Honor Magic6 Pro Review

Three things on the Magic6 Pro were the best you could get in a phone in early 2024. The 5600 mAh silicon carbon battery beat every rival on endurance, comfortably two days for a normal user, and refilled at 80W wired or 66W wireless. The 6.8-inch LTPO OLED hits 5,000 nits in HDR highlights, stays legible in direct sun, and dims with 4,320Hz PWM for the people that flicker gives headaches.

And the camera: a 50 megapixel main sensor at 1/1.3 inch behind a mechanical aperture from f/1.4 to f/2.0, a 50 megapixel ultrawide, and a 180 megapixel 2.5x periscope on a big 1/1.49 inch sensor that crops to a clean 5x and a usable 10x. DxOMark put it first in the world at launch, and the results support it, with the caveat that Honor's processing likes warm, sharpened skin. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is as quick here as in anything else.

Build is IP68 with Honor's own NanoCrystal glass, and it is a heavy 225 grams. Then MagicOS 8 on Android 14: a lot of Apple in the gestures and the Control Centre, duplicate apps, notifications that need permission wrangling, and a promised four OS upgrades with five years of patches that trails Samsung and Google. It launched in China in January 2024 at 5,699 yuan and in Europe at MWC in February at 1,299 euros for 12GB and 512GB, about $1,400 converted, and was never sold in the US.