Honor Magic 2 - slider smartphone with 6 cameras

Honor Magic 2

Slider design and in-display fingerprint

Just looking at the renderings and the data sheet can make your mouth water! The Magic 2 looks really chic at the front as well as at the back. With a screen-to-body ratio of 91.5%, the almost borderless 6.39 inch display takes up a large part of the front. The panel itself is of the AMOLED type and can be expected to have a rich color rendering and a particularly deep black. The resolution is 2340 x 1080 pixels, which in turn corresponds to a razor-sharp 403 PPI. In addition to the sRGB color space, the extended DCI-P3 color space is also supported. A first trend feature of the Honor Magic 2 is the in-display fingerprint scanner, which is hidden under the display glass and securely unlocks the smartphone.

Like the one recently introduced Xiaomi Mi Mix 3, the Magic 2 relies on a space-saving slider which, among other things, hides the front camera behind the display. According to Honor, the slider was designed in such a way that it can withstand long-term loads. One would like to counteract signs of wear and tear with a 5-rail guide system. The rest of the smartphone's casing is also an eye-catcher. The back is made of glass, is coated several times and shimmers depending on the incidence of light. The Honor Magic 2 is available in black, red and blue.

Six cameras

The Magic 2 is equipped with 3 cameras at the front as well as at the rear. The main camera consists of a 16 megapixel color sensor with f / 1.8 aperture, a 24 megapixel monochrome sensor with f / 1.8 aperture and a 16 megapixel sensor with wide angle and f / 2.2 aperture. The monochrome sensor is intended to ensure particularly good image quality, especially in low-light environments. The wide-angle camera ensures a much wider image section. To improve the recording quality, the smartphone is supported by extensive AI, which artificially enhances recordings and integrates various camera effects at the push of a button.

The main camera records videos with maximum 4K resolution at 30 frames per second. A slow motion mode records at 720p at up to 480 frames per second. To counteract wobble, Honors AIS (Automatic Image Stabilizer) is supported.

The sensors of the front camera include a 16 megapixel sensor with f / 2.0 aperture and two additional 2 megapixel sensors with f / 2.4 aperture. The two 2 megapixel sensors improve portraits and enable 3D emojis. The front camera is also supported by special AI modes, but only records videos in FHD + (2304 × 1064).

Kirin 980 and Magic UI 2.0

The cutting-edge HiSilicon Kirin 980 System-on-Chip is installed, the first in the recently introduced Huawei Mate 20 Pro Flagship was used. In many benchmarks, the Kirin 980 even surpasses the current Qualcomm Snapdragon 845. The three-level architecture divides the 8 cores of the 7 nm chipset into two powerful Cortex-A76 cores, two efficient Cortex-A76 cores and four additional Cortex-A55 cores. The Cortex-A76 cores are up to 75 percent more powerful and 58 percent more efficient than their predecessors. The Mali-G76 GPU provides a graphical increase in performance.

The system is supported by either 6GB or 8GB RAM (LPDDR4X) and 128GB or 256GB data storage. It is not possible to expand the data storage with a MicroSD memory card! The operating system is called Magic UI 2.0 and is based on Android 9. The decisive factors for Magic UI 2.0 are a wide range of functions and the AI ​​"YOYO", which is intended to make life easier for Chinese users at least.

Dual SIM, dual GPS and 40 watts charging function

The Honor Magic 2 is a dual SIM smartphone with two nano SIM slots. Both slots support 4G LTE and VoLTE. There are reductions in the supported mobile radio frequencies. Due to the fact that sales are currently only intended for the Chinese market, only the mobile radio bands used in China are supported. Local users would have to do without LTE Band 20! 

Additional features are dual-AC WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0 and NFC. New is the dual-frequency GPS (L1 / L5), which processes two signals simultaneously and enables even more precise position determination. Another special feature is the 3D face unlock, which, in addition to the already mentioned in-display fingerprint scanner, securely unlocks the smartphone. Last but not least, the battery. This has a capacity of 3500 mAh and is charged by cable (USB-C). The fast charging function of the Honor Magic 2 provides up to 40 watts and fully charges the battery within 55 minutes.

Price and availability

The smartphone will be available in China from November 6th. Depending on the memory configuration, the smartphone costs between € 480 and € 600. Nothing is currently known about an international sales launch.