Latest news with #HonorMagic7Pro
Forbes
04-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
How The Honor 400 Defines Its Future Through Form, Features And History
Honor 400 In some ways, the Honor 400 is a confident look back into its corporate history. Honor was spun out of Huawei in 2020; before then, it was the 'youth' sub-brand of the Chinese company. It focused on more affordable phones than the flagship Huawei devices, while still offering as many features as possible Honor stands alone now, with its own flagship devices, including the recently launched Honor Magic7 Pro, standing alongside the mid-range where it made its name. Arguably, the Honor 400 is the closest we have to a 'traditional Honor smartphone,' but is that ideal fit for purpose in 2025? I've spent time with the new Honor 400 to find out. Honor 400 There are a lot of comparable phones in the market at the $499 price point of the Honor 400. The three leading manufacturers all have their own entry: Samsung's Galaxy A56, Google's Pixel 9a, and arguably Apple's iPhone 16e (by virtue of it being the lowest priced of all the iPhones). These devices all have to decide what to sacrifice to reach that price point, and which options are critical to making the phone feel right for the consumers. Honor has leaned into both the display and the camera as the phone's selling points. On the other side of the equation, the luxury of wireless charging never made it onto the drawing board. The key compromise is using the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset; this processor will not match the benchmarks against the competition. Honor's decisions do not feel radically different to its three competitors. Google's Tensor chipset has never pushed the boat out regarding performance. Samsung's A56 camera works hard to maintain a clear and sharp image, while Apple's iPhone 16e leans into its unique software offering but comes with a single main camera lens and a $100 premium. Honor 400 It's the camera where Honor's physical design shows through. The camera island moves to a trapezoidal shape with wide corners, as the LED flash rises higher and two lenses higher still. It helps the Honor 400 stand out with its own identity, something critical at all price points. However, when it is as competitive as this point, getting character and attitude into the design is key to getting that personal connection. The Honor 400 sports a primary lens and an ultra-wide lens. The latter comes with a 12 megapixel sensor and a middle-of-the-road 112-degree field of view. The former brings with it a 200 megapixel sensor. It offers a wide dynamic range and colour reproduction feels natural, without too much over-processing. The 200 megapixel sensor partly makes up for the lack of a telephoto lens. Moving to X2, the software is effectively cropping the picture, and the excess pixels on offer compensate for the potential loss of visual information. The weak point is video capture. The clear colour reproduction seen in the images from the main camera does not quite carry through to the video, where the colours sometimes slip into too vivid moments, and exposure struggles in fast changing conditions. Honor 400 At 6.55 inches, the Honor 400 display is a touch smaller than others, but three key features balance out that slight deficit. The first is the increased resolution, the Galaxy A56 manages 385 pixels per inch, while the Honor 400 goes up to 460 ppi thanks to the 1264 x 2736 pixel resolution. The second is the refresh rate. Fast refreshing screens are fast becoming a standard feature across the board, so while it's worth noting that the Honor 400 goes up to 120 Hz, so does pretty much every other handset. Finally, the 400's display is rated to 5000 nits of brightness, which is a practical point of difference if you're going to be using your phone outdoors. Honor 400 Honor's Magic Portal remains one of the key differentiators of the MagicOS variant of Android. It's context aware, and you can select elements on the screen with an old school select option, right up to a circle the element to drag it into the portal, from there into various apps. For example, highlighting text, you can drop it into a note, use it as a prompt to create content, search with it, and more. The same goes when selecting an area of the screen, such as an image, and using that as the jumping-off point. This all sits in a sidebar which you slide in from the edge of the screen. You can also configure this to show shortcuts to apps and functions outwith the AI features. It's a smart alternative to searching through all your apps on the homescreen. You also get the AI features from Google that are seen as the standard AI apps in Android. This includes the established tools, such as Circle to Search on the screen and the Google Gemini app for direct interaction with the AI, along with newer tools, including the new tools in Google Photos. It's also nice to see that Honor is pushing out the support window; the Honor 400 offers six years of Android updates and security patches. It's not quite the seven years of the premium and flagship smartphones, but at this price point, that's in the top tier of support life. The software package is backed up by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset, 8 GB of memory, and 256 GB of storage (a model with 512 GB is also available). If you were going to spec out an utterly average mid-range smartphone, you'd probably go with the 7 Gen 3, 8GB, and 128 GB storage, so Honor has exceeded that, albeit by a rather fine margin. Mid-range smartphones have to make a conscious decision on what to prioritise. Consumers have to do the same and decide which phone is best suited to them. This is where Honor's previous experience in the space becomes crucial corporate knowledge. They know their audience, and the Honor 400 bears all the hallmarks of knowing their market segment. Now read how the Honor 400 fits in with Honor's evolution of photography in 2025's smartphones…
GSM Arena
23-05-2025
- GSM Arena
Honor Magic8 series to include a Mini
Honor is currently working on the Magic8 series of devices, and a new rumor out of China tells us to expect three phones to be part of it: the Magic8, the Magic8 Pro, and the Magic8 Mini. The Mini will have a 6.3-inch screen and will be powered by MediaTek's upcoming Dimensity 9500 SoC, the Magic8 will get a 6.58-inch display and will go with the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2, as will the Pro model with a 6.7" screen. Honor Magic7 Pro It's unclear if a Magic8 Lite will join these three, at least at the moment. The Magic7 and Magic7 Pro were both announced at the end of October and were released in November, but with Qualcomm announcing the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 in late September, the timeline for the Magic8 may shift and we could see the Magic8, Magic8 Pro, and Magic8 Mini becoming official in early October and be released later in the month. As previously rumored, the Magic8's screen will shrink from the Magic7's 6.78" panel, and the Magic8 Pro's will also be ever so slightly smaller than its predecessor's 6.8" display. According to a past rumor, the Magic8 Pro will have a 50 MP main camera, a 50 MP ultrawide, and a 200 MP periscope telephoto camera. Honor Magic7 Pro Source (in Chinese)
Business Mayor
22-05-2025
- Business Mayor
New Android phones match the S25 Ultra's camera for a price Samsung can't beat
If you want the best camera on a phone, you might expect to have to pay over the odds for it, but two new Android phones hitting UK stores today could fit the bill while costing hundreds less than the competition. Honor has announced the Honor 400 and 400 Pro, which both sport the same 200MP main camera sensor, a megapixel spec that matches the £1,249 Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra's main camera. But Honor's new phones cost £399.99 and £699.99 respectively, meaning they could be a cheaper way to get hold of a phone with a strong main camera. Honor says the large 1/1.4-inch lens uses AI to capture clearer shots and has optical and electrical image stabilisation tech to make sure you don't get blurry shots. The firm says it can even cope with 50x zoom, though you also get a dedicated 50MP 3x optical zoom lens and a 12MP ultra-wide lens that can also be used for macro photography. Just like the Honor Magic 7 Pro that came out earlier in the year, these two phones are stuffed to the gills with AI features and promises. I didn't much care for the 7 Pro's use of AI when zooming past 30x, where it artificially fills in details that otherwise are not there. The party trick of the Honor 400 and 400 Pro is an AI tool from Google called 'AI Image to Video', 'which enables users to bring static photos to life as dynamic videos', according to Honor. These are the first phones to get a feature that will likely come to other Android phones soon. You can take a photo and then turn it into a five second video using Google AI, which requires an internet connection. But as reported by The Verge, this isn't a free feature that Honor 400 buyers can enjoy forever. It's only free for the first two months of ownership, and you can only make 10 videos per day. Details of how Google will end up charging you for this service are not known, but the tool could become available to Google Gemini subscribers. Elsewhere, the 400 Pro has impressive specs with a big 5,300mAh battery, 512GB storage, 12GB RAM and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset that powered several high-end Android phones that came out in 2024. It can also fast charge at zippy 100W speeds, giving you 50 percent charge in 15 minutes, according to Honor. There's even industry-best IP68/69 dust and water resistance. You also get 'AI Eye Comfort Display' and 'AI Defocus Eyecare' smarts to keep the 6.7-inch AMOLED screen from causing your peepers too much strain, plus an 'AI Circadian Night Display' setting to stop the blue light from disrupting your sleep. All this sounds like we should stop looking at our phones so much, doesn't it? But it's good to see Honor thinking about these things, as not all phones have such granular display controls. Most impressively is Honor's promise of six years of Android updates and six years of security updates for both the Honor 400 and 400 Pro, matching the Magic 7 Pro and only one year short of Google and Samsung's promise for many of their phones. It's notable that the £399.99 Honor 400 will get six years of updates, one of the cheapest phones out there with such long support along with Samsung's £399 Galaxy A36, which also promises six years. The Honor 400 boasts a 5,300mAh battery like the Pro with slightly slower charging and a smaller 6.55-inch display that is flat compared to the curved one on the Pro. You'll also get the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chip with 8GB RAM and IP65 protection. Both phones are 5G compatible, as you'd expect, and go on sale today. Honor has secured impressively wide availability too, so you can buy it from EE, O2, Three, Vodafone, Tesco Mobile, Argos, Currys, Amazon and Very, as well as directly from Honor. READ SOURCE
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Yahoo
Honor Magic 7 Pro gets early access to Android 16's Beta
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Honor Magic 7 Pro gets access to Android 16 Beta 3 and test run, and see what this new OS feels like on their phones. The company put out a detailed guide for developers and advanced users who'd like to test out the new software. Honor cautions that this is not for general users and says that there's a low probability of the phone restarting in some scenarios once it is updated. Honor announced today that those with an Honor Magic 7 Pro device will be able to experience Android 16 Beta 3 as it has been made available for developers. In an email to Android Central, the company added that the HONOR Magic7 Pro is one of the first phones globally to support this preview. The company added that this Android 16 Beta 3 preview will give developers early access to new features and performance of the OS, firsthand. It will also give them access to new APIs and tools that could help developers fine-tune the user experience before the stable version of the OS is officially launched later in June. That said, it should be noted that Pixel phones are currently on Android 16 Beta 4, but this is the first Android 16 beta version available for the Honor's Magic 7 Pro. "This marks another milestone in HONOR's close collaboration with Google. HONOR was also among the first to roll out Android 15 Beta 1 in 2024 for the Magic 6 Pro and Magic V2," the company said in an email. Furthermore, in a detailed post, the company laid out steps for developers to safely upgrade their phones. And if you are a general user, the company recommends that you wait until the official stable launch of the OS later this year. Developers who plan on installing the Beta version can do so through Honor's official page, which has the upgrade package uploaded onto the website. All that you need to do is download the corresponding upgrade package based on your device. Make sure adb, Python environment, and Honor Suite are available for PC. Secondly, developers need to have more than 60GB of space on their phones. Following this, go to Settings > About phone, tap Build number seven times to enable developer mode, then go to System & updates > Developer options to enable USB debugging and connect the device to PC via USB cable. The next steps are detailed in Honor's blog post. Lastly, the OEM notes that this upgrade will not erase any data, and recommends that you back up your phone beforehand. "The upgraded new system adopts a brand new user partition, which is not shared with the original one, and the data of the original user partition is unavailable on the new system," the company added.
GSM Arena
07-05-2025
- GSM Arena
Honor Magic 7 Pro gets third Android 16 beta
Honor Magic 7 Pro is now getting Android 16 beta 3. This is still a Developer Preview and is meant for devs and advanced users. You can head this way for a detailed guide on how to get the beta running on your Magic 7 Pro. You'll need to be running MagicOS 9.0.0.165 version or higher for the update to work. Honor Magic 7 Pro is among the first smartphones to receive Android 16 beta 3. Google has already released its Android 16 beta 4, which is the final beta release before the consumer version, which is set to debut in June. Honor Magic7 Pro Source
