The Honor Magic 2 has been officially revealed in China, alongside the Huawei sub-brand’s first smartwatch, the Honor Watch.
As expected, the Honor Magic 2’s main selling point is a sliding mechanism that conceals the handset’s front camera ‘notch’ when closed and gives its 6.39-inch AMOLED display (2340 x 1080 pixels) a nearly 100% screen-to-body ratio.
Speaking of cameras, there’s a lot of them on the Magic 2: no less than six, in fact. The aforementioned front ‘selfie cam’ setup is comprised of a 16-megapixel primary lens and a pair of supporting 2-megapixel lenses.
On the rear of the device, there’s another, more powerful triple-camera configuration that pairs a 24-megapixel monochrome lens with a 16-megapixel colour lens and tops it all off with a 16-megapixel ultra-wide angle lens. Both are intriguing layouts, to say the least.
Under the hood, there’s a top-of-the-line Kirin 980 SoC backed by 6GB of 8GB of RAM, and the option of either 128GB or 256GB of on-board storage, while keeping things running is a 3400mAh battery capable of 40W ‘SuperCharge’ fast charging, but not wireless charging.
There’s no room for a 3.5mm headphone jack, either, as the Honor Magic 2 is fitted with just a USB-C port, but there is a new Honor accessory to help you get around this in the form of the wireless FlyPods Pro earbuds.
Security is handled primarily by an in-display fingerprint scanner, while Honor’s new Yoyo digital assistant makes its debut on the software side of things: Honor’s Magic UI 2.0 sitting on top of Android 9 Pie.
The Honor Magic 2 will be available in three gradient colours – Red, Blue and Black – and cost Chinese ¥3799 for the 6GB/128GB version, ¥4299 for an 8GB/256GB configuration, and ¥4799 for the top-end 8GB/256GB model. That’s about £425-£535 depending on which version you opt for, but while pre-orders have started in China ahead of a November 6 release date, there’s no word on UK availability at present.
It’s not a stretch to imagine we’ll see the Magic 2 – or a phone very similar to it – launched here, though, as Honor has a history of UK releases. Things look less promising for the US, where Huawei and Honor devices are persona non grata.
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The Honor Watch, which features 1.2-inch round AMOLED touchscreen, heart-rate tracking, and up to seven days of battery life, is pegged to launch globally in January 2019 – presumably at CES given the time frame.
Let us know what you think of the Honor Magic 2 on Twitter @TrustedReviews.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
