Honor She is back. The brand that was of Huawei presented the first new line of smartphone since, in November 2020, has officially separated from the Chinese giant. The new devices are the Magic3, the Magic3 Pro and the Magic3 Pro+. They are devices with advanced features that place them in the high end of the market. All three have Qualcomm’s latest and most powerful processor, lo Snapdragon 888+, a display OLED super-curved at 89 ° (to understand, the side edges are almost vertical) and a respectable photographic sector, with Sony sensors of the latest generation, three or four cameras, depending on the model, and various advanced software features for very high quality photos and videos. They are also all – ça va sans dire – compatible with 5G networks.
The links with Huawei, officially non-existent, are still visible in the design: the new Magic3 closely resemble the lines and appearance of the Mate 40 Pro, the latest model of Huawei smartphone arrived – monco dei Google services – on the European market. In particular, the recall is clear in the extreme curvature of the display edges and in the circular shape of the rear camera (hexagonal on the Pro + model), in a ring configuration that Honor calls, not without some emphasis, The Eye of the Muse, the eye of the muse.
All three smartphones of the Honor Magic3 series are equipped with the same display supercurvo with ultra-thin bezels, and are similar in size (the Pro + model is only slightly thicker). The display measures 6.76 ”, has a 10-bit color depth and supports HDR 10+ certification, for more detailed images and more vivid colors. Honor Magic3 Pro +, the spearhead (and the most expensive model of all), additionally offers a Super Curved Nano Crystal Shield and a Nano Ceramic body, which according to the company offer a more comfortable grip and a higher level of hardness. and resistance. The Honor Magic3 series is also certified with a resistance to water and dust IP68, and can therefore withstand immersion up to 1.5 m for 30 minutes.
The photographic sector is the strong point of the new devices. Both Honor Magic3 and Honor Magic3 Pro mount a 50MP main lens with f / 1.9 aperture, a 64MP monochrome camera, a 13MP ultra-wide angle and 120 ° angle of view. The Pro model finally adds a fourth camera, namely a 64MP periscope telephoto lens with 3.5X optical zoom, 10X hybrid zoom and digital zoom up to 100X. On the Pro + model, on the other hand, the ultra-wide angle is also 64MP, while the main lens integrates an even larger sensor with optical image stabilization.
The difference in use, according to Honor, is made above all by the multi-camera computational photography software solutions. In particular the company has integrated into the EMUI a new Honor Image Engine, an image processing system enhanced byartificial intelligence. As always in these cases it will be necessary to really try the devices to understand if the photographic results are what we would like or those who prefer to obtain the machine and the algorithm.
On smartphones of the Magic3 series also i video they make use of the help of AI, together with the technical equipment of the device. They are in fact the first smartphones IMAX Enhanced, that is, certified – so to speak – to achieve cinematic level footage. For example, users will be able to control the color of footage in a professional manner, thanks to the Magic Log and 3D LUT (Look Up Table) video capabilities. The log shot format allows users to enhance videos with cinematic color tones and HDR images during post-production and editing. Cinematic 3D LUTs, ie predefined settings for adjusting the color of video logs, allow for cinematic color tones.
In short, Honor is back on the market with great fanfare, with three devices that it could never have produced and sold when it was a subsidiary of Huawei destined for the mid-range of the market. It is a very clear upward repositioning, which is also reflected in the prices. The 8GB RAM and 128GB memory version of the Magic3 already starts at 899 €, while it rises to 1099 € for the 8GB + 256GB Magic3 Pro model and reaches the 1499 € of the 12GB + 512GB Magic3 Pro +.
The reference range is that of Galaxy S21 and of iPhone 12 e 12 Pro, also the segment in which Huawei’s flagships competed until recently. It will be interesting to see if Honor will be able to inherit the baton of the Shenzhen giant, passing from the role of a mid-range supporting brand for young people to an established brand capable of competing in the A series of smartphones. The presence of Google services, no longer prohibited by American interference, will certainly help regain some share in markets outside of China.
The general premises are good: even if for now the new smartphones of the Magic3 series will arrive only in shops of the People’s Republic, Honor has already announced that it plans to sell the devices in fifty different markets (Italy included), where the company has already established local operations and business channels. In the meantime, however, the first clouds can be seen on the horizon. In the United States a group of 14 Republican senators would like to add Honor to the same blacklist commercial of Huawei, to prevent the company from doing business with American companies (including Google) and sourcing through the supply channels from which Huawei has been banned for more than two years.
According to the American senators who promoted the motion, Honor was born alone «in order to evade US export control policies formulated to keep American technologies and software out of the hands of the Chinese Communist Party». The US Department of Commerce, which is entrusted with the control of the commercial Entity List, has not yet decided to act in this sense. After all, despite the possible suspicions and inferences, Honor is today formally a company disconnected from Huawei, and therefore from a strategic point of view it should play a role no different from that of Xiaomi, Oppo, OnePlus and other Chinese brands that haven’t faced the same kind of restrictions as the Shenzhen giant. The sale and spin-off of the brand from Huawei took place in November 2020 through a sale of all assets to a consortium made up of more than 30 different parties for an estimated amount of approximately 15.5 billion dollars.
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