New Honor Play and Two More Honor Smartphones Start Receiving Android 9 Pie Update in India

Honor, the sub-brand of Huawei, today sent out a press statement stating that it has started pushing Android 9 Pie-based EMUI 9.0 update to three of its flagship devices from 2018. The Honor Play, Honor View 10 and the Honor 10 smartphone users in India can now update their smartphone to the latest iteration of Android via over-the-air (OTA) method. The EMUI 9.0 update for the three Honor smartphones is said to bring various new features including full-screen gestures, GPU Turbo 2.0, Translation, AI Shopping, HiVision visual search, Password Vault, Wireless Sharing (Projecting) and so on. As seen with various other smartphone brands, Honor is also rolling out the update in a phased manner, so you may have to be a little patient as it might take some time to reach your handset.

EMUI 9.0: What’s New?

To recall, Huawei introduced EMUI 9.0 interface based on Android 9 Pie back at the company’s Mate 20 series launch in October. The Mate 20 Pro is the first smartphone in India to come out with EMUI 9.0 out of the box, and the three new Honor smartphones now join the list. Talking about the features being introduced with EMUI 9.0, Honor says the update will add a new mode of navigation which is gestures. For the unaware, Google officially introduced gesture navigation with Android 9 Pie and various other manufacturers followed suit.

Furthermore, Honor confirmed that the EMUI 9.0 update comes with gesture navigation Google introduced with Android Pie alongside the company’s own navigation system. “Users can now intuitively control their device with simple swipes instead of clicking on buttons, thus combining the goodies from Google’s Android Pie and Huawei EMUI,” said Honor in the press statement.

Moving on, the update also brings various new features like GPU Turbo 2.0, AI Shopping, HiVision visual search, Translation, Wireless Sharing (Projecting), Password Vault and Digital Balance dashboard. One of the important features which Huawei introduced last year was GPU Turbo which improves gaming performance on a smartphone. Now, with EMUI 9.0, the company is added GPU Turbo 2.0 technology to various smartphones, which is said to ‘optimise intensive workloads and give an on-demand performance boost to the devices while reducing power consumption.’

After updating their smartphone to EMUI 9.0, users will experience faster app load times. The new Password Vault feature will help users store their encrypted password with face or fingerprint for various services. There is also an Uninterrupted Gaming Mode to meet the needs of mobile gamers, which works similar to the Gaming Mode on Poco and OnePlus smartphones.

EMUI Currently Has 350 Million Active Global Users

Huawei recently surpassed Cupertino giant Apple to become the second largest mobile manufacturer in terms of global shipments. According to Huawei, EMUI currently has 350 million active global users. “EMUI 9.0 is the world’s first UI that can process and support AI functionalities like scene detection, NPU based processing,” says Huawei.

In other news, Huawei recently launched the Y9 (2019) smartphone in India. Usually, Huawei charges premium rates for its smartphones because Honor takes care of the affordable segment. However, that’s not the case with Huawei Y9 (2019) as the company got a bit aggressive by pricing the device at Rs 15,990. The highlights of the smartphone include quad cameras, gorgeous glass sandwich design, Kirin 710 SoC and a beefy 4000mAh battery.