Having used and reviewed Android OS mobile phones since 2010 with Samsung Galaxy S, I have had a good sense of how the OS has evolved, and more importantly, how each mobile manufacturer develops their unique UI on top of the open-source Google platform. I certainly did not manage to try every single brand in the market, but I have reviewed most of the popular ones. And for the past years, HONOR stands out as my favourite.
HONOR started as a sub-brand of Huawei which delivered arguably the best Android experience at its peak. When Huawei got banned from using Google apps, it lost all the global market share. When HONOR was sold off by Huawei, it was spared of the Google blockage, retained the Huawei-developed MagicOS UI, and continued to grind in China and India. Eventually, they returned to global sales, and has grown exponentionally in this region.
When Honor Singapore distributor reached out to me in 2023 to review their smartphones, I felt a familiarity and ease of use, albeit some quirks. But I like it enough to decide to replace my Google Pixel 7 Pro. Even as an underdog brand back then, it has all the right ticks. When I told my friends I am using HONOR phone, they were bewildered that this brand still existed. Today, I believe no one is unaware of this smartphone brand, thanks to effective brand marketing but most important of all, a product line that distinguishes from competition. For the entry-level series, their focus is on affordability and durability. With the new flagship Magic8 Pro, they are emphasizing on low light telephoto photography, among other features.
As a long-time Magic series user, I find the Magic8 Pro offers slight improvements over the Magic7 Pro, which still works really well after a year. Running on the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 CPU, the Geekbench 6 score is 3594 (single core) and 9577 (multi-core), while the GPU OpenCL score is 23824.
Larger Battery
As you can see above, the Magic8 Pro phone design is similar to the Magic7 Pro. The camera bezels contain hints of the Magic6 Pro rounded squarish timepiece-inspired shape, but once you slap on a casing, it woul simply look perfectly round. The new model is slightly smaller than the predecessor, weighs lesser (from 223g to 219g), but with a larger battery – from 5850 mAh to 7100mAh. This increment is quite a game changer. Already the Magic7 Pro battery optimisation is quite good, and on a typical office day, the phone battery will remain about 30%. With the Magic8 Pro, the phone battery remains at around 60%! I can practically use the phone for more than two days before charging. Best of all, I can charge the phone from 20% to 100% in just an hour. So I am basically changing my charging habits of doing day charge instead of overnight charge. There is no longer any battery anxiety because the level doesn’t drop excessively when during intensive use.
The phone still exhibits the same aggressive power management characteristics, meaning sometimes the app notification does not get received if the app is not used for long periods of time. The workaround is to disable auto App Launch for those affected apps.
Display
The overall display specs are similar to the predecessors. Despite a reduction from 6.8-inch to 6.71-inch, my eyes could not tell a difference. The new model uses the same OLED panel, delivers slightly brighter peaks, same NanoCrystal Shield panel, Dynamic Refresh Rate (120Hz), supports Honor Eye Comfrot Display settings like 4320 Hz PWM dimming, Defocus Eyecare. New to the Magic8 Pro is the Motion Sickness Relief and the Custom Display that tests your eye contrast and colour vision.
AI Button
The volume and power buttons are shifted lower compared to the Magic7 Pro. There is also a new button “AI Button” below the power button which adds three custom shortcuts as well as function as a touch-sensitive zoom, focus, and shutter buttons in camera mode. This button offers the combination of a swipe-gesture and physical press, which works better than the OPPO Find X9 Pro.
By press-and-hold the button when you use the phone, it will automatically prompt for useful functions. On webpages, it will prompt to summarise the page. On email, it will prompt to create content. In addition, there are other AI capabitilies incorporated in many aspects of the phone operations. For instance, with AI Settings Agent, you can chat to adjust system settings, and with AI Photos Agent, you can similar prompt to edit select images.
Fuller-Sounding Speakers
The HONOR Magic8 Pro has probably the biggest-sounding speakers on a smartphone. Called “Premium Bass“, it makes the audio sound fuller, using the phone body to resonate the lows which you can feel vibrating. The speaker is further improved from the Magic7 Pro with clearer highs, more bass, less boxy midrange. DTS;X Ultra headphone audio processing has been removed but I don’t use it so I don’t care. I make sure I disable all headphones audio effects so that I get the original stereo imaging.
Secure 3D Face Recognition
Another feature that has been taken for granted, HONOR Magic8 Pro continues supporting secure facial unlock which can be used for biometric authentication. It supports most of the apps including banking apps and SingPass. I don’t really notice if any apps are not supported, because when it cannot use the face unlock, it will ask for fingerprint, so the whole authentication process is seamless and fast.
Using this hardware, you can enable the Eye Tracking feature to use your eye as an on-screen cursor to interact. For instance, when there is an incoming notification pop-up, you can stare at the pop-up for 3 seconds and it will auto open as a floating window instead of tapping on the screen.
MagicOS: Magic Portal, Magic Sidebar, Magic Capsule
Making use of the front-facing camera area where the display does not cover, HONOR uses that area to show system services like media playback, clock countdown, recording indicator. I use the media playback most often, as it is a very convenient way to access the media controls of my player.
The Magic Sidebar appears magically when you swipe your finger from outside the display inwards. You can do it either on the left or right, the bar will appear. The list of app can be customised and once you select it, the app will appear as a floating window. I always use this to open the calculator, allowing me to do quick math without leaving my current screen.
The Magic Portal is another convenient feature that lets you drag the on-screen content and paste into another app without having to do screenshot or copy text. The OS intelligently detects the content, but if you don’t like what they pick, you can use the knuckle-circle option to select the right content.
Customisable Control Centre
Besides the ability to apply themes, adjust font and icon sizes, select which status icons to appear on the status bar, another feature that I appreciate is the ability to edit cards on the control centre. On the Magic8 Pro, I can add-remove cards, extend the tile rows. The transparent card is a new design for the MagicOS 10 and the blur level can be adjusted. I also like that the notification cards uses coloured app icons so that I can instantly recognise whether it is a Gmail (red) notification, or a Whatsapp (green).
Camera System
The Magic8 Pro camera system is made up of three lenses, similar to Magic7 Pro, with slightly different configurations. The main camera is 50MP 1/1.3-inch, similar to Magic7 Pro, except it uses a fixed f/1.6 aperture instead of the f/1.4-2.0 variable aperture. The ultra-wide camera is 50MP f/2.0 (same), and the telephoto camera is 200MP 1/1.4-inch f/2.6 at 3.7x optical zoom (the Magic7 Pro is 3x). The OIS engine is CIPA-rated for 5.5-stop stabilisation, which translates to outstanding image stabilisation when shooting handheld.
What makes the phone different from the other close competitoes like Vivo and OPPO and Xiaomi? While the other phones have collabs with imaging maquee brands like Leica, Hasselblad, Zeiss, Honor stuck with their own colour science, only went with Studio Harcourt for the Portrait colour filters. This collab remained in the latest Magic8 Pro but it seems to be played down as HONOR has something new to promote: the “Magic Colour” feature, which allows you to copy the colour style of any reference image. This is extremely useful if you want to create a consistent colour tone for a series of images that you are shooting. In fact, with this Magic Colour, you can easily replicate the same tonality without the laborious editing. Look how I transformed my shot on the left to Ghibli-style colouring on the right.
The AI Enhance mode now kicks in beyond 10x zoom and will appear automatically depending on the scene. The processing is less aggressive than previous generations and more natural looking. The details when zooming in are astounding.
These are some zoomed shots taken from the above position. The bottom left image is before AI Enhance.
Shooting within a conservative zoom range reaps great results. They don’t look like digital crops. Do we still need bulky cameras with massive lenses?
Shooting the moon, I was delighted that the camera recognises the scene even when I am just 20x zoom, the camera exposure dials down instantly and the moon image is presented. It is softer, less bright, and less contrasty than the OPPO Find X9 Pro.
The key to shooting low-light scenes is that there are too many dark areas that the camera cannot over-compensate or else the scene will be over-exposed and shutter is incorrectly long. The Stage mode is introduced on the Magic7 Pro to intentionally underexpose the scene.
Conversely the Night mode will increase the shutter speed to expose the scene longer so that it can capture more light details. While it may look artificial, the hyper-realistic outcome makes the shot more interesting. Check out how the HONOR camera system changes its night photography algorithm over the years:
If you ask me, the imaging quality difference between the Magic7 Pro and Magic8 Pro is small. The difference in the output is largely due to how the camera interprets the scene. If you are experienced in shooting, you can easily override the auto settings to get the exposure balance that you want.
At the zoom end, the new Magic8 Pro shows improvements in sharpness and details, with better control in saturation and vividness.
Compared to Magic6 Pro, the AI image processing on the Magic8 Pro is a lot better at the zoom end. The image stabilisation is also better which allows me to shoot better handheld. If you shoot a lot of zoom images, then it is worth upgrading your Magic7 Pro to the Magic8 Pro.
Verdict
The HONOR Magic8 Pro is easily a better phone among the competition. Running at Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the phone feels more responsive and smoother. While Xiaomi or OPPO or Vivo has branded camera brands to collab with, I find the UI experience on the Magic8 Pro better. If you like the colour styles of Leica or Hasselblad or Zeiss, then you probably should get those models which are selling at a lower price as well.
Personally, I use the phone more than just for taking photos, so I still find the HONOR Magic series more suited for me. A larger battery life allows the phone to last longer during heavy usages. The speakers deliver better bass resonance, I enjoy the unique UI features more. The camera system is also improved especially the zoom end, giving me more confidence to shoot at any zoom range without worry about image quality. The CIPA 5.5 rating also allows better handheld shots under low light conditions. HONOR has done the right thing to focus the improvement on the night shots as they have generally handled day shots well. The overall AI features are also increased to improve the user experience, though it might not always deliver the desired outcome. AI as a whole is still not mature enough for me to rely on them, but I would use them where I see good results, specifically on the image editing part.
The HONOR Magic8 Pro comes with 12/512GB at S$1499 and 16/1024GB at $1699. Pre-order before 6 December 20205 to get free gifts worth $1,034, including the Sony WH1000XM5 noise cancelling headphones, extended warranty, and 3-month Google AI Pro access.
Visit the HONOR Singapore website for more product details and head to the nearest HONOR Experience Store (NEX, Plaza Singapura, Jurong Point, Suntec City, Causeway Point, Tiong Bahru Plaza) to try the phone.
