Honor GT: Redefining Flagship Phone Value at $290+

Honor GT: Redefining Flagship Phone Value at $290+Honor officially spun off its GT series in late 2024, targeting the gaming experience and high cost-performance market. This isn't Honor's first foray into gaming phones; six years ago, Honor Play leveraged its first-gen GPU Turbo technology to boost gaming performance, and subsequently launched multiple models to meet diverse user needs

Honor GT: Redefining Flagship Phone Value at $290+

Honor officially spun off its GT series in late 2024, targeting the gaming experience and high cost-performance market. This isn't Honor's first foray into gaming phones; six years ago, Honor Play leveraged its first-gen GPU Turbo technology to boost gaming performance, and subsequently launched multiple models to meet diverse user needs. The Honor GT, launching at a disruptive price starting from 2199 (approximately $290 USD), not only offers an excellent gaming experience but also boasts flagship-level performance, an eye-care screen, long battery life, and fast chargingmaking its value proposition exceptionally strong. Honor aims to let young users experience cutting-edge design and powerful performance at a more affordable price, directly targeting the vast young user market.

The Honor GT is powered by the 4nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 flagship platform. While this SoC is a previous generation top-tier processor, Honor's AI rendering separation technology maximizes its performance. Through stutter frame prediction and deep optimization for gaming performance, the Honor GT achieves higher and more stable frame rates and PC-level game visuals. Simultaneously, without a dedicated graphics card chip, the GPU Turbo X virtual discrete graphics technology achieves simultaneous super-resolution and super-frame rate, laying a solid foundation for the gaming experience.

As the first esports phone in the Honor GT series, it features a 3D natural circulation cooling system and uses an industry-first waterfall-like VC chamber, making it Honor's most aggressive cooling system to date, providing esports users with a consistently cool gaming experience. Honor has always prioritized eye protection features, and this time it brings flagship-level eye care to the GT series for the first time. Based on flagship-level screen quality, the Honor GT innovatively introduces AI defocus eye protection, 360-degree all-scenario motion sickness relief display, 3840Hz ultra-high-frequency PWM risk-free dimming, and other industry-leading features like natural light eye protection and AI sleep-aid display, creating a comprehensive eye-care gaming experience for young usersa true champion of performance phones with eye care.

Next, we'll delve into the Honor GT's performance release and cooling capabilities, as well as its overall performance in other aspects.

Appearance: Iconic HONOR logo returns, Blade Eye design adds youthful vitality

Our review unit is the Aurora Green colorway. The back design is minimalist, with the return of the large HONOR logo after four years, reminiscent of the classic design of the Honor 30 series, combining retro and modern aesthetics. This design element's revival infuses the Honor GT with youthful vitality and brand identity.

The Honor GT's camera Deco adopts a unique "Blade Eye" concept. The right-angled frame design complements the flat back, creating an overall clean and robust style. The exquisite secondary oxidation process gives the camera module a supercar-like texture, enhancing durability and providing a unique visual impact. The "GT" totem is cleverly integrated into the center of the camera module, pulsating rhythmically under light like the phone's performance heartbeat, enhancing the cool factor and showcasing its powerful imaging capabilities and pursuit of speed.

The Honor GT features a 6.7-inch flat screen on the front, with a 26641200 resolution, supporting a maximum 120Hz refresh rate. It integrates AI defocus, 3840Hz high-frequency PWM dimming, natural light-like display, 360 adaptive dimming, AI sleep-aid display, and hardware-level low blue light eye protection. Furthermore, the Honor GT is the first performance phone to introduce motion sickness relief display, simulating movement in 12 directions to identify and respond to the motion of vehicles, effectively reducing motion sickness while gaming. The screen adopts an equal-width four-sided design with a centered front-facing camera, creating a harmonious visual effect. The power and volume buttons are located on the right side, and independent speaker openings are located at the top and bottom. These are the best-performing dual speakers in the industry for this size, offering the most immersive sound among performance phones. Notably, the Honor GT cleverly integrates the infrared opening into the camera Deco. A 100W fast charger is included in the box.

Gaming Performance: Stable frame rates under high loads, super-resolution and super-frame rate without a dedicated GPU

The Honor GT houses a 4nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 flagship chip, with up to 16GB LPDDR5X RAM and 1TB UFS 4.0 storageperformance is unquestionable. For cooling, the Honor GT boasts a 3D natural circulation cooling system with an industry-first waterfall-like VC chamber and, for the first time, aerospace-grade high-performance thermal conductive gel, reducing the core SoC temperature by over 5 and boasting three times the thermal conductivity of the previous generation. Additionally, the Honor GT's VC vapor chamber area reaches 5514mm, improving heat dissipation by 10%. Combined with 2K high-performance graphite covering key areas, heat dissipation is further improved by 27%, ensuring uniform body temperature and maintaining ideal temperatures even during high-load gaming.

Our test unit is the 16GB+1TB top configuration. In a 25 office environment, we tested three popular mobile games: Honor of Kings, PUBG Mobile, and Honkai: Star Rail, using the highest graphics and frame rate settings (priority on graphics).

1. Honor of Kings: In a 5v5 battle at the highest graphics settings (9662144 resolution), the average frame rate was stable at 120.3 FPS, with an average fluctuation of only 0.2. The average power consumption was 3.17W, with a power efficiency of approximately 38 FPS/W. The highest temperature on the back of the phone after gaming was only 35.5, located to the right of the camera.

2. PUBG Mobile: With the frame rate maxed out at smooth graphics, the average frame rate after a battle was stable at 119.4 FPS, with an average fluctuation of 0.7 (7201592 resolution). Average power consumption was approximately 3.6W, with a power efficiency of 33.17 FPS/W. The highest temperature on the back of the phone after gaming was only 37.4.

The Honor GT, without a dedicated GPU, uses GPU Turbo X technology to achieve super-resolution and super-frame rate. This means players don't have to choose between high frame rate and high resolution, enjoying both 120 frames of smoothness and 1080P clarity, surpassing traditional 60fps gaming experiences. We tested the super-resolution feature using PUBG Mobile. After enabling the enhanced graphics quality, the resolution increased from 7201592 (720P) to 10802338 (1080P). After a battle, the average frame rate was stable at 119.1 FPS, with almost no impact on frame rate smoothness due to the increased resolution (average fluctuation of only 0.8). Average power consumption was 4.24W, approximately 0.6W higher than the native resolution. The maximum temperature on the back was 38.6, rising only about 1.2 despite a resolution increase of approximately 120.25%.

3. Honkai: Star Rail: Under the highest graphics and resolution settings, the game frame rate remained consistently stable at an average of 58.8 FPS. Power consumption reached 6.96W, almost 7W. The high power consumption is due to Honor's AI rendering separation technology, which improves game stability but also increases power consumption. However, for esports players, frame rate stability is paramount. Under high load gaming, the Honor GT's 3D natural circulation cooling system demonstrates excellent cooling performance, keeping the maximum temperature on the back below 43.3 even with power consumption nearing 7W, at least 2 lower than other Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 phones.

Imaging: 50MP camera, suitable for everyday photography

The Honor GT has a dual rear camera setup. The main camera uses a 50MP sensor with OIS and EIS, providing a more stable preview for night and motion scenes and reducing video shake. The other lens is a 12MP ultrawide-angle camera supporting macro photography, more practical than the 8MP lenses found in similar phones.

Our sample image tests show that the main camera accurately reproduces details and vivid colors in daylight scenes, realistically replicating what the naked eye sees. The ultrawide-angle lens captures wide scenes, showing the grandeur of architecturefrom skyscrapers to ancient buildings. In the performance phone market, a high-quality ultrawide-angle lens significantly enhances the practicality of mobile photography. Macro shots from the ultrawide lens are also excellent, without blurring.

Charging and Battery Life: 100W fast charging fills in under 30 minutes, enough for a day's use

The Honor GT packs a 5300mAh battery and inherits the 100W fast charging