Honor finally launched its foldableMagic Vsfor international markets atMWC 2023after it’s been available in China since November. But the company also brought its regular flagship series overseas,presenting it at the Barcelona trade showeven before making it official in its domestic Chinese market. We’ve had the opportunity to go hands-on with a pre-release version of the Magic 5 Pro flagship, slated to hit European and international markets in April.
Honor Magic 5 Pro
As the archstone of the Honor Magic 5 series, the Pro offers three 50MP cameras on the rear, a “floating,” vivid LTPO display, refined, extra hardware for display control, laser focus, color temperature, and more. It’s a minor update from the Magic 4 Pro, but still a whole lotta phone.
Display and hardware
Like theHonor Magic 4 Probefore it, the Honor Magic 5 Pro comes with an unapologetically curved screen. The company again claims that it’s a quad curved display, though it’s hard to see any of these on the top or the bottom. The sides are clearly curved, though, leading to the usual issues like extra glare on the sides and slight discolorations when you look at the display straight on. On a technological level, you’re in for a 1312x2848 6.81-inch 1-120Hz display that reaches a peak brightness of 1,800 nits, making it easily visible in the sun (though this year, Barcelona isn’t gracing us with much of it, so stay tuned for our full review).
From our limited testing, it also looks like the OLED screen has a better quality than its predecessor. On the Magic 4 Pro, dark gray colors were heavily rasterized, which is something that every OLED suffers from, but it was a particularly pronounced problem on the Magic 4 Pro.
Design-wise, the phone clearly takes inspiration from its Magic 4 Pro successor. The camera array on the back is still in the “eye of the muse” design, with the three sensors arranged in a symmetrical design within a circular camera bump at the top of the back. The area surrounding the camera bump smoothly curves into the sensors, which is reminiscent of point-and-shoot cameras of old, but personally, I’m not the biggest fan. The curve feels like it’s not sloped enough, making for a weirdly organic-looking design that makes me slightly uncomfortable. I much prefer tacked-on looks like we have in the Vivo X90 Pro or theOnePlus 11.
As for the materials on the back itself, Honor went for a glossy finish for the black version and some silky-smooth etched glass for other color variants, like the green one that we have here. It makes the phone feel more slippery than I would like, but since most people will use their device with a case anyway, I can let this point slide. The Magic 5 Pro is also noticeable less top-heavy than the Magic 4 Pro. It doesn’t feel like it will tip over and drop any moment while using it, which is a more than welcome improvement.
As for the rest of the hardware, we’re looking at the top-notch Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, joined by 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. It’s the latest and greatest LPDDR5X and UFS 4.0, respectively. The battery comes in at a more than comfortable 5,100mAh which can charge at 66W wired and 50W wirelessly — gone is the much advertised 100W wired and 100W wireless charging that the Magic 4 Pro has.
On the connectivity front, you will find Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 7 as well as 5G, with dual physical SIM and eSIM support. Like its predecessor, the Magic 5 Pro supports biometric face unlock for both the lock screen and apps while also offering a fingerprint scanner. The stereo speakers get decently loud and provide great clarity.
The Honor Magic 5 Pro comes with a triple camera setup on the back that are arranged symmetrically, all of them coming with a resolution of 50MP. The primary wide camera supports optical and electronic image stabilization at f/1.6 while the ultra wide makes do with EIS only and offers a 122 degree field of view. The periscope telephoto camera offers a 3.5x optical zoom and both OIS and EIS, coming in at f/3.0. Since Honor is still working on finalizing its camera stack, including its post-processing algorithms, we won’t judge the system in its current state just yet, though.
Our very first impressions are still promising, we can say that much. That’s because there is one thing that Honor specifically finalized for the hands-on. The company launched its new Motion Sensing Capture, which prioritizes fast shutter speed to provide crisp and motion-blur-free images of action scenes. you may optionally also flip a switch in the camera settings that makes the phone automatically look for the right moments to hit the shutter, helping you capture the action. Testing the feature, I’ve noticed that it’s a great way to take selfies with the back cameras, too, with the camera automatically snapping a picture when you look in the lens and smile. It likely needs more work, though, as it feels like it doesn’t only react to smiles but also to someone just looking at the camera, no matter the expression.
Honor told us that the software isn’t finalized yet, so it wouldn’t be fair to judge it in its current state. If the Magic Vs and its Magic OS 7.1 skin is any indicator, we can get a vague idea of what will expect us. The new software introduces an option to seamlessly move across other Honor devices like tablets and Windows computers using Honor Connect, allowing you to move files and share your mouse across devices easily. A new intelligent app space on the home screen wants to put the most relevant apps right at your fingertips. There is also a new Magic Text feature that works like Google Lens, extracting text from images you take with Honor devices.
We’re not expecting the company to fix any of the gripes we’ve had with the Magic Vs’s software, though. It’s likely that the Magic 5 Pro won’t support Material You or per-app languages, and it probably also won’t offer an app drawer anymore. We’d love to be proven wrong, though, particularly in the latter department.
Honor also claims that we can expect better performance, smoother animations, and longer battery life with Magic OS 7 — but as mentioned, all of these are claims we haven’t been able to put to the test yet.
The Honor Magic 5 Pro will get three OS upgrades and five years of security patches, matching the update policy of the Google Pixel lineup.
The Honor Magic 5 Pro is coming soon
The Honor Magic 5 Pro is a serious upgrade over its predecessor, fixing a lot of the gripes we’ve had with it in our review. The display seems more uniform, its weight is much more balanced and less top-heavy, and it doesn’t lose any of the features that made its predecessor special.
