Honor Magic 7 Pro: our handling before its European announcement

This is Honor's next flagship, the one which, it hopes, will allow it to counter the very recent European return of Oppo, with its Find X8 Pro, but also the Galaxy S25 range from Samsung to come, or even the Xiaomi 15. The Magic 7 Pro, accompanied by a simple Magic 7 of which we will not see the end of the hull in France, will succeed a successful Magic 6 Pro, and presented in Europe at Mobile World Congress from Barcelona, ​​at the end of February 2024. It is already official in China, where it is even marketed, and we were able to meet it in its native country.

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If Honor is so keen to show it to us, it is obviously because the device will be available shortly in our regions, but enough enthusiasm: we were not able to obtain more than a vague window. It will therefore be released in the first quarter of 2025, without further details. We can bet that it will make its debut a little before the Catalan show, the 2025 trend being that of a slight advance by manufacturers on their usual schedule.

What do you think of the newcomer? First of all, Honor has not abandoned its design identity, still offering a large 6.8-inch screen – this diagonal has not changed, nor has its definition of 1080 x 2800 pixels, and its resolution of 453 dpi. It is still an Oled panel, and Honor has chosen not to go any further in the race for maximum brightness: the brand still announces 1600 cd/m2 in high brightness mode, and up to 5000 cd/m ²maximum. We measured 1627 cd/m² on the Magic 6 Pro: suffice to say that its successor is unlikely to disappoint.

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The smartphone retains most of its predecessor, but still improves its design. If the textured green finish of the 2024 model was questionable to say the least from an aesthetic point of view, the Magic 7 Pro is more sober. Blue or gray are on the menu, always with a matte glass finish that doesn't stick to fingerprints. The exaggerated curves of the 6 Pro have also disappeared: both the back and the screen of the 7 Pro are flat, with a hint of rounding (2.5D windows). A choice that is both more in tune with the times and a little more pleasant in the hand. On the other hand, the brand does not give in to the sirens of the action-type side haptic button, unlike Oppo, for example.

The Magic 7 Pro offers a technical sheet without visible technical compromise. The Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, seen on the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro, is included, with at least 12 GB of RAM and a minimum of 256 GB of storage. When getting started, it is difficult to fault this configuration. The adoption of a silicon-carbon battery, a technology allowing accumulators to offer greater capacity in a smaller footprint than their lithium predecessors, has the advantage of not weighing down the device (223 grams, or 2 g less than the Magic 6 Pro), despite its 5810 mAh (5600 mAh on the 2024 model). The promise of endurance is there! Charging the smartphone is also a little faster, up to 100 W wired, instead of 80 W.

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Variable aperture, telephoto lenses and AI

The flagship asset of Honor's latest addition, at least the argument by which it intends to make a difference, is also that of image capture. The terminal is always a block with a shape between round and square (!), and comprising three modules. And this is where we find most of the technical new features brought by the manufacturer. Starting with a variable aperture lens (f/1.4-2) accompanying a 50-megapixel main sensor identical to that of the 6 Pro. The idea is interesting, with automatic operation varying depending on lighting conditions, but we still regret that this aperture changes so little; a Xiaomi 13 Ultra, for example, offers an aperture varying between f/1.4 and f/4. Nevertheless, and in a software version which is not the same as the one we will have in Europe, the results seemed more than convincing to us.

The Honor Magic 7 Pro offers an ultra-wide-angle module quite similar to that of the 6 Pro (50 Mpx sensor, f/2 optics, 12 mm equivalent), and is distinguished by its telephoto module. This offers a 200 Mpx sensor (180 Mpx on the Magic 6 Pro), with optics whose aperture remains at f/2.6, and with a focal length equivalent to 60 mm; we thus obtain a x3 zoom. The tests that we were able to carry out, particularly in low light, allowed us to discover nicely detailed images (but with aggressive colorimetric rendering), even though one of the smartphone's star options is missing: AI. Honor plans to use artificial intelligence to improve the rendering of images captured at the telephoto lens, with a dose of generative AI (involving sending images to Honor's cloud) promising to recreate the much greater level of detail. Unfortunately, this AI is not yet available, even on the Chinese version of the smartphone, and we have to take the brand's word for it, while waiting for an update expected within a few months.

Added to this AI-boosted image quality is a Harcourt-branded portrait mode compatible with all smartphone focal lengths, the ability to shoot at 10 fps continuously and even intelligent scene detection. Let's not forget the brand's classics, such as its Magic Portal suite (for simplified sharing of images, texts and documents), the prevention of deepfakes (coming via an update), translation or transcription of audio recordings in real time, without forgetting AI Eraser, to remove unwanted content from photographs. All this will be included in Magic OS 9.0, based on Android 15, of which the Magic 7 Pro will be the first ambassador. The Magic 6 Pro will be updated to this same version, although Honor is not yet able to provide a precise date, but will unfortunately not get all of the AI ​​features of the 7 Pro, the firm citing limitations material.

Let's end this overview with a very material consideration: the Magic 7 Pro is sold from 5,699 yuan in China, that is to say at the same price as its predecessor at its launch. Enough to get an idea of ​​its European price, since the 6 Pro made its debut on the Old Continent at €1,299.

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