By the end of 2024, Honor has officially positioned the GT series for high-performance gaming phones with more affordability. But the concept of gaming phones is not very new for Honor. Aggregating six years back, it launched the Play series, which came forward with GPU Turbo technology for the betterment of game performance. Since then, multiple models in the series have been upgrading to meet different users’ needs. Priced starting from 2,199 yuan, the Honor GT enters the market. Equipped with flagship-level performance, eye-protective display, long battery life, and 100-watt fast charging, the Honor GT boasts high competitiveness in its category besides its excellent gaming capabilities.
The marketing of Honor has been harping on how it works to make the latest design and powerful performance more accessible. But between the lines, its objective is quite clear-to capture the youth market.
Powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen3 flagship platform, built on a 4nm process, the Honor GT, even with last year’s top SoC, fully maximizes performance with Honor’s AI rendering and display technology. By predicting possible frame drops and optimizing game performance, it delivers a gaming experience with higher frame rates, increased stability, and PC-like graphics quality.
With the GPU Turbo X technology, Honor does not require a separate chip for graphics; thus, the phone supports super-frame and super-resolution mode at the same time and lays the foundation for extreme gaming experiences.
What else
As the first gaming phone in the GT series, it sports a 3D natural circulation cooling system and an industry-first waterfall-like VC cavity, making it Honor’s most advanced device for heat dissipation, ensuring a consistently cool gaming experience.
When it comes to eye protection, the long-time strong suit of Honor, for the first time in the GT series, flagship-level eye protection features are inherited. Besides the high-quality display, the Honor GT introduces AI defocus eye protection, 360-degree motion sickness relief mode, and 3840Hz ultra-high frequency PWM dimming to minimize eye strain.
It is packed with advanced features like natural light eye protection and AI sleep-aid display that make the Honor GT a thorough eye-friendly gaming experience and take the lead in high-performance smartphones with regard to eye protection.
So, how does the Honor GT power and heat management perform? Let’s look at the overall performance of this model.
Design
The Aurora Green color of the Honor GT in our hands looks sleek and minimalistic on its back. There is also the big Honor logo that comes back after four years and reminds us of the Honor 30 series with its style, blending retro and modern taste.
This design adds to making the Honor GT younger, full of energy, and different in its own branding.
With very uniquely carved right-angle edges and a completely flat back panel, this ‘Blade Eye’ named camera module makes the phone clean yet tough in its looks. The intricate secondary oxidation process gives the supercar finish to the camera lens module. This enhances not only the strength of the phone but its visual impact.
Meanwhile, at the module center of the camera, it sits cleverly: the “GT” totem. When the light pulsates with rhythm under it, high performance in this form was personified. Such design shows not only visual characteristics of the phone but also reflects bold imaging capabilities and speed-insisted statements by the Honor GT.
On the front, the Honor GT boasts a 6.7-inch flat screen with a resolution of 2664×1200 that supports up to a 120Hz refresh rate. It also comes equipped with all-around eye care features: AI defocus, 3840Hz high-frequency PWM dimming, natural light, 360° adaptive dimming, AI sleep-aid display, and hardware-level low blue light protection.
More design elements
The Honor GT brings a motion sickness relief display feature for the first time on a high-performance phone. This technology can detect and adjust to vehicle movement in 12 directions, reducing dizziness while gaming on the go.
It has four symmetrically designed sides with the front camera in the middle top, making the display balanced and harmonious. Power and volume buttons are conveniently positioned on the right side.
Independent openings for speakers at the top and bottom are designed to house the best performance dual speakers in their class, making an immersive audio experience that’s just ideal for gaming and entertainment.
Interestingly, the Honor GT does not have a separate infrared sensor; instead, it’s seamlessly integrated into the camera design.
Included in the box is a 100W fast charging kit, ensuring quick power-ups for extended use.
Performance
The Honor GT is powered by the 4nm Snapdragon 8 Gen3 flagship chip with up to 16GB of LPDDR5X memory and 1TB UFS4.0 storage for a gaming powerhouse.
It also comes with an ultra-advanced 3D natural circulation heat dissipation system, boasting an industry-first waterfall-like VC cavity. It introduces aerospace-grade thermal conductive gel that can drop the SoC core temperature by up to 5°C. The VC heat spreader has increased in area by up to 5514mm² for a 10% increase in dissipation. And with 2K high-performance graphite, it goes up to 27% to keep the device cool during intense gaming.
We conducted the performance, frame rate, power consumption, and device temperature tests for the top-of-the-line version (16GB+1TB) in a 25°C office environment, with three popular mobile games: Honor of Kings, Game for Peace, and Honkai Impact 3rd.
1. Honor of Kings
- Resolution: 966×2144
- Average Frame Rate: 120.3 FPS (fluctuation: 0.2)
- Power Consumption: 3.17W
- Energy Efficiency Ratio: 38 FPS/W
- Max Temperature: 35.5°C (right of the camera)
2. Game for Peace
- Resolution: 720×1592
- Average Frame Rate: 119.4 FPS (fluctuation: 0.7)
- Power Consumption: 3.6W
- Energy Efficiency Ratio: 33.17 FPS/W
- Max Temperature: 37.4°C
The Honor GT also supports GPU Turbo X, which can support super-resolution and frame-rate enhancement without a drop in performance. When using super-resolution in Game for Peace, resolution increased to 1080×2338, with frame rate remaining stable at 119.1 FPS and power consumption rising slightly to 4.24W.
- Super-resolution Max Temperature: 38.6°C（only 1.2°C higher than native resolution）
3. Honkai Impact 3rd
- Average Frame Rate: 58.8 FPS
- Power Consumption: 6.96W
Even with this much power consumption, frame stability is achieved with the help of phone AI rendering and separation. The temperature was kept within a maximum limit of 43.3°C, at least 2°C away from other Snapdragon 8 Gen3.
In all, Honor GT provided the best performance and temperature control, the best option for mobile players of e-sports games.
Camera
The Honor GT sports a dual rear camera setup that includes a 50-megapixel main sensor and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera. The main camera supports both OIS and EIS, providing better stability in night and sports scenes, reducing video shake, and yielding clearer previews.
Main Camera
The 50-megapixel sensor does a good job in daylight, clicking vibrant and detailed shots. The sky, greenery, flowers, and buildings appear in realistic colors, close to what the scene appears like to the naked eye.
Ultra-Wide-Angle Camera
The ultra-wide-angle lens is 12 megapixels and captures expansive scenes exceptionally well, perfect for modern and historic architecture displays. Compared to the usual lenses in these devices at 8 megapixels, this lens brings a little more practicality and quality.
Macro Shooting
Moreover, the ultra-wide-angle camera supports macro photography, with close-up shots that clearly detail high details without smearing indicators. Overall, this would make it quite good in capturing complex, minute details.
All in all, the Honor GT’s cameras should then merge the crucial flexibility and quality between both mainstream and specialized photography.
Battery and charging
The Honor GT has a 5300mAh battery and supports 100W fast charging, inheriting the same high level of charging as its predecessor. The following are the test results for its charging speed and battery life:
Charging Test
From 5% battery with the screen off:
- 10 minutes: 48% charged.
- 20 minutes: 81% charged.
- Full charge: It took just 29 minutes.
Such fast charging makes the Honor GT quite a handy device for those who require fast replenishment of the power supply.
Battery Life Test
With the help of the Battery Dog test tool, which can simulate real-world usage-such tasks as CPU stress tests, AI recognition, video playback, and web browsing-the phone has been put to a serious test. The key conditions included the following:
- Screen brightness was set to 50%.
- Volume was at 30%.
- Auto-brightness and other variable settings turned off for consistency across different models.
This way, the test is closer to real-life usage, and that’s how users can get an idea of how long the battery will last in different scenarios. With such a big battery and power-efficient design, the Honor GT should have quite solid endurance.
Conclusion
As the first self-owned product, the Honor GT series sets foot in with a strong foundation-a flagship phone for e-sports, targeted at youth. Combining flagship performance with innovative design and practical features, it continues the Honor focus on providing powerful mobile experiences.
In our test, the Honor GT runs very smoothly on high-load games such as Honkai Impact 3rd, with an average frame rate of 58.8FPS. It controlled power consumption and heat well. When power consumption reached 6.96W, the temperature did not exceed 43.3°C. Thanks to the AI rendering and GPU Turbo X technology, this device can guarantee smooth 1080P gaming without any loss in frame rates.
It differs in that this one focuses on eye protection. The 3840Hz PWM dimming reduces visual strain, while the AI defocus eye protection helps alleviate fatigue from prolonged use. Further, the 360-degree motion sickness relief display minimizes dizziness during mobile gaming.
With a starting price of 2,199 yuan ($300), the Honor GT features high-end performance, fashion design, and ultimate heat dissipation, ensuring an excellent price-performance ratio among Snapdragon 8 Gen3 phones. This all-around package can meet young users’ needs for powerful gaming, eye comfort, and great value.
