Honor’s Magic 6 Pro is gunning for the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s zoom crown

The Galaxy S24 Ultra continues Samsung’s long reign of zoom lens supremacy with an upgraded periscope camera system, but it looks like Honor could be about to steal Samsung’s crown.

Revealed to Trusted Reviews, the Honor Magic 6 Pro boasts a significant number of camera firsts, including both a heavily upgraded main camera and a new 180MP periscope lens that looks to give the Galaxy S24 Ultra a run for its money.

At 180MP, the Magic 6 Pro has one of the highest-resolution periscope lenses around, offering 2.5x optical zoom alongside 5-10x in-sensor zoom capabilities and 100x Super Resolution zoom to get you closer to the action. Sound familiar?

It’s also the largest periscope sensor of any smartphone around right now, measuring in at 1/1.49 inches. Combined with an aperture of f/2.6, which is particularly wide for a periscope lens, Honor claims that it can capture up to 400% more light than competing periscope lenses. The huge megapixel count also means Honor can take advantage of 16-in-1 pixel binning tech to further boost light and detail in those zoomed shots.

Honor has paired this with a new Sports Portrait algorithm that it claims can capture portrait shots with that signature bokeh even in fast-moving scenarios, all of which should make for a capable periscope camera.
That ties nicely into the second teased feature of the Honor Magic 6 Pro camera system revealed to us at Trusted Reviews; Honor’s upgraded AI Motion Sensing 2.0 technology, the tech behind the Falcon Capture system that allows the phone to essentially freeze time when subjects are running, jumping and walking.

It’s one of the key features we praised in our Honor Magic 5 Pro review, and Honor claims that it’s much better this time around as the second-gen AI has been trained on a whopping 8 million images, a huge boost to the 270,000 images of its predecessor.

It’s not all about the periscope camera either; Honor has also shared a few exclusive details about its main camera.
While Honor hasn’t divulged the exact megapixel count for its primary shooter, the camera sports what’s described as an “industry-first customized HDR sensor with ultra-large dynamic range”.

More specifically, it’s a large 1/1.3-inch sensor that the company claims can improve dynamic range by 800%, which should essentially provide more details in the highlights and shadows in your shots, and a better balance between the two.

The Magic 6 Pro is also joining a growing number of phones with variable aperture via what Honor is calling Ultra-large Variable Aperture tech. Per the company, the Falcon Camera System can automatically adjust the aperture between f/1.4 and f/2.0 when shooting, though the user can also control this manually in the phone’s Pro mode.
Combined with the large HDR sensor, Honor claims that the main camera can capture 22% more light than an IMX989 f/1.9 lens – a larger 1-inch phone sensor – while low-light photography delivers a 104% increase in light compared to the Honor Magic Pro 5.

The Honor Magic 6 Pro is expected to be revealed at MWC 2024 later this month, so we don’t have long to wait until we see it in all its supposed glory.