Honor has revealed the design of its upcoming Magic 8 Professional flagship in a number of pictures shared completely with The Verge, confirming that the telephone will embrace a devoted AI button. When the Magic 8 collection launches in China subsequent month, the telephones shall be among the many first powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, which was announced today by Qualcomm.
The Magic telephones are Honor’s flagships, and the Professional fashions are inclined to launch first in China after which later in Europe, the place they usually value upwards of €1,000 (round $1,200) and lean on flagship chips, massive batteries, and highly effective cameras. From what we all know to this point, the Magic 8 Professional shall be no exception.
In broad strokes, the Magic 8 Professional appears very like the Magic 7 Pro. The telephone’s again is flat, reasonably than having delicate curvature just like the earlier mannequin, however in any other case issues appear acquainted. Even the sunshine blue shade appears so much like one in every of final 12 months’s hues.
The most important distinction is on the telephone’s aspect, the place we will see an additional button along with the fingerprint sensor and quantity rocker. Honor tells me that it is a devoted AI button, reasonably than a digital camera management, although precisely what AI features it would allow I don’t but know. Honor can also be asserting a brand new AI characteristic referred to as Magic Shade, which helps you to restyle pictures and movies utilizing the colour palette from one other picture of your alternative, however presumably it has extra AI tips in thoughts for the telephone.
On the again we will see a spherical rear digital camera island, boasting what appears like 4 digital camera lenses, however is more than likely three plus a ToF (time of flight) sensor for depth detection. We don’t know a lot about these cameras, however Honor’s CMO Guo Rui did share a camera sample to Weibo taken on a 200-megapixel, 85mm-equivalent, f/2.6 digital camera, which ought to imply a extra highly effective telephoto than the Magic 7 Professional’s 72mm periscope.
Honor has additionally confirmed that the Magic 8 telephones shall be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the most recent iteration of the corporate’s flagship telephone chip. Honor isn’t the one firm prepared for the 8 Elite Gen 5 although. Xiaomi has beforehand introduced that the brand new chipset shall be utilized in its Xiaomi 17 series, set for a full reveal Thursday.
Final 12 months Honor introduced the Magic 7 and Magic 7 Professional, ultimately joined by a Lite mannequin too, so I’m anticipating the corporate to announce two telephones at its Chinese language launch occasion on October fifteenth. They’ll be joined by the MagicPad 3 Professional, additionally powered by the 8 Elite Gen 5, and can hopefully see a European launch a while early subsequent 12 months. The corporate is rumored to be engaged on new Magic 8 Ultra and Mini models too, although these will even reportedly arrive in 2026.