By the end of February Honor introduced its Honor Magic4 Pro flagship smartphone, at the at Mobile World Congress 2022, in Barcelona, Spain. ProVideo Coalition published news about the versions introduced there, revealing the boast cutting-edge technology used in both models to deliver new breakthroughs in smartphone design, display, photography, videography, performance and privacy.
Now Honor continues to expand the family, revealing its ultimate flagship, the Honor Magic4 Ultimate, featuring a powerful Quad-Camera system that introduces the world’s first Dual Free-Form Lens and a range of cutting-edge camera innovations that massively improve photography and video capture experiences.
Announcing the new model, the company noted that the Honor Magic4 Ultimate has also entered the DxOMark smartphone camera rankings in 1st place, a milestone achievement that attests to the brand’s progress and R&D capabilities as an independent company. According to DxOMark tests, the camera capabilities of the Honor Magic4 Ultimate get a score of 146 points, two more than the previous leader in DXOMark’s list, the Huawei P50 Pro.
Honor, which made it to the market in 2013, was owned by Huawei Technologies, but in November 2020 was sold to Zhixin New Information Technology, apparently due to the US sanctions against Huawei. Honor made its debut in the United States in January 2016, still with ties to Huawei but in January 2021, the company launched its first non-Huawei phone, the V40, and in June the same year the company announced that its new models, starting with the Honor 50, would ship with Google’s apps and services.
Back to our story. Although the numbers from DxOMark are important, they should not be taken as the absolute truth, when measuring how interesting a smartphone can be. In fact, just the specifications of the Honor Magic4 Ultimate suffice to make it a solution that photographers and videographers should look at. If the Honor Magic4 Pro already offered a good reason to investigate further, the Honor Magic4 Ultimate gives those who are after their next imaging system all the reasons to want the new smartphone… if it ever appears in markets beyond China, where it will be available later this year, with a price that will be close to $1,300 when converted.
As so many other “Ultra” flagships of Chinese origin, the Honor Magic4 Ultimate may never make it to western countries – unless you import it directly– but it’s worth to go through its specifications to better understand how technology is evolving. The Ultimate version is, to a certain extent, like the Honor Magic4 Pro, with the same 64MP telephoto camera with a 90 mm lens and the dToF sensor, but there are reasons why this model is named Ultimate.
The device adopts the largest image sensor ever on an Honor smartphone: a massive 1/1.12-inch sensor with a large aperture of f/1.6 on the 50MP wide camera means that it delivers superior light-sensing performance that “rivals even cameras with a 1-inch sensor and f/1.8 aperture”, says Honor. The smartphone can take scenic night shots or low-light portraits that are brighter, with more vivid colors, better defined objects and minimal visual artifacts, adds the company.
The customized 8P lens comes with a 37% improvement in center sharpness and a 30% improvement in edge sharpness, producing photos and videos that look detailed even when zoomed in. Also, with an Ultra Anti-Reflection (UAR) coating and Infra-Red Cutoff Filter (IRCF), the 50MP Wide Camera effectively minimizes the flare captured from strong light sources, so users can capture their most magical moments even in challenging lighting conditions.
“The Honor Magic4 Ultimate represents the pinnacle of Honor R&D and demonstrates our ambition to become the technology brand of choice for even the most demanding consumers,” said George Zhao, CEO of Honor Device Co, Ltd. “Delivering exceptional camera performance proven by independent researchers at DxOMark, all the while offering the display, performance and security features that consumers have come to expect from an Honor flagship smartphone, the Honor Magic4 Ultimate is the ultimate pain point killer that pro users have long expected.”
The ultra wide camera is also new, with a 64MP sensor. It offers an impressive 126° field of view for capturing everything from parties to sprawling cities, while benefiting from the world’s first Dual Free-Form Lens, which gets to the root of the wide-angle image distortion problem with an industry-low 0.5% edge distortion. With the anti-flare coating technology, the Honor Magic4 Ultimate can get a clean and large field of view, whether taking photos or videos, claims the company.
Unique to the Honor Magic4 Ultimate in the series, the 50MP Spectrum Enhanced Camera, which debuted in HONOR’s first foldable flagship Magic V, allows the camera system to reveal more details in complex environments like mist. According to Honor, this all-new Quad-Camera that sets a new standard for mobile imaging systems.
There is more, though. At the heart of the system, an additional brand-new custom-made image processor supports faster and more efficient AI computations to take Ultra Fusion Photography to even greater heights, enabling the industry’s strongest 4K Night Mode video capture and real-time preview, making sure that shooting very bright, clear and vibrant videos in extreme darkness is possible.
The Honor Magic4 Ultimate also comes with support for an all-new professional-grade video format: Magic-Log2. Custom-developed based on the new camera modules, the new format enables the capturing of 15% higher dynamic range for recording video footage. Combined with the brand-new 3D LUT (Look Up Table) support, the Magic4 Ultimate can make stunning HDR10+ video even in low light, which makes bringing movie magic to life easier than ever.
Running the latest Magic UI 6.0 based on Android 12, the Honor Magic4 Ultimate supports a range of Honor signature smart life features. The device will be available in black and white.