News & Reviews:   Huawei Honor 3C Play

When the Huawei Honor 3C first came out, it made a big splash as one of the few smartphones in Malaysia to offer big features at a relatively tiny entry-level price of RM499. Nearing the end of the year and the Huawei Honor 3C Lite has entered the scene, cutting this price tag down even further to RM399 but at the cost of some of the features and tech specs that defined the earlier Honor 3C. Does the Huawei Honor 3C Lite measure up? Check out our review of the Honor 3C Lite below to find out.

If you are looking for a cheap smartphone, the new Huawei Honor 3C Lite is a great option. This affordable version of the Honor 3C will be available for pre-order starting 28 November 2014 from VMall.my. Starting from the above date, you can pre-order the device for just RM399 from the online store as opposed to its regular retail price of RM449. In addition, 10 lucky winners who buy the Honor 3C will get a free holiday trip to Langkawi. The pre-order starts at 10AM on the said date and ends at 6PM on 3 December 2014. The first batch of pre-orders will start shipping from 8 December 2014. Even though the Honor 3C Lite is much cheaper than the original Honor 3C, the tech specs remain more or less the same. You get a Quad Core 1.3GHz Mediatek processor, 5 inch 720p display and an 8MP rear camera like the Honor 3C model. However, the RAM is reduced to 1GB, as is the battery capacity from 2300 mAh to 2000 mAh. Surprisingly, Huawei has increased the onboard storage from 8GB to 16GB in this cheaper variant. The Honor 3C also comes with 6 months exchange warranty along with a 1 year Original Manufacturer warranty.

We first covered the Huawei Honor 3C Play Edition back in August 2014 when it was officially announced in China. At the time, it was priced at CNY599 (RM308) and came with a design fairly similar to the Huawei Honor 3C. It turns out that we could soon see the Honor 3C Play as the Huawei Honor 3C Lite. Tech specs are more or less the same as mentioned earlier such as  a 1.3GHz MediaTek MT6582 processor, 1GB RAM, 16GB storage, 5-inch display at 720p pixel resolution, 8MP rear camera, 2MP front camera, dual-SIM support and Android 4.2. Huawei Malaysia have teased it officially with teaser images on their Facebook page and at VMALL.my so we expect the Malaysia release date to be very soon. No news yet on pricing but we expect it to go for the entry-level market at around RM299 to RM349. Stay tuned for more developments.

The Huawei Honor 3C made a big splash with it's 2GB of RAM, 8MP rear camera and 5MP front camera when it first hit Malaysia at just RM499. Now, we could be seeing the entry-level version as Huawei have officially announced the Huawei Honor 3C Play Edition which is going for just CNY599 (RM308). Tech specs for this version include a 1.3GHz MediaTek MT6582 processor, 1GB RAM, 16GB storage, 5-inch display at 720p pixel resolution, 8MP rear camera, 2MP front camera, dual-SIM support and Android 4.2. In terms of design, the Honor 3C Play looks more or less the same as the Huawei Honor 3C but for now, it seems like it is just for China. We expect it to arrive in Malaysia soon and shake up the entry-level market even further.

While the Huawei Honor 3C already has a prime spot on the value smartphone market at just RM499, this is still not entry-level pricing. As such, Huawei have since come out with teaser images of their upcoming Huawei Honor 3C Playpriced at a very low price of CNY599 (RM312). Tech specs for the Honor 3C Play are quite good and include a 1g.3GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6583 processor, 1GB RAM, 4GB storage, 5-inch display with 720p pixel resolution, 8MP rear camera and Android 4.2.2. We suspect that the front camera will probably be a 2MP version and the rear camera won't have any LED flash but we assume it will come packing with Emotion UI 2.3 and offer an Apple iPhone like design based on the Apple logo image in one of the teasers. No news yet on actual Malaysia release dates or pricing but we expect it to come out soon in August 2014 or it may risk having to battle it out with the next Apple iPhone, Galaxy Note and Xperia Z smartphones in September 2014. Check out the teaser images for yourself.