Honor Magic 4 Pro
Honor has broken free of the shackles preventing it from working with Google, and at MWC 2022, it's clearly reveling in the fact. First, it flexed its new China-only foldable, the Honor V in the waiting area ahead of the announcement. And as for the launch event, it was all about Honor's specsy new flagship, the Magic 4 Pro.
While not the first phone from Honor to hit the West since its split from Huawei, this is the first serious contender we've seen to cram in unadulterated flagship features.
Historically, Honor phones have always been the 'lite' alternative to Huawei's big hitters. Even the Honor 50, which launched towards the end of 2021 fell short of a win out of the gate.
A glance at the spec sheet of the Magic 4 Pro though, and words like Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, 256GB storage and 100W wireless charging make a clear point – Honor isn't playing games.
Then there's the price. While it doesn't tread into iPhone 13 Pro Max or Galaxy S22 Ultra territory, it's still a serious flagship, costing OnePlus 10 Pro and Pixel 6 Pro prices. But can it attack up to such fierce completion?
Honor Magic 4 Pro price and availability
The Magic 4 Pro hasn't been announced for the US, but it's coming to Europe, with UK availability expected to be announced imminently.
While we don't know exactly when we'll be able to buy the Magic 4 Pro, we do know it's set to cost £899, roughly £1,200 / AUS $1,650. There are two versions of the phone expected, one with 256GB storage and 8GB RAM, and the higher-spec configuration with 512GB storage and 12GB RAM.
Honor Magic 4 Pro design
If you've seen a Huawei Mate 40 Pro, then you'll very loosely know what to expect from the Honor Magic 4 Pro's design. It's a premium bit of kit with a curved display on the front and a curved glass back, sandwiching polished metal.
While a lot of smartphone makers are switching it up and adding frosted finishes to their flagships, Honor has opted for high-gloss glass with a shiny back that bounces light off it with grace and beauty (until it gets grubbed up by greasy fingers).
While the phone is on the chunkier side at 9.1mm, it nevertheless feels somewhat elegant with the glass back and front tapering into the sides. It's also solid at 205g, though still undercuts the super-heavy iPhone 13 Pro Max.
Around the back of the phone, the styling is a pretty clear evolution of Honor's Magic 3 flagship series and Huawei's Mate 20 series. That means a circular camera surround that cascades the cameras around a ring. What's striking is how the Magic 4 positions the eye-catching periscope camera right in the center of the circle.
Honor Magic 4 Pro screen
On first impression, the Honor Magic 4 Pro's screen is rich in zing and vibrancy, and is bright too. It's an LTPO OLED panel, which explains the color pop, and it gets as bright as 1000 nits, which should make seeing what's going on easy in all but the brightest climes.
Measuring 6.8 inches, the screen matches the Galaxy S22 Ultra size-wise, and with a resolution of 1312 x 2848, it sports a nice and sharp 460ppi pixel density, as well as a relatively widescreen 19.5:9 aspect ratio.
Honor has also done some cool stuff with the screen's flicker rate, cranking it up to 1,920Hz. This makes for a more comfortable viewing experience according to Honor.
That's versus the iPhone, which caps out at 480Hz. In the flesh, of course, we couldn't tell the difference when holding the phones side by side, but when filming the Magic 4 Pro, it didn't display as much banding as an iPhone.
Honor Magic 4 Pro camera
On the back of the phone, housed in that attention-grabbing ring are four cameras. The telephoto periscope camera sits in the center with its 64MP resolution, f/3.5 aperture and 90mm focal length, taking its zoom range to around 3.5 times that of the primary camera's focal length.
As with the Oppo Find X5 Pro, the wide and ultra-wide cameras are both 50MP, but unlike Oppo's latest flagship, the wide camera of the Honor Magic 4 Pro sports a far superior sensor with its larger size, a wider aperture of f/1.8, and superior autofocus.
The fourth camera around the back is a time of flight depth sensor, while on the front are two selfie cameras, a 12MP ultra-wide with a 100-degree field of view, and another time of flight depth sensor.
Given the telephoto camera's optical zoom combined with its 64MP high resolution sensor, Honor claims the Magic 4 Pro is actually a great digital zoomer too, reaching ranges of 100 times zoom, though in our brief tests, that's pushing it. 30-40 times zoom is probably where you'll want to draw the line.
Honor Magic 4 Pro performance and battery
With a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset and either 8GB or 12GB of RAM, the Honor Magic 4 Pro goes toe to toe with the latest from Oppo, Realme, Samsung, and Xiaomi.
Honor has also added its special sauce for better gaming, GPU Turbo, which it claims boosts performance.
While we didn't game with the phone, we did thumb through the interface, Magic UI 6, and it's unsurprisingly still very familiar to Huawei's EMUI – but we're not mad about it. The main thing is, Honor has access to Google Play Services, which instantly puts it back in the Western smartphone race.
As for the battery, there's a modest 4600mAh cell in the Magic 4 Pro, which is smaller than the 5,000mAh power we're used to seeing in flagships like the Find X5, Note 22 Ultra and Xiaomi 12 Pro these days.
While it's too early to comment on battery performance though, the Magic 4 Pro can power up incredibly fast, with wired and wireless 100W fast charging.
That means 15 minutes can charge the phone by 50% even if you don't plug it in - witchcraft. In fact, this is the fastest wireless charging we've seen on a commercially available device to date.
Early verdict
The Honor Magic 4 Pro marks a shift for Honor, a brand living in Huawei's shadows for almost a decade. Now, against all odds, is the one to watch.
More impressive still is the fact Honor's cramming world firsts into its flagship, introducing 100W wireless charging to the market before anyone else and also making an across the board specced out contender.
Where the Honor Magic 4 Pro could fall down is optimization. Is the camera going to be as reliable as the Pixel 6 Pro's? Will Honor be able to keep that Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 cool even when playing Genshin Impact on maxed-out graphics settings? Does the on-paper, modest battery make it through a full day?
All these are questions for our full Honor Magic 4 Pro review. For now though, we're happy to see this underdog have its day with a strong showing at MWC 2022.
- MWC (Mobile World Congress) is the world's largest showcase for the mobile industry, stuffed full of the newest phones, tablets, wearables and more. TechRadar is reporting on the show all week. Follow our MWC 2022 live blog for the very latest news as it happens and visit our dedicated MWC 2022 hub for a round-up of the biggest announcements
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