Two variants of an upcoming Honor smartphone were spotted on the TENAA website yesterday. Rumors suggest both the JAT-AL00 and JAT-TL00 could be variants of the Honor Play 8. However, there is also a possibility of the two being Honor 8A variants instead. The Chinese certification agency has now updated the JAT-AL00 and JAT-TL00 listings on its website with images of the upcoming smartphone.
Honor Play 8 Images Revealed by TENAA
The images published by TENAA reveal the upcoming smartphone will come with a waterdrop style notch at the top. Since the Honor Play 7 features an 18:9 aspect ratio display, the Honor Play 8 will be a significant upgrade in terms of the screen-to-body ratio. At the rear, we see a dual-tone finish that will help differentiate it from other entry-level smartphones. As confirmed by the TENAA listing yesterday, the smartphone will have a single camera at the rear with an LED flash. We do not see any fingerprint sensor on the back of the handset.
Earlier:
In May this year, Huawei sub brand Honor introduced the Play 7 budget Android smartphone in China. A successor to the Play 7 has now been certified by TENAA in China, suggesting it could be launched very soon. The two Honor 8 Play variants – JAT-AL00 and JAT-TL00 have been certified by MIIT and Bluetooth SIG as well. What seems is a little odd, however, is that the Honor Play 8 seems to be a downgrade over its predecessor in some areas.
Honor Play 8 Gets Certified by TENAA
The Honor Play 8 TENAA listing reveals the smartphone will feature a 6.08-inch IPS display with 720 x 1560 HD+ resolution. Going by the display resolution, the smartphone will come with a 19.5:9 aspect ratio, which hints at a waterdrop notch design on the front. We cannot be completely sure, however, as TENAA is yet to publish images of the upcoming smartphone on its website. Under the hood, the handset will be running on an octa-core processor clocked at up to 2.3 GHz. While the smartphone will only be available with 3GB of RAM, Honor will be offering a choice of 32GB and 64GB storage variants.
In terms of optics, the Honor Play 8 will feature a 13MP camera on the back and an 8MP snapper on the front for selfies. The Honor Play 7 sports a much more impressive 24-megapixel selfie snapper on the front, so it is certainly weird that the company has decided to downgrade the selfie camera on the Play 8. Fueling the smartphone will be a 2920mAh capacity battery, slightly smaller than the 3020mAh battery in the Play 7. Just like its predecessor, the TENAA listing for the Honor Play 8 confirms it will not feature a fingerprint sensor. However, we certainly hope the handset will include support for facial recognition. As for physical dimensions, the Honor Play 8 measures 156.28 x 73.5 x 8.0mm and weighs in 150 grams. It will be available in four colors at launch – Black, Blue, Red, and Gold. On the software front, the Honor Play 8 will be running on the Android 9 Pie operating system out of the box with the company’s EMUI 9.0 custom user-interface layer on top.
In addition to TENAA and MIIT, the Honor 8 Play has been certified by the Bluetooth SIG as well. The Bluetooth Launch Studio listing only confirms the smartphone will support the Bluetooth 4.2 Low Energy standard.
