Honor confirms smartphone with rear display for global market

Honor has listed the Play 20C on its global website. It is an entry-level smartphone with a secondary display on the back. The touchscreen measures 2.01 inches and has a resolution of 240 x 296 pixels. Users can use the rear touchscreen as a camera viewfinder, view incoming call alerts, and control media playback.

On the front, the Play 20C sports a 6.78-inch LCD with a resolution of 1,576 x 720 pixels and a typical brightness of 600 nits. The phone comes in three memory configurations: 3GB/32GB, 4GB/64GB, and 4GB/128GB. Storage can be expanded by up to 1TB using a microSD card (128GB SanDisk microSD card curr. $35.99 on Amazon).

Honor specifies a Unisoc T615 for the 4GB/128GB configuration, while other memory configurations use the Unisoc T610. The Unisoc T610 features two Cortex-A75 cores and six Cortex-A55 cores, all clocked at 1.8GHz, alongside a Mali-G52 GPU. The Unisoc T615 retains the two 1.8GHz Cortex-A75 cores but runs its six Cortex-A55 cores at 1.6GHz and uses a different GPU, the Mali-G57.

The phone packs a 6,000mAh battery and supports 15W wired charging. It supports 4G connectivity but lacks 5G support. It comes with a 5MP front camera, a 3.5mm headphone jack, an IP52 rating, and a side-mounted fingerprint scanner. In terms of software, the phone runs Android 16 Go edition.

The Honor Play 20C resembles the Honor X5ds, which recently launched in South Africa. However, the X5ds has a 50MP rear camera, compared with the 13MP rear camera on the Play 20C. The X5ds is also limited to the Unisoc T610 chipset. Both come in Forest Green and Midnight Black, while the Play 20C also offers a Sunrise Gold option.