Global technology brand Honor unveiled a brand-new line-up of premium products at Mobile World Congress 2022, in Barcelona, Spain. Here at ProVideo Coalition we look at the two new flagship models from the company, the Honor Magic4 Pro and Honor Magic4, which boast cutting-edge technology to deliver new breakthroughs in smartphone design, display, photography, videography, performance and privacy.
While the Honor Magic4 shares some of the new technologies now announced, the Honor Magic4 Pro is the device to get if you’re buying a smartphone for your photography and video. The Honor Magic4 Pro is the only one to offer a 64MP Periscope Telephoto Camera, while the standard version is equipped with an 8MP periscope telephoto camera. This 3.5x telephoto camera (+/- a 90mm focal length), while not offering the 10x present in Samsung’s Galaxy S22 Ultra, is an interesting compromise.
Telephoto photography continues to be an area were smartphone brands rarely offer more than the average 2x optical “zoom”, a tendency that suggests they are not really catering for the interest of photographers who may only consider smartphones as a tool when the focal range available goes from wide-angle to, at least, a medium telephoto around 200mm. The recent launch by Oppo of its flagship Find X5 Pro, with a humble 13MP 52mm lens telephoto confirms that there is a gap between what is being said and what really happens.
The new devices feature Honor’s iconic “Eye of Muse” symmetrical design, with the lens/camera circular island in the top center of the smartphone. Both devices feature a 50MP wide camera which packs a 1/1.56-inch color sensor, a 50MP 122 degrees Ultra-Wide Camera, and a periscope telephoto camera, 64MP in the Pro version and 8MP in the standard, as noted above.
The company claims that “the 50MP Wide Camera and the 50MP Ultra-Wide Camera delivers a 65% increase in image sharpness and clarity with Computational Photography. Upon applying fusion computational photography with the wide camera, the 64MP Periscope Telephoto Camera delivers a 3.5x Optical Zoom and a 100x Digital Zoom, further enhancing image sharpness and clarity by 160%.”
The results shown during the presentation do suggest the telephoto is able to go up to 10x digital (and it would be interesting to compare results to those from Samsung’s optical 10x telephoto in the S22 Ultra), but Honor may be taking it too far claiming that the lens can go all the way up to 100x. Well, it can, but the results are, I guess, nothing photographers would show around…
Honor also takes a leap with advanced photography while video recording. Based on Honor’s Dual Chain Computational Photography and Videography Algorithm, the Honor Magic4 Pro can, according to the company, “capture truly high-quality images while shooting videos, which is not limited by the video recording quality, as is common in other smartphones.”
Cinematic videography is also a key part of the Honor Magic4 series, and here the devices offer the option to capture cinematic-level footage, through the use of Honor Magic-Log Movie Master and AI Film Effects. With this, the Honor Magic4 Series delivers the industry-first 10-bit Log 4K video recording in 60fps (frame per second), beating another industry benchmark.
Commonly used to shoot professional-grade movies, the Log format allows users to enhance the look of their videos with cinematic color tones in HDR clarity. Equipped with Cinematic 3D LUT (Look Up Table) capabilities, the Honor Magic4 Series with its Magic-Log format helps, the company says, “users edit their videos in superior color hues fit for the movies, enabling budding creators to bring Hollywood style colors and moods to their content.”
Equipped with the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 5G Mobile Platform, the Honor Magic4 Series is backed by industry-leading Qualcomm 7th Gen AI Engine and Cortex-X2 CPU Architecture, for ultra-fast processing speeds, while achieving high levels of efficiency. Honor claims that “compared to the previous generation, the Honor Magic4 Series enhances CPU performance by 20%, GPU performance by 30% and AI capabilities by a whopping 300%.
The Honor Magic4 Series is equipped with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage, ensuring users can enjoy a smooth and stable performance. The new devices will be available starting from Q2, 2022. The Honor Magic4 will start at €899 or $1000 (8 GB+256 GB), while the Honor Magic4 Pro will start at €1099 or $1230 (8 GB+256 GB).