HONOR Magic 6 Pro: two and a half highlights in review

In February, I got to be at the launch event of the Honor Magic 6 Pro live in Barcelona. What Honor promised there was quite a tall order. They delivered almost everything, but only almost. For me, the Magic 6 Pro has two and a half highlights.

Highlight 1: the design

I have loved the design since the first second after unboxing. The faux leather back in the color Epi Green feels good, gives super grip and is more robust than glass. Many people say the black one is prettier. I find the green incredibly well done, especially with the slightly golden frame. It looks really classy. The frame is made of high-gloss aluminum. I double-checked that, because to me it looks more like stainless steel.

At 225 g, it counts among the heavyweights of smartphones, but at the same size it is 7 g lighter than the S24 Ultra with its titanium frame and glass back.

• Display: 6.8-inch OLED with Nano Crystal Shield, a very robust glass, high contrast and up to 1,600 nits peak, partially up to 5,000 nits. The iPhone 15 Pro Max manages 2,000 nits. The display is curved. I’m actually more of a flat-display person, but it fits the overall design with the curved edges perfectly.
• Capsule: I find the elongated notch in the display just as useless as Apple’s Dynamic Island. It houses the selfie camera and a 3D depth sensor camera that makes face unlock extremely secure. That is a unique selling point in the Android space.
• Fingerprint: The scanner is very accurate, but sits quite low. You get used to that quickly.

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Highlight 2: Magic Portal

Like everyone else, Honor is betting on AI for camera shots and image editing. With Magic Portal, though, Honor is doing something completely new. You select, for example, an address, a text or an image, hold it down and drag it to the edge of the screen. A context-aware menu opens there, where you can drop it. For an address, Google Maps is shown, for an image, for example, Instagram.

The menu learns from your own behavior. If you always copy photos into emails, for example, at some point it will suggest the mail app instead of Instagram. I haven’t seen that anywhere else. It is an intelligent copy and paste, and I used it frequently in everyday life. For that, it gets both thumbs up from me. I celebrate every manufacturer that thinks outside the box. The AI is still in its infancy, and I love these many small features as a preview of how useful it can become.

The half highlight: the camera

On the back, the triple camera sits in a circle: a 50-megapixel wide, a 50-megapixel ultra-wide and a 180-megapixel periscope telephoto camera. Here, extremely good hardware meets really good software. The photos and videos left me speechless at times, especially the videos, which have a crazy 3D effect thanks to the AI. The main camera fully convinced me.

The 50-megapixel selfie camera is a different story. In good light, such as outside in the sun, it takes very good shots, though not as outstanding as the main camera. 50 megapixels is excessive for a selfie camera; 12 or 22 is more common. Indoors, with less daylight, it falls apart completely and delivers only mediocre to weak shots. It’s like moving from a luxury hotel to a youth hostel with an eight-bed room. I hope this gets fixed with an update.

Performance and battery

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 works together with Magic OS 8.0 based on Android 14 outstandingly well. The 5,600 mAh battery gives me 7 to 9 hours of screen-on time, a full two days and sometimes beyond.

Price and verdict

The recommended retail price (RRP) is €1,299, which I think is too high. A price drop is likely. I would tell anyone thinking about buying it: you can do that, go for it. That is my very personal seal of approval.

Apart from the low-light performance of the selfie camera, the Honor Magic 6 Pro is an absolute home run. Everything that really matters to me in a smartphone is 99% fulfilled.