Honor unveiled the Magic6 series this January and today it brings the sequel with a new chipset, even bigger batteries, faster charging, tougher bodies and more. Both the Honor Magic7 and Magic7 Pro are powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite and they leverage its NPU compute power for a variety of AI tasks that range from a digital assistant to improvements to camera processing.
The big upgrade on the Honor Magic7 Pro is
the 200MP telephoto camera, replacing the already impressive 180MP shooter on
the Magic6 Pro. The new sensor is quite large – 1/1.4” is “main camera”
material for certain other flagships – and sits behind a 60mm lens. This gives
a comfy 2.5x zoom on the short end, which you can extend all the way to 100x
with digital zoom.
The main camera remains the same with a
50MP 1/1.3” sensor and a variable aperture (f/1.4-f/2.0), plus OIS. The ultra
wide camera is essentially the same too, with a 50MP sensor and a 12mm f/2.0
lens (122°), which can focus at a just a couple of centimeters away to take
macro photos.
The front-facing camera has yet another
50MP sensor and a wide 90° lens (f/2.0). The pill-shaped cutout holds it and
the 3D face scanner for secure biometric unlocking. Unlike camera-based
approaches, this one works in the dark since it has its own IR illuminator. To
be fair, the ultrasonic fingerprint reader works in the dark too.
The reader is built into the 6.8” LTPO
OLED display (1-120Hz) with 1,280 x 2,800px resolution and 10-bit colors (Dolby
Vision). The global peak brightness is 1,600 nits, but HDR content can go up to
5,000 nits. All that light is reigned in with high-frequency PWM dimming
(4,320Hz). Note that the display isn’t flat, but is “micro quad curved”. The
battery inside the Pro has grown to 5,850mAh (250mAh more than the Magic6 Pro),
the bigger improvement here is the faster charging – 100W wired and 80W
wireless, compared to 80W/66W for the older phone.
The Honor Magic7 also has an LTPO OLED
display (1-120Hz), a flat 6.78” panel this time (1,264 x 2,800px). This model
also switches to an ultrasonic fingerprint reader (the Magic6 and Pro from
January used optical readers). There’s no 3D face scanner here, so you have
just the fingerprint reader (and a smaller hole in your screen).
Predictably, the vanilla phone loses the
awesome telephoto module, but the rest is basically the same. The tele here is
a 50MP 68mm module with OIS (3x optical, up to 50x digital zoom). It is joined
by a 50MP main (1/1.3” sensor, fixed f/1.9 aperture) and 50MP ultra wide (122°
with macro mode). The selfie camera has a 50MP sensor and a 90° lens.
The Magic7 has a third generation Honor
Qinghai Lake battery – the same branding as on the Pro, but we’re not seeing a
mention of Silicon-Carbon. It doesn’t matter, though, the capacity is what
counts and the new vanilla phone has a 5,650mAh battery (200mAh more than its
predecessor) and supports the same fast charging as the Pro at 100W wired and
80W wireless (up from 66W/55W). It’s also worth noting that the Magic6 had no
dust or water resistance rating, the Magic6 Pro had IP68. But the Magic7 and
Magic7 Pro are tougher than both with not only IP68, but also IP69 (resistance
against hot water jets).
It’s great to see the “vanilla” model be
on par with the Pro on so many things – chipset, most of the cameras, battery
tech, waterproofing. This includes satellite connectivity, but since it is
based on the Beidou system, it will most likely be available only in China.
The two Magic7 models go on pre-order
today and Honor will start selling them on November 8 (Friday next week). The
vanilla Honor Magic7 starts at CNY 4,500 for the base 12/256GB model (US$ 630/€ 585/₹ 53,000. There are several upgrade options: 12/512GB for
CNY 4,800, 16/512GB for CNY 5,000 and 16GB/1TB for CNY 5,500. The Honor Magic7
Pro starts at CNY 5,700 for a 12/256GB model (US$ 800/€ 740/₹ 67,250). A couple of
higher tiers are available too: 16/512GB for CNY 6,200 and 16GB/1TB for CNY
6,700.
