The Honor Magic4 series was announced for the global market in February, ahead of the announcement for the domestic market. That came today and it was worth waiting for since the company unveiled one more model – the top of the line Honor Magic 4 Ultimate Edition. This builds on the Magic4 Pro by upgrading the camera hardware. The Ultimate model has a massive 1/1.12” sensor (up from 1/1.56”) in the main, but keeps the resolution at 50 MP. The larger 1.4 µm pixels (2.8 µm with binning) are combined with an improved lens – an 8P design with an f/1.6 aperture (vs. f/1.8). The lens is also sharper in the center (+37%) and in the edges (+30%).
The Ultimate edition camera is so good it
can rival cameras with 1” sensors and f/1.8 lenses, says Honor. DXOMark tested
the phone and awarded it 146 points, topping the previous leader, Huawei P50
Pro, by 2 points. The ultra wide-angle camera also gets a boost with a new
larger, sharper 1/2” 64 MP sensor (up from 1/2.5” 50 MP), the lens is slightly
wider at 126° (up from 122°). This 7P lens has an f/2.2 aperture and also
features special coatings. Also on board is a new 50 MP spectrum enhanced
camera, which made its debut on the Honor Magic V.
The rest of the camera hardware is mostly
unchanged, including the 64 MP telephoto camera (1/2” sensor) with a 90 mm lens
with OIS (3.5x optical magnification). Then there’s the 8x8 dToF sensor and an
8-channel sensor that detects the color temperature of ambient light and any
flicker from artificial lighting. The selfie camera uses the same 12 MP sensor
and 100° wide lens, next to it is a 3D depth sensor for face recognition.
The beefed up cameras are supported by a
custom image processor, designed specifically for this phone. It offers 28.8
TOPS peak performance with a power efficiency of 13.4 TOPS per Watt. It
processes imagery from the camera in 20-bits per channel and offers 4K night
mode with live preview. The ISP introduces support for the so-called Magic-Log2
video format that offers 15% higher dynamic range. It also supports 3D LUTS and
is fast enough to record 4K video at 60 fps in a 10-bit Log format.
Camera hardware aside, the Honor Magic4
Ultimate Edition follows the Magic4 Pro recipe. It is powered by the Snapdragon
8 Gen 1 chipset, which is equipped with 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB storage. It
runs Android 12 with Magic UI 6.0. The display is the large 6.81” LTPO OLED
panel from the Pro. It has 1,312 x 2,848 px resolution and boasts a high
frequency PWM dimming at 1,920 Hz. Thanks to LTPO, the refresh rate can range
from 120 Hz to just 1 Hz. The display was also tested by DXOMark and it was
given 95 points, placing it in third place behind the iPhone 13 Pro Max and Pro
(with 99 and 98 points, respectively). The battery capacity is 4,600 mAh (same as
on the Pro) and it supports 100W fast wired charging. Wireless charging is 50W
(down from 100W on the Pro).
The Honor Magic4 Ultimate Edition will be
available in China later this year at a price of CNY 8,000
(US$ 1,260/€ 1,140/₹ 95,600). It will be available in Black and White. The Magic4
Pro will launch on April 2 starting at CNY 5,500 (US$ 865/€ 785/₹ 65,700) for the
8/256 GB unit. The vanilla Honor Magic4 will arrive first (March 25 in China)
with a starting price of CNY 4,000 (US$ 630/€ 570/₹ 47,800).
