New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….
Original story (published on February 28, 2020) follows:
The Huawei Honor Play was announced in mid-2018 to much fanfare thanks to its premium internals that matched the likes of Huawei P20 Pro and Mate 10 Pro, among other devices, yet commanding a very affordable price.
At the time of its release, Android Oreo was the most up to date stable version available and that’s what you get out of the box. As expected, the device was upgraded to Android Pie and apparently, that’s it!
As noted earlier, the Honor Play has the same Kirin 970 chipset found in the Huawei P20, P20 Pro, Mate 10, Mate 10 Pro, Honor 10 and even the Honor View 10.
While all of these devices will receive EMUI 10 based on Android 10 (others like P20/P20 Pro and Honor 10/View 10 have already received it), the Honor Play EMUI 10 update isn’t on the cards.
Thousands have stormed Change.org to sign a petition to compel Honor to not only release the EMUI 10 update to the device, but also unlock the bootloader to allow for custom ROM installation and other modding stuff, but these cries seem to be landing on deaf ears.
With no official Honor Play EMUI 10 update, the least Huawei can do is allow users to unlock the bootloader of the device and install their preferred software, probably an Android 10-based custom ROM. The likes of OnePlus and Xiaomi do this all the time.
Instead, Honor says it is for the benefit of the user if the bootloader remains locked as it is. Matter of fact, the company says the process of requesting an unlock code for your bootloader was terminated (see more details here).
Alternatively, you can part with a small fee to have the bootloader of your Honor Play unlocked. Check out the details here.
Even though it doesn’t seem like the Honor Play will get past Android Pie and bootloader unlocking will be a thing too, at least VoWiFi is confirmed to be part of the upcoming March 2020 security update for the device. The full story is here.
Update 1 (March 18, 2020)
Update 2 (May 13, 2020)
Honor Play picks up Android 10 via Pixel Experience ROM. Head here for more coverage.
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