May seems to be the month of companies announcing new AI capabilities for their products. After OpenAI, Google and Microsoft, Honor has announced a 4-layer AI architecture for MagicOS—its Android skin. Moreover, the company is partnering with Google Cloud to provide Gen-AI experiences on its devices, and is aiming to enhance the portrait experience with AI on the next number series. Honor is joining hands with Paris’s Harcourt Studio, which is famous for its black-and-white celebrity portraits.
Honor’s 4-layer AI architecture uses cross-device and cross-OS AI as the foundation of an “open ecosystem,” which is aimed to share “computing power and services among devices and operation systems.” It’ll help personalize your phone interactions with “resource allocation and intent-based human-computer interaction.” Essentially, it’s Honor’s take on the Apple Continuity feature but with AI.
Honor will use generative AI on the app level (in its 4-layer AI architecture) to enhance the user experience. The top layer of Cloud AI includes Google’s help with privacy and providing Gen-AI experiences on its devices.
The use cases and how they differ from other companies will be interesting to see. At the Mobile World Congress earlier this year, I used Honor’s eye tracking feature called Magic Capsule—part of its intent-based UI approach, to move a car with my phone. While the feature’s global rollout is still awaited, Honor has developed outstanding features in the past. And I hope it is more proactive with the rollout.
Honor Partners With Harcourt Studio For Portraits on Honor 200 Series
In a separate announcement related to the upcoming Honor 200 series, the company is also partnering with Harcourt Studio in Paris. Honor is very specific with its partnership. Unlike OnePlus, Xiaomi, and Vivo which have partnered with camera makers for various factors including, lens-making, camera software tuning, and more, Honor is using the studio’s expertise in portrait photography to fine-tune its AI-enhanced Portrait experience on the Honor 200 lineup.
Honor says that it’s using AI to learn from a vast dataset of Harcourt Studio portraits to break down the entire portrait photography process into 9 distinct steps. It claims to replicate the full Studio Harcourt method, which I’ll be testing soon in my review of the upcoming Honor phone that’s set to launch on June 12.
The Honor 200 series is already up for pre-order in China through the company’s website. It showcases a dual-tone design on the back and a smaller front camera cutout than the Magic 6 Pro. Both the Honor 200 and 200 Pro are said to sport a 50MP primary camera and pack a 5,200mAh battery with 100W fast charging support.
