Honor’s Magic 9 takes aim at the top camera phone crown
Honor just offered a sneak peek at its forthcoming Magic 9 flagship smartphone series, which could come with some intriguing camera upgrades.
Honor yesterday held an event to launch its ambitious Robot Phone project, now officially priced at RMB 9,999 (or around £1,099/$1,499). That phone will probably never launch in the West and was overshadowed by the big Google Pixel 11 launch, but Honor had something to say about a phone that will.
The Honor Magic 9 is the logically named follow-up to the Honor Magic 8 series that launched around the turn of the year.
As GSMArena notes, Honor slipped in a teaser for the Magic 9 towards the end of its keynote address. It confirmed that the phone would be officially announced in September, which is a bit of a turn up for the books given that the Magic 8 launched in October last year.
Intriguingly, the teaser revealed a glimpse at the Honor Magic 9’s (most likely the Pro’s) camera module, complete with pro camera-style ridged lens surround. Might we be getting a rotating camera control with the new model?
The shot also confirms that at least one of those sensors will be a 1/1.4-inch 200Mp sensor, backed by OIS. In the Honor Magic 8 Pro, this was the very spec for the 3.7x telephoto camera.
Chris Hall / Foundry
Arri up already
Also telling is the presence in the teaser shot of Arri branding. Arri is a German video camera specialist, which announced a partnership with Honor back in March.
The Honor Robot Phone is the most obvious beneficiary of this partnership, with its clever tracking appendage, but Honor is clearly intent on bringing its expertise to bear on its regular flagship phones too.
According to Honor, Arri will supply native Log-C3 video encoding, LUT color grading and a dedicated cinema mode to the Honor Magic 9 series.
Honor
We reviewed the Honor Magic 8 Pro and liked it rather a lot. Personally, I’ve got a lot of time for the fact that Honor is the only major Android manufacturer to emulate Apple’s Face ID system.
Work needed to be done on its camera consistency, as well as Honor’s fussy software, so hopefully the Honor Magic 9 will go some way to addressing those issues.
The way could be open for Honor to challenge Samsung in early 2027, given the suggestion that Samsung’s new 200Mp camera sensor might not be used in its own Galaxy S27 series.
