The Honor Magic 7 Pro and its AI mega zoom camera go global
200MP telephoto and speedy image processor promise impressive camera capabilities
You don’t earn a place among the best smartphones these days without a cracking set of cameras. Honor has taken that to heart for its latest flagship effort, adding one of the highest pixel count telephoto sensors I’ve ever seen on a phone. The Honor Magic 7 Pro also doubles down on AI smarts, and promises oodles of power courtesy of a Snapdragon 8 Elite CPU.
The replacement for the rather brilliant Honor Magic 6 Pro was announced for China last October, and is now ready to hit Europe and the UK. That’s at least a month sooner than the previous generation, which puts it in a better place to compete with the imminent arrival of Samsung’s Galaxy S25.
It looks every bit the worthy successor to the Magic 6 Pro at first glance. Up front, the 6.8in screen goes for subtle 2.5D edges instead of curved-edge glass for the first time, and sits in a flat frame. There’s an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor underneath, paired with Honor’s familiar 3D depth-sensing selfie camera cutout up top for facial recognition. With a peak 5000 nits, the OLED panel is one of the brightest of any smartphone, while LTPO tech brings an adaptive 1-120Hz refresh rate. IP68 and IP69 elemental protection make this one seriously durable handset, too.
Photography should see the biggest gains. The lead 50MP snapper has a variable f/1.4-f/2.0 aperture, while the telephoto increases its pixel count to a massive 200MP. Both get optical image stabilisation, while the 50MP ultrawide can double as a macro lens. Honor’s Eagle Eye tech should mean it takes crisp shots of fast-moving subjects, and AI Super Zoom is the pick of the AI-assisted shooting modes. It promises to fill in the blanks beyond 30x magnification, creating details that the sensor isn’t able to resolve itself.
MagicOS 9.0 has also seen its fair share of AI upgrades. Magic Portal puts context-sensitive shortcuts within easy reach when highlighting text or circling onscreen images; foreign language translation can be done in real-time; the Notes app can transcribe voice recordings and concisely summarise long meeting notes; and Google Gemini and Circle to Search are on board right out of the box.
There’s just one global version of the Magic 7 Pro, with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. It also differs from the Chinese version on battery capacity: instead of an impressively capacious 5850mAh cell, the rest of the world gets a 5270mAh battery – albeit with Honor’s silicon carbide chemistry and rapid 100W wired / 80W wireless refuelling. You’ll be able to pick one up in Lunar Shadow Grey or Black colours.
The Honor Magic 7 Pro is up for pre-order right now in the UK and Europe, with devices set to start shipping in the coming weeks. Expect to pay £1099 in Blighty or €1299 on the continent – putting it on par with the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL and a close match for the Oppo Find X8 Pro, but pricier than the recently announced OnePlus 13.
Honor wont be bringing the regular Magic 7, which steps down on screen size (6.78in) uses a flat OLED panel, and has 50MP sensors for all three of its rear cameras, to Europe. That phone – which also packs a 5650mAh battery and does without the 3D depth sensor for facial recognition – will stay exclusive to China, just like the outgoing Magic 6 did.
Value-minded shoppers should check out the Honor Magic 7 Lite instead. I reviewed the £399 handset earlier this year, calling it “a new endurance standard” for affordable phones, thanks to a colossal 6600mAh battery.