Skip to main content

The new Honor Magic 4 Ultimate is all about the cameras

Honor has introduced an Ultimate edition of its Magic 4 smartphone that was announced at Mobile World Congress 2022 earlier this year, and it seems like the company put in everything it could find in terms of the optics.

The Honor Magic 4 Ultimate sports a quad rear camera setup that is led by a 50-megapixel wide camera with a customized 8P lens. It is joined by a 64MP ultrawide-angle sensor, a 64MP periscope telephoto lens, and a 50MP spectrum enhanced camera. Finally, there’s a brand-new, custom-made image processor.

Recommended Videos

The 1/1.12-inch sensor primary sensor has an aperture of f/1.6 that is said to rival cameras with a 1-inch sensor and f/1.8 aperture in terms of the capacity of light it lets in. As a result, night shots or lowlight portraits are brighter, with more vivid colors, better-defined objects, and minimal visual artifacts.

The customized 8P lens comes with a 37% improvement in center sharpness and a 30% improvement in edge sharpness, which helps it produce photos and videos that look detailed even when zoomed in. With this and a 64MP periscope camera, it is a serious challenger to the mighty Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, which is currently the best smartphone camera for zoomed-in shots. It comes with 3.5x optical zoom and up to 100x digital zoom.

A promotional image of the Honor Magic 4 Ultimate highlights the rear cameras.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

The primary 50MP camera also has an Ultra Anti-Reflection (UAR) coating and Infra-Red Cutoff Filter (IRCF) that lets it effectively minimize the flare from strong light sources — a problem that we’ve seen on the flagship iPhone and Samsung Galaxy devices. The 64MP ultrawide-angle lens offers a 126-degree field of view with the help of the world’s first Dual Free-Form Lens, which keeps the edge distortion to an industry-low 0.5%.

All of the above is achieved with the help of a new custom-made image processor that supports faster and more efficient A.I. computations to take better shots even in challenging lighting conditions. You can record 4K in night mode on this Ultimate smartphone. It also has an all-new professional-grade video format: Magic-Log2 that enables the capturing of 15% higher dynamic range for recording video footage.

The Honor Magic 4 Ultimate features a 6.81-inch LTPO OLED display with support for a 120Hz refresh rate. Like the Honor Magic 4 Pro, the Ultimate is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 system on a chip. It comes with MagicUI 6.0 based on Android 12, complete with Google Play services and all the usual Google apps installed.

The Honor Magic 4 Ultimate is going on sale in China later this year for 7,999 Chinese Yuan, which translates to about $1,260. All told, that’s not too bad a price considering the potential camera capabilities. Of course, we’ll wait until we have the device in hand to judge the final product.

Prakhar Khanna
Prakhar writes news, reviews and features for Digital Trends. He is an independent tech journalist who has been a part of the…
A special battery makes this new phone different from others
The Honor Magic7 Lite's colors.

According to Honor, the new Magic7 Lite has a special, industry-first battery inside it, making it slightly more interesting than your average midrange smartphone. But what is new about it? The Magic7 Lite has a silicon-carbon battery instead of the more common lithium-ion battery, which allows for a greater capacity without increasing physical size.

The Magic7 Lite’s silicon-carbon battery has a whopping 6,600mAh capacity, and Honor estimates this will return nearly 26 hours of video playback on a single charge. It will also reliably operate in both hot and cold environments. Using its AI technology, Honor’s software will squeeze a 50-minute call out of the remaining 2% of the battery, which will make it useful in emergency situations. Using silicon can also assist with efforts to reduce the use of fossil fuels.

Read more
The iPhone SE 4 camera specs have leaked. Here’s what we know
The back of the Apple iPhone SE (2022).

Recent reports regarding the upcoming iPhone SE 4 suggest that it will be released in just a few months. Now, we have more news about Apple’s next budget handset.

According to ET News, the iPhone SE 4 is expected to feature a single 48-megapixel rear camera and a 12MP TrueDepth camera on the front. This information comes from a recent supply report from Korea. These upgrades represent a significant improvement over the current iPhone SE 3, which has a 12MP wide camera system and a 7MP front-facing camera. Korea-based LG Innotek has been chosen as the main supplier for both the front and rear camera systems of the upcoming iPhone SE.

Read more
I’ve worn the Oura Ring 4, and I’m conflicted about it
A person wearing the Oura Ring 4.

The Oura Ring 4 is here, and it has been on my finger for a few hours. What you’re about to read are my initial thoughts about the latest version of the best smart ring you can buy from someone who has worn an Oura Ring for at least three years now.

It’s undoubtedly a beautiful ring, but I’m conflicted about some of the big hardware changes that separate it from my beloved Oura Ring 3.
What it's like to wear the Oura Ring 4

Read more