Honor announces the Magic 4 and Magic 4 Pro for £749 and £899

Honor has announced two new flagship phones, the Honor Magic 4 and Honor Magic 4 Pro, with a planned global release for both models.

The Chinese company, which was created as a spin-off from the troubled Huawei, hopes to compete in the global market against other premium phones, such as the Samsung Galaxy S22 and Apple iPhone 13.

The predecessor, the Honor Magic 3 series, was restricted only to the Chinese market, without a global release. The Magic 4 series will be Honor’s first major attempt to create a flagship phone with a premium price that can be purchased worldwide.

Previously, Honor have pushed their mid-range phones with good results, but have been more hesitant to push their more expensive phones. With the Magic 4 series, Honor will become more serious in pushing for a large slice of the premium phone market share.

Both the Honor Magic 4 and Honor Magic 4 Pro will feature a 6.81-inch LTPO display, with an adaptive refresh rate between 1Hz and 120Hz. With Honor’s LTPO 3rd generation technology, they claim their displays are even more power efficient, with improved eye strain controls. Traditional OLED displays without LTPO technology are usually more power hungry, as they are restricted to a set refresh rate. LPTO allows the refresh rate to drop to a lower rate when suitable, such as when viewing a photo, in order to draw less power,

Both displays will have over 1.07 billion colours with HDR10+ support and DCI-P3 wide colour gamut, however the Honor Magic 4 Pro will have a higher resolution at 1312 x 2848 pixels (460 ppi) compared to the lower resolution Honor Magic 4 with 1224 x 2664 pixels (431 ppi).

With Honor’s Quad-Curved Display technology, the display wraps around all sides of the phone with a thermal glass bending technique. The displays are also ‘IMAX ENHANCED’ certified, which appears to be more or less a marketing gimmick. However, both displays are actually excellent, so it makes sense that the IMAX branding will act as a sort of confirmation for consumers.

Under the display, there will be a fingerprint sensor powered by Qualcomm's 3D Sonic Sensor technology, for superfast unlock speeds.

The main selling point of the Honor Magic 4 series is the camera, and it’s very prominent with the design. The rear of the phone features a large black ring of cameras, which takes up around a third of the phone.

Both phones will have two massive 50 MP sensors, featuring a 50 MP f/1.8 wide lens and a 50 MP f/2.2 ultrawide lens. Both phones will also feature a periscope telephoto camera, however the Honor Magic 4 will only have a 8 MP f/3.4 lens, whereas the Honor Magic 4 Pro will have a 64 MP f/3.5 lens, with an additional ToF 3D depth camera.

Both phones will have a 3.5x optical zoom and 100x digital zoom thanks to the large megapixel count. Honor will also be introducing their Ultra Fusion technology, which was first seen with the previous Honor Magic 3. Honor claim their R&D into AI photography can produce superior photos compared to the competition - although we’ll have to see the results to verify this claim. However, Honor and Huawei generally have great quality cameras, so we don't think we'll be disappointed.

As for the front, both will have a 12 MP f/2.4 selfie camera, however only the Pro model will have dual cameras, featuring an additional ToF 3D depth camera. The Honor Magic 4 will have a pinhole cutout for the selfie camera at the top centre of the display, whereas the Honor Magic 4 Pro will have a larger pill shape cutout at the top left, in order to git the extra ToF 3D camera.

The Honor Magic 4 series will be powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, which is the same Qualcomm chip used in the latest flagship phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S22. There is also a dedicated security chip, which will act as a secure enclave for your credentials and personal data.

Although the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is infamous for being a power hungry chip, both phones will come with large enough batteries to counter this. The Honor Magic 4 Pro will come with a generous 4600mAh battery with 100W SuperCharging for both wired and wireless charging, which Honor claims can charge the phone from 0% to 90% in just under 30 minutes.

The regular Honor Magic 4 will actually have a slightly larger battery at 4800mAh, but will reduce both wired and wireless charging speeds to 66W. Charge times haven’t been disclosed for this model, but we still expect it to be very fast compared to its competitors.

Both phones will also have 5W wireless reverse charging, to power your other phones and devices on the go.

With an IP54 rating, the Honor Magic 4 will only be protected against dust and water splashes, but the Honor Magic 4 Pro will have an IP68 rating for dust and waterproofing up to 1.5m for 30 minutes.

Honor's version of Android 12 - Magic UI 6, will ship with both phones. The skin isn't too much different from stock Android, and Honor appear to have toned down their own personal branding and customisations from previous Magic UI versions.

The Honor Magic 4 and Honor Magic 4 Pro will be available in 8GB and 12GB memory, with 256GB and 512GB storage variants. The Honor Magic 4 will also be available in a smaller 128GB storage variant.

As for colours, they'll both come in black, white, cyan and gold, with an additional orange colour for the Pro model.

The Honor Magic 4 is expected to be released on 30th March for £749, with the Honor Magic 4 Pro expected to be released on 9th March for £899.

• Honor Magic 4 Pro
• Honor Magic 4 Lite
• Honor Magic 4 Lite 5G