Last year may have been the best year in Honor’s history yet, as its foldable Magic V3 won virtually every “best foldable phone of the year” award from the tech media landscape, and the slab Magic 6 Pro finally established — at least in my opinion — its own distinct identity that differs from other Android devices.
And so with the new year comes the Honor Magic 7 Pro, the follow up that adds further polish to the 6 Pro. More importantly, Honor continues to zig when other Android phones zag, giving us a device that stands out from the crowd a bit.
For example, Honor is just about the only Android phone brand that still offers us real 3D face unlock like iPhones do (meaning the phone uses a depth-mapping sensor to identify the unique contours of our faces). All other Android phones have decided to give us the less secure 2D face unlock (which uses just a single selfie camera to identify faces).
Truth be told, the in-display fingerprint scanners in all Android phones are so good these days I wouldn’t call 3D face scanning a must-have feature, but it is nice to have. And the Honor Magic phones are the only one to give us this on the Android side.
Also, the Magic 7 Pro, like the last few Magic phones, uses a slightly wider 19.5:9 screen aspect ratio (compared to the 20:9 used by other Android manufacturers), so the Magic 7 Pro’s 6.8-inch OLED screen is ever so slightly wider horizontally than other 6.8-inch Android phones. And that extra width matters for a fast typer such as myself. I find typos to happen a bit less common when I type away on a Magic 7 Pro compared to other phones, because the keyboard is not as cramped.
Cameras
The Honor Magic 7 Pro brings an impressive Periscope zoom lens: 200-megapixel, f/2.6 aperture, 1/1.4-inch image sensor size. These numbers, particularly the sensor size, are very impressive — much larger than most other phone zoom cameras. But Honor is not the first to adopt this lens — Vivo has been using it in its last two flagship phones.
Having such a large telephoto sensor allows the camera to produce natural bokeh and capture more details and dynamic range. And this zoom lens delivers, it’s absolutely one of the best zoom cameras around.
But it’s not better than the Vivo X200 Pro’s zoom lens. Perhaps it’s Vivo having more time fine-tuning the lens, but side-by-side zoom shots between the two phones almost always has the Vivo image coming out superior. In the samples below, notice the Vivo image on the right exhibits more bokeh and dynamic range. Honor’s image is not bad at all — this is a 10X image! It’s almost certainly better than what the iPhone could have muster. But Vivo’s image almost looks like it came from a real camera.
Still, we must remember the Vivo phones have been known among phone geeks as the best camera phone for a few years, so Honor coming in second here is no shame.
In a vacuum (and I’m not nitpicking) the Magic 7 Pro produces beautiful looking images, especially black and white portraits of human subjects, thanks to Honor’s partnership with Studio Harcourt.
The Magic 7 Pro’s main camera is also very good, but I have come to the conclusion that, in 2025, the only real differentiating factor between a great phone camera and good phone camera is in the telephoto lenses. The differences between flagship phone main camera quality is getting razor slim, as every phone, whether it’s from Apple or Asus, Samsung or Xiaomi, is going to have a very capable main camera.
Software and performance
The Magic 7 Pro is powered by the newest and highest-tier Qualcomm chip, the confusingly named Snapdragon 8 Elite (this is the second time in four years Qualcomm has completely revamped the naming scheme of its flagship silicon series).
Performance is excellent, obviously, as mobile silicon has long surpassed what 99% of people need on a mobile device. Whether it’s splicing together video clips on CapCut or scrolling through Instagram, sending emails or uploading files to Slack, this phone doesn’t miss a beat.
The software — MagicOS 9.0 — has a new look of which I’m a fan. There’s more customization than before, and the UI overall has a fresher, more vibrant vibe. The phone also comes with a suite of AI features like generative AI photo editing and AI translation, as well as connectivity with Windows laptops and Honor devices, but these are really not new in 2025, as most phones offer some version of this.
Battery life has been fine, but not amazing, for me. On average the phone lasts about 10-11 hours for me outside before the battery dips below 10%. This is a couple hours shorter than say the iPhone 16 Pro Max or Vivo X200 Pro, but it’s acceptable. I am a very heavy user who’s on the phone constantly. And my 10-11 hours has me going all around the city, not sitting in one place connected to WiFi.
Overall, the Magic 7 Pro is a very polished and well-rounded phone from Honor. As mentioned, I like that Honor does a few things differently from other Android phones, like having real 3D face unlock, and the slightly wider form factor, but otherwise, the very best Android phones are starting to feel very familiar features-wise. This isn’t a big deal for most people, who use one phone for a year or three. But for me who’s jumping phones often, I am starting to feel like I can recite what’s new with these phones in my sleep.
The good news is, Honor has a whole different segment it’s innovating on — foldables. And if I’d have to bet, I’d say Honor will be the first to bring a tri-fold to the international market.
