothing against the Kirin 970 of the Honor Play.

Moreover, the Honor Play comes with a 3,750mAh battery with fast-charging support. That’s way better than the 3,340mAh battery found on the Nova 3i. Lastly, Honor’s bet uses USB Type-C and has NFC, if anyone of you actually uses it.

For the rest of the specs, these two phones are pretty much identical. They share the same Android 8.1 Oreo with EMUI 8.2 interface, a 6.3-inch FHD+ IPS screen with a display notch, and GPU Turbo technology that accelerates the device’s performance when gaming. However, only the Honor Play has it at the moment while the Huawei Nova 3i will get it on a later date.

In conclusion, it’s pretty obvious that the Honor Play is the winner here. Thanks to its flagship-like chipset, this device is easily the most powerful midrange device in the market today. For the price of Php15,990, the Honor Play is the best smartphone right now.