Huawei Honor Play 8 launches, powered by MediaTek Helio A22

The Huawei Honor Play 8 is well-featured, yet highly affordable smartphone powered by the capable MediaTek Helio A22. Its large 5.71-inch display with fashionably tall 19:9 ratio is great to hold and gives plenty of screen-estate, and it incorporates a small waterdrop notch that houses the front-facing 5MP selfie-snapper. At the back there's a larger 13MP sensor with HDR capabilities, and despite the lack of fingerprint sensor the Honor Play 8 includes convenient facial unlocking instead.

The A22 is nimble with its 2GHz quad-core and IMG PowerVR GE8300-class graphics, plus a wealth of photography enhancements backed-in for day, night, whenever you need it pictures, because everyone relies on a great camera in their pocket. It's 12nm production process means its extremely efficient, sipping away at the Honor Play 8's capacious 3,020 mAh battery.

Paired to the A22 is 2GB of memory and 32GB of storage, which you'd expect from an entry smartphone, but also expansion space for up to 512GB microSD so it'll always have plenty of room for media and apps.

Dual 4G SIM increases user choice and provides a consistent experience on either 4G connection, and the Play 8 even has space for microSD plus the second SIM, so there's no need to choose between the two.

The Honor Play 8 is available in stylish black or blue colors, with a strip of texture down the one side through the camera. It runs Huawei's EMUI 9.0 based on Android Pie, so you'll be using the latest Android OS right out the box.