Huawei has just launched its most innovative smartphone yet, the Huawei Honor Magic. The phone comes with a unique design as well as some great features, read on to find out more about the device.
The Huawei Honor Magic comes with a special design that’s curved on all the eight sides. Usually, we have seen dual curved smartphones that feature a curved display on the left and right side of the screen. This phone features a similar display, but the company has ensured that all the other six sides, including the ones on the back continue with a curved design, following a true symmetry.
The phone seems to be inspired from space, hence the deep black color along with a rose gold metal frame going around the body. Symmetry is an important aspect of the device and hence the SIM card slot, speakers, microphone as well as the charging ports are located at the bottom of the smartphone. So, rest of the body looks flawless. The company notes that incorporating a dual SIM card slot at the bottom of the Honor Magic was not easy but the phone has managed that feat.
On the topside of the front, which is curved as well, you have a camera sensor. There are a few other sensors as well like the infrared camera, ambient light sensor, and infrared LED light. There seems to be a special UV coating on the phone to make sure that these sensors remain relatively hidden. At the back, the camera on board is a standard 12MP monochrome + black & white sensor module (probably similar to the Honor 8), however, what’s really interesting is the camera design. First of all, Huawei boasts that the camera is completely flat, so it goes well with the overall design. The two sensors are placed a few centimeters apart in horizontal symmetry. Besides the two sensors, you have the standard dual LED flash.
But the innovation is not just in the design department. The main highlight of the Honor Magic is in its user-friendly software experience dubbed as the Magic Live. Some of the amazing features of the Honor Magic Live system are given below:
- When you have the phone in your hand, it will make a note of this and whenever you get a call, it will just vibrate and not ring.
- The phone can automatically light up the screen when you look at it as the Honor Magic can keep a track of your eyes.
- The Honor Magic can recognize its owner. So, if there’s a new message, you can see the details of the message, but if anyone else takes a look at it, the phone will not reveal the details on the screen.
- If you are in the dark, the Honor Magic will sense this automatically and recommend flashlight app on the screen.
- Magic Live can bring up some useful information even while you are chatting. For example, if you someone asks you, where are you? the phone will offer the option to share your current location. Similarly, if you are chatting about your current weather, details about the same will be provided to you. Even if you talk about the weather of a different city, for example Beijing or Shenzhen, the Honor Magic’s Live system is smart enough to bring you details about the same.
- Booking a movie ticket is super easy with its smart software. The magic live system can intelligently recommend current movies, if you are talking about movies in the chat. Also, if you are talking about booking, it can bring up relevant information as well as help in booking the ticket.
- If you have an unknown number calling you, the software is smart enough to bring you details about its previous history, if any.
- The smart software can also classify unread mails as promotions / advertisements / bills / meetings etc, based on the content of the mail. It can also create smart schedules for events that pop up via SMS or WeChat.
- The Magic Live is also a smart shopper. When you are about to shop on your smartphone, the phone will automatically show you the lowest price along with price comparisons among different shopping platforms. After you shop, it will smartly help you to store the tracking information in your ‘My Favorites’ page.
- If you want to get details about a particular travel destination, the Magic Live helps in that as well, by bringing you relevant pictures, reviews, weather etc. And you won’t have to type a single thing as the assistant analyses specific keywords such as ‘how about we travel to xx place’ to sense that relevant travel information has to be brought up on the screen.
- There’s even a Magic Auto which is in development (evolutionary version only) which will simplying using the phone while driving your car.
- Finally, it learns from you as you use it and becomes smarter at helping around in your daily tasks.
Note that there are two Magic Live systems available — Magic Live Stable and Magic Live Evolutionary version (sort of a beta version). The stable version comes with monthly upgrade cycle while the evolutionary version updates every two weeks. You can switch between the two versions easily and Huawei has even launched a dedicated phone support number for Honor Magic users.
Well, analyzing chats, reading your messages and providing you with relevant information is all well and good, but this brings the big issue of privacy. Huawei seems to have thought about this as well, because the Honor Magic Live system reportedly processes all data locally. Plus, there’s an encryption chip onboard and everything works after proper authorization from you. I am assuming that these features only pop up when you, the owner, has used his/ her fingerprint to access the device.
Well, this was all about the software. Let’s check out some of the other features of the Honor Magic.
Like expected the Huawei Honor Magic comes with the super fast charging technology which charges the phone up to 90% in just 30 minutes of charging.
Then there’s the Magic Touch home button which incorporates multiple gestures like single click for home, double click for multi-task panel and swiping for back. The phone comes with Kirin 950 chipset inside with 4GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage. The display seems to be of 5-inches with 2K resolution. That chip and memory combinations are not really flagship grade, at least not according to today’s standards, but it’s still decent enough. I guess the long development cycle, especially perfecting the assistant and software features (probably after finalizing the hardware) did push the specifications a generation behind.
Unlike the special features, Huawei did not reveal much about the core specs of the phone, so we will have to rely on the specs sheet that crops up a few hours later for these details. But until then, digest the information that’s given above.
As for the pricing, the Huawei Honor Magic is priced at 3699 Yuan (~$533). To be honest, I’m surprised it’s under 4000 Yuan, but this pricing definitely makes the unique Magic smartphone worth checking out.
The phone goes on sale via Vmall, JD.com, Lynx and Suning from 20:00 December 16 i.e. today.
Before Huawei ended the conference, it also confirmed that Android 7 Update for Honor V8 and Honor 8 rolls out today. The Honor Note 8 gets the update early next year.
