Huawei will soon start rolling out Android 10-based EMUI 10 to at least 33 Honor and Huawei devices, but one of the notable exceptions will be the Honor 10 Play, which was launched just last year as the company’s gaming-focused offering. According to a statement from Huawei, the device won’t receive the Android 10-based update because of certain hardware constraints, although, there’s no word on exactly what those might be.
According to the official statement posted on Twitter recently: “We regret to inform you that EMUI 10.0 / Android Q will not be available for your device due to hardware limitations as it requires higher hardware specifications for optimal performance. We appreciate your understanding and patience”.
It’s rather strange that Huawei says the Honor Play doesn’t have strong-enough hardware to support the new software, given how devices with similar or even lower-end hardware are slated to receive the update. For starters, it has much the same hardware as the P20, including the Kirin 970 SoC and 4GB of RAM. It was originally launched with EMUI 8 on-board, and has since been updated to Android Pie-based EMUI 9.1.
Just to recap, the Honor Play is powered by the Kirin 970 – the same processor as the Huawei P20 series. Even the base model has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, alongside a 3,750mAh battery and a FHD+ screen, all of which should be more than good enough to support Android 10. That being the case, it will be interesting to see if Huawei will care to explain exactly why it is leaving out a relatively new device from its Android 10 update list.
