Huawei had introduced three flagship handsets last month, the Huawei Mate 9, Porsche Edition Mate 9 and Mate 9 Pro. The last two devices are basically identical, aside from the fact the Porsche Edition Mate 9 is considerably more expensive due to the ‘Porsche’ branding. In any case, Huawei’s subsidiary, Honor, was rumored to be working on a new bezel-less smartphone that would be a direct competitor to the Xiaomi Mi MIX. The company actually teased the announcement of this device for December 16th, which is today, and we’re glad to say that Honor just introduced this smartphone.
The company has just announced the Honor Magic, their sleek-looking smartphone. Unfortunately for those of you who live outside of China, this smartphone will be available in China only, at least those are Honor’s plans at the moment. The device will be available from a number of retailers in the country starting today, including Vmall.com, Suning, JD.com, and Tmall. We still don’t know how much will the phone cost, but we’ll let you know as soon as some additional details surface, as per usual. Now, let’s get Honor Magic’s specs out of the way, shall we. This smartphone sports a 5.09-inch QHD (2560 x 1440) curved AMOLED display, along with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of native storage. The device is fueled by the Kirin 950 64-bit octa-core processor, and comes with a 2,900mAh non-removable battery. On the back of the device, you’ll be able to find a 12-megapixel dual camera setup (f/2.2 aperture), while an 8-megapixel shooter (f/2.0 aperture) is available on the front side of this smartphone. Android 6.0 Marshmallow comes pre-installed here, and on top of it, you’re getting the company’s Honor Magic Live software, which we’ll talk about in a minute. The phone comes in Golden Black and Porcelain White color variants, while it measures 146.1 x 69.9 x 7.8mm, and weighs 145 grams.
This phone is equipped with some interesting features, including some AI-driven ones. The WiseScreen feature combines a sensor in the phone’s frame and an infrared sensor included in the front-facing camera. When you pick up the phone, this WiseScreen feature is supposed to recognize both your hands and eyes and then turn on the display, so it basically provides two layers of security at once. When you put your phone in your pocket, however, the phone’s display will turn off on its own within 1 second. The FaceCode Intelligent Recognition is yet another feature worth mentioning. This feature will make sure that you’re holding the phone before you get to see any received notifications, in other words, it will make sure that other people don’t see your notifications if they happen to hold your smartphone. Now, this is not all, not even close. Honor talked about a number of other features which include the AI element to them. For example, if you’re talking about a specific movie to your friends via Wechat, the phone will recommend you the latest blockbusters. If you start your car and start driving, Honor Magic will remind you to switch the phone to driving mode. When you arrive at the theater, the phone will automatically show you the ticket booking number, and so on.
As far as the design goes, this phone features a curved display, and also a home button below the display. This home button actually replaces both the ‘back’ and ‘overview’ keys, as you’ll be able to touch it, double tap it or swipe it in order to perform all those functions. The battery included on the inside of this phone is actually Huawei’s all new graphene-assisted Li-ion battery they’ve unveiled quite recently, which allows this phone to charge up to 40% in only 10 minutes, according to the company. All in all, this is a very interesting smartphone, and we’re hoping that it will become available outside of China at some point.
