Honor Magic 6 Pro Hands-On: Proof Phones Are Getting Exciting Again

Honor will not be a world family model like Apple or Samsung, however the Chinese language firm is clearly decided to make a reputation for itself. And the brand new Magic 6 Professional seems to be designed squarely with that in thoughts.

Honor’s Magic 6 Professional, which made its debut at Cellular World Congress, is the world’s first cellphone offered exterior China that carries a silicon-carbon battery, which researchers say has a decrease environmental influence and threat from overheating than lithium ion batteries utilized in a majority of telephones.

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What’s extra, the Magic 6 Professional presents a novel method to work together with it, utilizing an AI eye-tracking characteristic that lets you open and work together with apps utilizing your eyes. Whereas worldwide variations of the Honor Magic 6 Professional do not have eye-tracking, the characteristic is anticipated to roll out sooner or later. This is a demo video the place Honor reveals off the probabilities of its eye-tracking expertise.

Aside from these progressive options, the Magic 6 Professional has most of the specs and options you’d count on from a 2024 flagship cellphone. I spent almost every week testing the Magic 6 Professional, which delivers a strong Android expertise packed in an opulent {hardware} design. Because of its sharp show, slow-draining batteries, glorious cameras, zippy processor and people progressive AI-based instruments, the Magic 6 Professional will doubtless be some of the compelling Android telephones of 2024. However it’s price noting that the Magic 6 Professional isn’t scheduled to obtain a launch in america. It will first be launched in Europe for a worth that’ll be revealed at a later date.

Regardless of all its benefits, the Magic 6 Professional isn’t excellent. Maybe its largest disadvantage is Honor’s software program improve coverage, which lags behind rivals comparable to Google’s Pixel 8 line and Samsung’s Galaxy S24 sequence, which presents seven years of main OS upgrades and safety updates. As a substitute, Honor guarantees 4 years of Android updates and safety patches, which continues to be respectable, though it is shorter than its rivals. I additionally discovered its show collected mud, particles and even tiny scratches — keep in mind I’ve solely used it for six days. 

Honor has clinched a string of firsts with its telephones after it was offered off by Huawei just a few years in the past. The Chinese language firm debuted the world’s thinnest and lightest book-style foldable cellphone in 2023, the Honor Magic V2. Earlier than that, it launched the world’s first cellphone with a silicon carbon battery, the Magic 5 Professional, which is the Magic 6 Professional’s predecessor. However these batteries have been solely utilized in telephones for Honor’s native China market.

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Luxurious-inspired design

As quickly as I took it out of the field, I might inform that Honor desires its latest cellphone to face out. The mannequin I acquired is available in a relaxing sage inexperienced colour, which I believe pairs nicely with the gold-colored end across the digicam bump and physique. It has a textured rear end in addition to a cushion-shaped digicam bump. Honor says it drew inspiration from jewellery and classical timepieces. The digicam bump is cumbersome, nevertheless, so the cellphone does not lie utterly flat on surfaces. On the entrance, the Magic 6 Professional’s display screen has delicate, curved edges. 

Vibrant however delicate show

The 6.78-inch show on the Magic 6 Professional is well seen open air, even when sunny. Because of its zippy refresh fee of 120Hz, making it a easy and seamless expertise to change between apps and scroll on social media. However I used to be stunned to seek out that the display screen suffered some seen put on and tear throughout my restricted time with it. I popped the cellphone right into a tote bag over the course of some days and not using a case and located that it simply collected mud and particles on the display screen. After just a few days, I additionally discovered a number of small scratches on the cellphone. Honor says its Magic 6 Professional’s display screen makes use of a nanocrystal glass.

Great cameras

The Magic 6 Professional’s so-called falcon digicam system has a complete of 4 cameras. The rear digicam module is headlined by a 2.5x telephoto lens with an f/2.6 aperture to let in additional gentle. It has a 108-megapixel sensor and may zoom digitally as much as 100x. Apertures underneath f/2.8 are thought of quick, which mainly means the lens permits a bunch of sunshine. You’ll be able to choose for a quick shutter pace, which ends up in shiny, crisp photos with little to no picture noise. f/1.7 and f/1.6 are a number of the widest apertures discovered on a cellphone digicam lens. For context, full-frame standalone cameras just like the Leica M sequence or Sony Alpha sequence have lenses with apertures underneath 1. 

The telephoto digicam is accompanied by a 50-megapixel extensive digicam and a 50-megapixel, ultrawide digicam. On the entrance, there is a 50-megapixel digicam. Have a look beneath to see the cameras in motion.

I like how the picture above turned out. You’ll be able to even see the reflection of the alternative constructing within the glass, nevertheless it seems artificially sharpened within the picture.

The picture beneath was taken on default settings on a shiny and sunny day in Hong Kong. The Magic 6 Professional amps up the blueness of the skies and seas. I personally prefer it.

Beneath are a sequence of images I took to indicate off the Magic 6 Professional’s zoom vary. The primary picture was taken with the 0.5x ultrawide digicam and the second with the telephoto digicam at 5x digital zoom.

However let’s take issues to the acute. Beneath is a photograph I shot at 100x digital zoom. I am amazed you may really see a semblance of the ship’s entrance. I could not see a lot with my bare eye apart from a tiny silhouette of the ship. As you may count on, the picture is blurry, nevertheless it offers you a tough thought of the topic.

Now let’s zoom on one thing that is really bodily close by (and extra cute). The picture beneath of Rocky, my canine reveals off the Magic 6 Professional’s telephoto capabilities. It is a sharp picture taken in a well-lit room. Discover the strands of fur and element captured.

Portrait mode was one in every of my favourite options to make use of on the Magic 6 Professional. It is easy to take stunning portrait telephones. I like the natural-looking bokeh within the background and the sharp foreground. 

In my time thus far with the Magic 6 Professional, it generally struggled with edge detection. Check out the pictures beneath of the heart-shaped balloon to see what I imply. The primary was taken with portrait mode. Discover the way it separates the balloon from the background. You’ll be able to inform that the Magic 6 Professional struggles with “reducing out” the balloon and its string. 

Beneath is one other picture of the identical balloon taken with portrait mode disabled. You’ll be able to clearly see the balloon’s string in addition to the background on this picture, which was taken on default settings. The digicam took a true-to-life shot of the balloon regardless of gentle pouring into the window.

The Magic 6 Professional images have been strong. Photos in most lighting conditions have been colour correct, crisp and visually interesting. Because the portrait lens has 108 megapixels to play with, zoom was additionally one other stellar characteristic on this cellphone. I might take all types of photos and digitally zoom into them, and every picture appears to be like sharp. I can not wait to take this cellphone to a tennis match and take some motion photographs. 

If I needed to nitpick, the digicam tends to make skies bluer than they have been and generally the ocean too. However I used to be pleased with the ultimate picture, so this tendency to oversaturate images did not trouble me.

Generally portrait mode struggled with edge detection too, however once more it was a non difficulty for me because it was normally a simple repair of simply transferring the digicam barely. Moreover, it was a breeze to take stunning portrait photographs. I completely liked how I might simply take images with a pure bokeh impact within the background but retain a crisp foreground. The Magic 6 Professional most likely has one in every of my favourite portrait cameras regardless of the minor edge detection points.

Silicon carbon battery

This 12 months’s Magic 6 Professional has a 5,600-mAh silicon-carbon battery. In my expertise, the battery lasted all through the day after average use. That features fast cellphone calls, social media scrolling, studying emails, watching YouTube movies and listening to music. 

I additionally ran a 45-minute battery drain take a look at, by which I hopped on a Zoom name, scrolled by way of social media and performed a graphic-intensive cell sport. In that point, the battery dropped by 8%. This end result retains up with gaming telephones such because the Asus ROG Cellphone 8 Professional, which additionally dropped 8% in the identical take a look at, though that cellphone makes use of a lithium-ion battery. Most lineups, together with the just lately launched Samsung Galaxy S24, run on lithium ion batteries. 

Using silicon-carbon batteries in cellphones is an rising pattern that is drawn consideration resulting from its potential benefits over lithium-ion batteries. These advantages embody a decrease environmental influence and decreased threat of overheating. However the long-term reliability of silicon carbon batteries are nonetheless being researched, and adoption within the smartphone trade continues to be in its early phases.

Spectacular efficiency

The Magic 6 Professional runs on Qualcomm’s top-of-the line Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which guarantees a 30% enchancment in CPU efficiency and a 25% improve in GPU efficiency. In my expertise, the cellphone might deal with nearly all the things I threw at it, together with graphic-intensive video games comparable to Genshin Affect, operating Zoom video calls and switching screens between a Zoom name and my electronic mail, as an illustration.

Aside from providing improved efficiency, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip will enable Magic 6 house owners to faucet into generative AI options wherever they’re, even offline. 

On-device AI

The Magic 6 Professional runs MagicOS 8.0, which is predicated on Android 14. Honor is billing its newest working system as one “that actually is aware of you” in a nod to the supply of AI-based options. However probably the most notable AI characteristic, which entails eye-tracking, isn’t but accessible globally. 

Just like the Magic V2, the Magic 6 Professional has an AI-based characteristic generally known as Magic Textual content, which might acknowledge textual content content material on a picture and convert it into editable textual content. Like iPhone’s Reside Textual content characteristic, I might count on this characteristic to come in useful you probably have handwritten recipes or notes that you simply wish to digitize simply, so long as the handwriting is legible and clear. In my expertise, it was intuitive to make use of. All I needed to do was faucet and choose textual content in a picture within the Gallery app, hit copy after which paste it into an electronic mail or wherever I wanted the textual content. 

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General ideas

The Magic 6 Professional is among the many most compelling Android flagships accessible this 12 months. It has glorious cameras, a pointy show, and slow-draining batteries coupled with quick charging. It is also the primary industrial cellphone offered internationally that has a silicon-carbon battery. Nevertheless it is held again by the software program improve coverage and I’m involved about put on and tear on the show. That mentioned, the Magic 6 Professional has helped reinvigorate my pleasure round telephones by way of its futuristic options comparable to eye-tracking, however I am going to must see how advantageous it’s in actual life once I finally get to check it out.