This article contains affiliate links, we will receive a commission on any sales we generate from it.Learn more I know every tech company in the world is talking a lot about AI, but I wish Honor wouldn’t.In the press release for its new flagship Android smartphone, the Honor Magic 8 Pro, Honor refers to itself as an “AI device ecosystem company”.
The phone itself, which I have been using for well over a month, is stuffed to the gills with AI, and not always in a good way.On the face of it, features like AI deepfake detection are useful, but in daily use, the phone feels like it’s dealing in gimmicks that detract from just how solid this phone is. After getting to know the phone, which is available to buy today at a cost of £1,099.99, I believe Honor shouldn't rely so much on the artificial smarts it insists are the device’s USP.The Magic 8 Pro is a very powerful smartphone with an excellent camera, great battery life and clever software that is well worth considering instead of similarly priced high-end phones such as Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra or Google Pixel 10 Pro XL.It runs the latest top of the range Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset with 12GB RAM and a generous 512GB storage, making this one of the most powerful phones on the market.The 50MP camera on the Magic 8 Pro can take incredible shots, particularly of people and in low light.Perhaps that is down to the phone’s “human-centric AI Photo Agent”, as Honor puts it.
I’m more impressed by the 200MP telephoto lens, which improves upon last year’s Magic 7 Pro’s 3x optical zoom with a stretch to 3.7x.It kicks out amazingly detailed portraits of people, objects and landscapes.“The Honor Magic 8 Pro reimagines a new future for AI Photography that provides more choice for customers,” Bond Zhang, CEO of Honor United Kingdom and Ireland said.Honor talking about AI all the time gives me the ick, and it puts me off using the excellent Magic 8 Pro.I worry that this sort of messaging and marketing is also off-putting for the potential customers Honor is trying to woo away from more popular brands.Thankfully, I can tell you that the Magic 8 Pro is worth your money if you value what it has to offer in design, camera and battery (and if you don’t balk at spending more than £1,000 on a phone).
The design is very pretty, sticking with curved edges and glass where virtually every other flagship phone recently has gone with flat screens and flat sides.Aside from being slightly top heavy with that massive camera, it's a win.The phone’s 6,270mAh silicon-carbon battery is also a major plus point, easily giving me two days of life.It’s not quite as good as the OnePlus 15, though, which can stretch to three.
Either way, this new tech puts your iPhone’s battery life to shame....the Magic 8 Pro is worth your money if you value what it has to offer in design, camera and battery Tech news, reviews and latest gadgets plus selected offers and competitions Subscribe Invalid emailWe use your sign-up to provide content in ways you've consented to and to improve our understanding of you.This may include adverts from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding.
You can unsubscribe at any time.Read our Privacy PolicyGet More of Our News on GoogleSet Daily Express as a 'Preferred Source' to get quicker access to the news you value.It’s also one of the only Android phones with fully secure 3D face unlocking and biometrics, akin to Apple’s Face ID.
All other Android brands stick with less secure 2D tech.But it’s hard to fall in love with the phone when Honor makes missteps.Though the firm’s take on Android 16, MagicOS 10, is generally great, one of the most annoying software decisions is with notifications.When you view them in the notification shade, they often hide all the text, and swiping down on a single notification doesn't expand it like it does on other Android phones.
Instead you have to tap to expand.Honor also only displays notifications on the lock screen the first time they come in.If you unlock the phone and then lock it again, the notification disappears from the lock screen forever, even if you haven't opened it.I can't find any way to change either of these behaviours, and it makes me not want to use the phone.
It's the same with Samsung's pesky persistent Now Bar on the lockscreen of its recent phones.Stop it!Good thing then that the display on the 8 Pro is excellent.The 6.71-inch OLED is lovely to look at, and Honor remains one of the only firms with an e-book mode for reading and several very customisable options for tweaking the screen to your liking.Despite the camera’s excellence, AI makes it worse.
It’s optional, but there is an AI enhancement mode you can toggle on in the camera app when you zoom past 10x, which uses AI to upscale the quality of blurry zoom images.It doesn’t work well and creates an unrealistic, oil painting-like mess.Honor’s Magic Portal is better.Touch and hold an image in any app, and the system picks it up and lets you drag it to a toolbar on either side of the screen to share to that app.
It works well, but is annoying in Instagram Stories if you want to tap and hold to stop an image skipping ahead, as the phone thinks you want to share it.After stepping out of the shadow of former parent company Huawei, Honor is doing well to produce phones that compete at the high-end with the incumbents like Samsung, Google and Apple.In fact, Honor tells me many of its phone customers are previous iPhone owners.I love the fact the Magic 8 Pro has curved edges and a slim design, and when you’re not using AI, the camera is phenomenal, all on a phone with two-day battery life.But the software could do with some polish around the basics.
Deepfake detection and AI upscaling might be top of some people’s list, but I struggle to want to use this £1,099.99 phone full time when the notifications are so annoying to deal with.You have to nail the basics, and too often Honor forgets to pay attention to them.The Honor Magic 8 Pro is available to buy now from Honor in the UK.
