Honor is without doubt one of the most fascinating smartphone manufacturers on the market proper now. Beginning out life as a extra inexpensive offshoot of Huawei, it has now reduce lots of these ties and turn into an bold producer in its personal proper.
That’s paying off too, with knowledge from Searchabull suggesting that Honor is having fun with elevated momentum, whereas Honor itself says that new clients aren’t simply coming from the Android pool, they’re switching from older iPhone fashions.
Worth for cash, elevated publicity and packing a cellphone with every thing appears to be paying off. The extremely skinny Honor Magic V5 actually earned its stars, whereas the spectacular efficiency of the Honor Magic 7 Professional stands it in good stead too.
I’ve acquired my arms on the Honor Magic 8 Professional, which is in the course of a sophisticated launch course of. The cellphone was introduced as one of many first Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 telephones, earlier than getting a world launch. That launch, nonetheless, hasn’t correctly reached Europe (together with the UK), so the value and availability haven’t been confirmed.
As standard, it gained’t be launching within the US. Which is an actual disgrace, with hands-on time already demonstrating that it has loads of strings to its bow.
Chris Corridor / Foundry
An replace that’s all about battery
With the Magic 8 Professional in my hand, I can’t assist feeling that it’s a bit of too just like the Magic 7 Professional. It’s a hefty cellphone, with the Dawn Gold and Sky Cyan colors having that swirling depth to the color on the rear. The digicam remains to be enormous, simply because it was on the Magic 7 Professional, whereas there’s the unsurprising addition of a customisable AI button on the aspect of the cellphone.
However a lot of the dialog concerning the 8 Professional goes to be across the battery. From the Chinese language launch of the machine, it’s identified that there’s a 7100mAh battery, however that’s not the case for the worldwide model, the place it takes a dip to 6270mAh. I can already hear the ripples of disappointment, however let’s put that into context.
The Galaxy S25 Extremely has a 5000mAh capability, whereas the Pixel 10 Professional XL‘s sits at 5200mAh – it is a enormous battery for a cellphone, even on the flagship tier. Honor clearly loves large batteries, with the Magic 8 Lite that includes a 7,500mAh cell.
So, whereas the Magic 8 Professional doesn’t fairly have the largest battery that Honor gives, it’s nonetheless expansive. Honor additionally isn’t shy of quick charging, with 100W Honor SuperCharge help and 80W wi-fi – though you’ll want the best charger to get these speeds. I’ve not examined the precise stamina of the cellphone (and I’m not allowed to speak about efficiency but), however I’ve very excessive hopes.
That is additionally the type of factor that’s going to maintain folks occupied with what Honor has to supply: the pattern for slender telephones (Motorola Edge 70, iPhone Air, Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge) appears to disregard a common fact – everybody needs extra battery, not much less.
A dialog that’s all concerning the digicam
Aside from the battery, the Honor Magic 8 Professional continues the dialog concerning the digicam.
My largest takeaway from the Magic 7 Professional was that the AI zoom was a bit of too glad to tug in generative replacements to provide long-range photographs that have been removed from actual. You’ll have to attend for my remaining overview earlier than I can share precisely what the state of affairs is with the Magic 8 Professional, however let’s check out the {hardware} for now.
The main focus of the Magic 8 Professional stays the telephoto lens and efficiency in low mild. Certain, all telephones take an honest daylight shot, so it is sensible that Honor sticks to areas which might be tougher to grasp.
Chris Corridor / Foundry
The digicam {hardware} is spectacular, however it was on the earlier cellphone, too. There’s a 50Mp important digicam, f/1.6, supported by a 50Mp ultrawide f/2.0 and a 200Mp telephoto. Honor is eager to push the telephoto as “Extremely Night time Telephoto”, and now it gives a 3.7x optical zoom.
That’s a slight enhance over the three.0x optical zoom of the earlier mannequin – and that 0.7x distinction isn’t to be sniffed at, as a result of it takes you fairly a bit nearer to the motion. It’s an f/2.6 digicam, so gives lengthy zoom (as much as 100x digital) with out limiting the sunshine that will get to the sensor an excessive amount of. My impressions from taking take a look at photographs when launched to the cellphone are that that is an extremely succesful digicam.
I discovered that the stabilisation was actually efficient and I snapped some nice low-light photographs. I can’t share these but (they usually weren’t taken on remaining software program), however there’s sufficient right here to proceed that dialog about Honor throwing every thing into the digicam.
Chris Corridor / Foundry
A couple of remaining particulars
The Honor Magic 8 Professional launches on Android 16 and – whereas not confirmed – I’d count on 7 years of software program updates. That’s what the corporate introduced for its flagship units earlier in 2025.
The cellphone gives safety as much as IP69K, which implies it may well stand up to scorching water jets for spectacular safety.
Inside Honor’s MagicOS 10 software program pores and skin, there are many AI options, with a customisable button on the aspect to entry them. You get Gemini and Circle to Search, in addition to a set of Honor-specific options, together with within the digicam, an AI Settings agent, an AI sidebar, an AI Photographs agent and an entire lot extra.
There’s nonetheless a lot extra for me to discover earlier than the machine will get its full reveal in early January 2026. Thus far, the Honor Magic 8 Professional is trying like a strong smartphone – probably, among the best telephones of 2026. I simply want I knew how a lot it’s going to value.