Honor Magic4 Professional evaluation: {hardware} highs, software program stumbles

As soon as a sub-brand of Chinese language cellphone big Huawei, Honor has been going it alone since being spun out in late 2020. To date, it’s launched the midrange Honor 50 globally, however numerous difficulties have prevented the corporate from popping out with a real flagship smartphone within the west since changing into an unbiased firm. It even went so far as to announce world pricing for the Magic3 final August, however the cellphone ended up solely being obtainable in China.

That modifications with this yr’s Magic4 Professional, which might be obtainable to preorder within the UK from Might thirteenth and can ship on Might twenty seventh from £949.99. (Honor says it at the moment has no plans to launch the cellphone within the US.) It’s a worth level that sees Honor’s cellphone compete straight with Samsung’s wonderful Galaxy S22 Plus, the 256GB storage variant of Google’s achieved Pixel 6 Professional, and Apple’s ever-reliable iPhone 13 Professional. These are three wonderful decisions for potential cellphone consumers and signify powerful competitors for Honor’s newest.

On paper, the Magic4 Professional is aggressive. It’s acquired a trio of high-resolution rear cameras, super-fast 100W wired charging, and assist for 100W wi-fi charging, in addition to a giant vibrant, colourful display screen with a quick refresh charge. However whereas I preferred quite a lot of these options individually, Honor’s software program struggles to carry up its finish of the discount.

From the entrance, the Honor Magic4 Professional appears like most different Android flagships in 2022. It’s acquired a big 6.81-inch OLED show with a decision of 1312 x 2848, a peak brightness of 1000 nits, and a most refresh charge of 120Hz. It will get a lot vibrant, and it’s beautiful and colourful. There’s a pill-shaped hole-punch cutout on the highest left for a 12-megapixel selfie digicam and 3D face unlock {hardware}, and there’s an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor round two-thirds down the show.

Honer is asking this a “quad-curved” display screen, nevertheless it solely actually curves across the left and proper sides of the cellphone, and I want it wasn’t curved in any respect. Positive, the curves arguably give the cellphone a extra premium really feel, and I didn’t have any issues with unintentionally touching its sides like with some curved display screen telephones. However in the end, I simply ended up dropping the edges of apps and the highest and backside of movies across the curved edges, with little or no profit. The cellphone has an IP68 ranking for mud and water resistance, which implies you shouldn’t have any points utilizing it within the rain.

Out of the field, the Magic4 Professional runs Android 12, however Honor is simply committing to 2 years of Android updates and two years of safety updates. In distinction, Samsung now gives as much as 4 years of Android updates, Google gives three (or 5 if you happen to embrace safety updates), and Apple remains to be releasing new iOS updates for 2015’s iPhone 6S.

I don’t usually spend a lot time speaking in regards to the biometric safety choices constructed into telephones today, however the completely horrible time I had establishing fingerprint unlock on the Magic4 Professional is value mentioning. Throughout preliminary setup, I encountered a software program bug that led to my makes an attempt to register my proper thumbprint failing over a dozen instances. Curiously, after I manually added three extra fingerprints in settings after preliminary setup, I didn’t encounter any such points, so I think the issue is software-based quite than with the Qualcomm 3D Sonic Sensor Gen 2 that Honor’s utilizing on this cellphone.

The Magic4 Professional’s 3D face unlock characteristic is extra seamless and, in a side-by-side take a look at with an iPhone 12 Professional, was solely a fraction of a second slower in splendid situations. However when situations have been tougher, equivalent to when unlocking in a darkish room, when wanting from an angle, or when sporting a hat, Honor’s face unlock would typically stumble, and total, its implementation didn’t really feel as dependable as Apple’s.

Battery life with the 4,600mAh cell is dependable, and the cellphone’s 100W quick charging is much more so. I averaged slightly over 5 hours of display screen on day trip of the Honor Magic4 Professional and would typically finish the day with over 40 p.c of cost left. It took a day of heavy utilization, together with a half-hour video name and an hour and a half of utilizing the cellphone for biking instructions, for me to see the cellphone attain zero at round 11PM. Once I did a charging take a look at, the 100W charger that Honor offers within the field did an important job. It hit the 46 p.c mark simply quarter-hour after I put it on cost at 0 p.c (aka simply sufficient time to take a bathe) and reached 100% simply after the half-hour mark.

The Honor Magic4 Professional additionally does 100W wi-fi quick charging, which in my take a look at charged the cellphone to 54 p.c in simply quarter-hour of charging and to 100% on the 31-minute mark. However I’d be shocked if many individuals really make use of this characteristic as a result of really getting these speeds entails shopping for each Honor’s 100W wi-fi charging stand and its 100W-capable energy brick individually (the facility brick that comes within the field for the wi-fi charging stand can solely deal with 80W quick charging). Honor didn’t reply to questions in regards to the pricing of those two equipment, however I’d wager they’re unlikely to come back low cost.

Honor’s Magic UI 6 software program provides a few fascinating options to Android 12, however for essentially the most half, I acquired annoyed on the bloat. For starters, the cellphone comes pre-installed with round half a dozen third-party apps of questionable utility, equivalent to Reserving.com, TrainPal, Journey.com, and WPS Workplace, alongside first-party Honor apps like Honor Retailer and Honor Membership. Somewhere else, I persistently stumbled into supposedly useful shortcuts after I wasn’t on the lookout for them. For instance, the cellphone asks you to slip your finger up on the show to entry the house display screen as soon as it’s unlocked. However if you happen to begin your swipe too far down, you’ll as a substitute open a shortcut menu with hyperlinks to a voice recorder app and calculator, and I unintentionally activated this shortcut an annoying quantity.

One other characteristic is a cellphone calling know-how it calls “Simply Say to Me,” which goals to regulate the sound popping out of the cellphone’s earpiece throughout calls to make it inaudible to these round you. Honor says the characteristic works utilizing “AI Directional Sound” know-how, utilizing the display screen itself to transmit low and medium-frequency sounds, leaving the earpiece to deal with excessive frequencies, allegedly leading to much less sound leakage. To my ear, it sounds prefer it’s adjusting the EQ of the incoming voice, decreasing the amount of decrease frequencies which may carry additional. The catch is that it solely works when you have got the cellphone’s name quantity set to 60 p.c or beneath. I recorded myself utilizing it, and it was definitely more durable to listen to the individual on the opposite finish of the decision with the characteristic turned on, nevertheless it’s onerous to know precisely how a lot of this was simply all the way down to the truth that I needed to flip the amount all the way down to get the characteristic to activate.

In some instances, it was doable to tweak away a few of my annoyances with Honor’s software program. There’s a easy toggle to reintroduce the usual Android app drawer (disabled by default), and SwiftKey is straightforward sufficient to exchange with Gboard. Honor’s software program additionally aggressively shuts down apps working within the background if it doesn’t suppose you’re utilizing them, which tripped up a jogging app I used to be utilizing to maintain time — however fortunately, you’re capable of manually exclude all or simply some apps from this conduct.

However even after I tweaked its software program to my liking, utilizing Honor’s Magic UI typically didn’t really feel like I used to be utilizing a smartphone costing nearly £950 outfitted with Qualcomm’s newest flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor. Its app drawer stuttered barely after I flipped it open, and apps would typically get confused and must reload their contents after I switched to them shortly. They’re small hiccups, however given how good midrange telephones have gotten, it’s not nice seeing these crop up in a premium flagship. Internally, the Magic4 Professional has 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, which places it on par with the Pixel 6 Professional.

This neatly brings us to the Honor Magic4 Professional’s digicam system, which is housed inside a big round digicam bump on the rear of the cellphone. Individuals who I confirmed the cellphone to have been break up on the design, however I like the best way it makes an announcement out of its rear digicam bump quite than attempting to attenuate it. You get three rear cameras on the Magic4 Professional: a 50-megapixel most important; a 50-megapixel ultrawide with a 122-degree area of view; and a 64-megapixel telephoto with a 3.5x optical zoom. It’s good to see Honor buck the development of producers pairing a high-resolution most important sensor with a lot decrease decision secondary cameras.

Grid View

In follow, daylight pictures is sweet, which is the place most smartphone producers are at in 2022. Honor’s tuning tends to prioritize punchy colours and sharp edges, however with its well-specced sensor, it’s acquired sufficient element to work with that I believe the impact works. It even does a very good job with faces, leaving my pores and skin tone wanting pure quite than overly brightened. The hi-res sensors behind the ultrawide and telephoto lenses imply this efficiency continues with the secondary cameras. The place different cellphone cameras may get grainy or low-detail, Honor’s pictures preserve the identical high quality stage.

I used to be much less impressed with efficiency in low mild, the place I struggled to get the identical quantity of element out of the Honor Magic4 Professional. It did a very good job with shade accuracy, and at first look, I used to be impressed by the dearth of seen noise. However look nearer, and it appears like Honor’s software program is attempting to easy out as a lot movie grain as it will possibly, and it will possibly make photos seem like comfortable watercolors whenever you look carefully. Swap to the ultrawide or telephoto cameras, and efficiency is roughly the identical as the principle digicam’s, which is definitely fairly good going contemplating the degraded efficiency you typically get from the secondary cameras in different telephones.

Honor has performed a very good job at speccing out the {hardware} of the Magic4 Professional. Its cameras are excessive decision, it expenses extremely quick, its display screen is gorgeous (curved edges however), and total, the gadget’s {hardware} succeeds at having that premium flagship really feel. If you would like a cellphone that may wirelessly cost sooner than many different telephones can do over a wired connection, then the Honor Magic4 Professional may be very completely satisfied to oblige.

However I used to be by no means received over by the expertise of truly utilizing the Honor Magic4 Professional. Whether or not it was the occasional software program hiccups, the aggressive background app administration, or the lock display screen shortcut that acquired in the best way too typically, it typically felt like sporting a pair of footwear that have been simply half a dimension too large. When a cellphone prices as a lot as a Samsung or Apple flagship, you may discover a higher match elsewhere.