The Magic is back at Honor, with not one but two new Magic-branded smartphones being revealed during MWC 2023. The Honor Magic 5 Pro joins the Honor Magic Vs folding smartphone and is the company’s latest “normal” non-folding flagship.
Like many Honor phones over the years, it’s all about the camera and an unusual design.
On the back of the Magic 5 Pro is a large, circular camera module with three cameras inside it. Honor calls the unusual module its “Star Wheel Triple Camera,” and it certainly stands out. The phone comes in two different colors: a standard black or a very cool-looking Meadow Green. There’s no doubt green continues to be one of the trendiest colors for smartphones — most recently seen on the OnePlus 11.
This is a big, heavy device. It’s 8.7mm thick and weighs 219 grams, while the screen is a whopping 6.81 inches. The panel has a dynamic 120Hz refresh rate, LTPO technology, 2160Hz PWM dimming for less flicker, a peak of 1,800 nits brightness, and a 2848 x 1312 pixel resolution. It’s curved along each side and the top and bottom for seamless integration with the chassis and back panel.
Inside the crazy-looking Star Wheel camera module is a 50-megapixel main camera with optical image stabilization, a 50MP wide-angle camera, and a 50MP telephoto camera with a 3.5x optical zoom. Honor is also pushing a 100x digital zoom, along with AI-driven motion capture, a 30x macro feature, and its “Falcon Capture” algorithm, which promises to speed up the entire camera experience from the focus to the image processing.
Other camera features include laser autofocus, a color temperature sensor, a flicker sensor, and Honor’s “Ultra Fusion” computational photography technology. On the front of the phone is a 12MP selfie camera and a 3D Depth camera for secure face unlock. The camera can shoot 4K video at up to 60 fps and has HDR10+ certification.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor drives the Honor Magic 5 Pro, and it comes with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage space. A big 5,100mAh battery powers everything, and it’s recharged using Honor’s 66W SuperCharge wired system, or a 50W wireless charger. To get this capacity from the battery, Honor has chosen a LiCoO2 graphite battery which allows a greater capacity from the same volume as a more standard cell used in other devices.
Finally, the Honor Magic 5 Pro has an IP68 water and dust resistance rating, stereo speakers, a fingerprint sensor, and Android 13 with the MagicOS 7.1 software over the top. Honor promises two years of major software updates and four years of security updates. The Honor Magic5 Pro will be available between March and June this year, and will cost 1,199 euros, which is approximately $1,270. It will almost certainly not be available in the U.S., but is likely to come to the U.K. and Europe.
