I had the HONOR Magic6 Pro for a while, so I enjoyed using the smartphone and was surprised at how high-quality the device was made by HONOR. Of course, the device is not perfect, but, firstly, it is very close to it, and secondly, most of my complaints can be eliminated by installing third-party software.
Table of Contents
Camera capabilities
The camera is, of course, the main wow factor of the Magic6 Pro. First, some technical information. The Honor Magic6 Pro has a camera system with a couple of unusual solutions:
- 50 MP, variable aperture F1.4-2.0, optical stabilization, PDAF, laser autofocus
- 50 MP, ultra-wide, F2.0
- telephoto 180 MP, F2.6, PDAF, optical stabilization, 2.5x optical zoom, 5x hybrid zoom (optical + digital)
- Front camera 50 MP + TOF 3D (depth sensor + biometric sensor)
- Video recording on the main cameras 4K 60 fps (including telephoto and ultra-wide-angle cameras)
- Front camera video recording 4K 30 fps
Selfie camera and telephoto lens
About unusual solutions. Firstly, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen TOF 3D sensors even in flagships.
By the way, its presence is completely justified. Selfies with blur are excellent. Several examples at once on the front camera.
I especially liked the selfie camera’s capabilities when shooting in difficult conditions. The front camera offers 1x and 0.8x shooting. These shots taken against the sun, in my opinion, are very good because both the foreground and background are well-developed.
Secondly, the 180 MP telephoto sensor with optical zoom of only 2.5x. I appreciated the genius of this solution when shooting with a 5x hybrid zoom. For its telephoto lens, HONOR took the 200 MP Isocell S5KHP3, 1/1.40″ sensor from Samsung and cut it down to 180 MP.
The strong point of 200 MP is its gorgeous detail. But the downside is that it is difficult to provide sharpness across the entire frame. It turns out that the center of the frame has excellent sharpness, but everything is blurred at the edges. For a telephoto lens, this is not a problem, because that is where the image needs to be in the center.
As a result, the 5x mode has become simply a favorite. Plus, note that some shots were taken in difficult conditions (twilight, sunset).
The right ultra-wide
The ultra-wide-angle mode is no less enjoyable. For some reason, many manufacturers prefer to save money and install sensors with low resolution. As a result, the “ultra-wide” becomes a useless add-on. HONOR has a 50 MP sensor.
Check out some examples. Pay special attention to the temple shot taken against the sun. I think the ultra-wide angle shot is more interesting than the regular one.
And finally, two more photos. In both of them, my finger accidentally got into the frame. By the way, with the HONOR Magic6 Pro, this was a constant problem for me in the ultra-wide-angle mode. The phone is heavy (225 g), with slightly sloping edges, so you subconsciously want to hold it tighter. My Galaxy S23 Ultra is also a brick, but thanks to the case, it feels more secure in the hand. This is how I usually hold the HONOR, so when shooting in ultra-wide-angle, my finger gets into the frame.
But the main thing here is that both shots were taken in the shade, and in the background there is a bright background: light walls, from which the sun is reflected. Without high-quality HDR, a good photo would not have been possible.
Night shooting
To test night photography I chose the “Night of Light” in Gatchina. An interesting event where you can walk around the park, which is decorated with numerous art illuminations.
I really liked the algorithms of the HONOR Magic6 Pro, which confidently but tactfully corrected the image.
And, of course, it was nice that all shooting modes can be used even at night. For example, thanks to the zoom.
And here is the ultra-wide-angle camera, thanks to which it was possible to film the entire projection on the palace.
The implementation of the projection on the palace is, of course, a separate delight. Look at several photos below. Especially the first one, it seems that the palace has not been fully rendered yet.
And here is a video recording of how it all looked live.
Main camera
The main camera consistently produces good results. All shots are made using the “point and shoot” principle. This is exactly what a flagship smartphone should be. For example, the boss once wrote about the Galaxy S Ultra line that it is a photo combine in which you need to play with the settings. I absolutely disagree with this. If the buyer paid a lot of money for the phone, then be so kind as to make everything work on its own.
Battery life
HONOR are innovative guys, and the smartphone has a super-duper silicon-carbon battery, which, with the same size, has a capacity of 10% more, that is, not 5000 mAh, but 5500 mAh. The company, by the way, is great that it highlights its innovations in the smartphone menu.
The kit includes an adapter that charges the smartphone to 100% in 44 minutes. And up to 83% in 30 minutes. At the same time, unlike Samsung, Apple or Huawei, HONOR did not add the ability to limit charging to 70-80%. In the settings, there is only an option that allows the smartphone to charge slightly less than 100%.
It would be very interesting to track the battery degradation, because the battery life is great now. And I am rather pleased with how the smartphone consumes the charge in heavy applications.
For example, here are 2 screenshots from PUBG. To test the battery, I sacrificed sleep and desperately played a shooter for 30 minutes. And the consumption at a brightness level of about 70% was only 5%. That is, for an hour of play, the smartphone spends only 10%. Most devices spend exactly 2 times more.
If we talk about less stressful tasks, for example, I also play the Play Station 1 emulator, then the smartphone spends about 7-8% per hour.
However, in the PCMark test, which simulates everyday tasks, the smartphone received an average result of 8.5 hours. The reason is that we conduct the test at the maximum manual brightness of the display. And it is unusually high in the HONOR Magic6 Pro. Usually, manufacturers limit the manual brightness level to 500-600 nits. In HONOR, it is 800 nits. By the way, in automatic mode, the screen brightness is 1600 nits. So the screen is perfectly readable in the sun, but it eats up the battery actively.
Performance and flagship features
Before working with the HONOR Magic6 Pro, I thought that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset was extremely unsuccessful. If you look at Samsung, you can see that the manufacturer was unable to curb the temperature. The cooling system does not cope, and in the AnTuTu v10 test, the result (1.7 million points) is only 200 thousand points higher than the previous generation.
For comparison, the HONOR Magic6 Pro confidently scores 2.1 million points.
With such performance, the smartphone can handle any task. A little higher, I mentioned that I play the emulator of the first PlayStation. And the smartphone’s performance is enough to display the image with 16x scaling. For reference, 9x is for comfortable gaming on a 4K screen. However, I will not say that this somehow saves the picture of the game, which was released a quarter of a century ago (in 1999).
Plus, the smartphone is packed to the brim with all sorts of “features” that you learn as you use it. For example, when I put the smartphone horizontally, I discovered that it can work as a table clock that also understands when you look at it.
A very cool option if you put your smartphone on a stand on your bedside table. Open your eyes, and the phone immediately shows you the time. Recorded a video. The screen lights up the moment I look out from behind my smartphone:
Screen without PWM
We have published materials on this topic, from which I concluded that even professional reviewers do not fully understand how everything works. So let’s briefly talk about it again.
So, AMOLED and OLED screens tend to flicker when the brightness is reduced. This usually starts when the brightness is below 50%. We are talking about backlight flickering. We do not notice the flickering, but our eyes and brain notice it and start to get tired. For example, on the Galaxy S23 Ultra, flickering at 240 Hz looks like this (it is noticeable when shooting on camera):
The solution that manufacturers came up with is to increase the flickering frequency to a level where it is unnoticeable. That is, a value of 3000 Hz. Although, in principle, flickering does not cause problems from 1440 Hz. HONOR went into marketing and released a display with a flickering frequency of 4320 Hz, which it proudly writes in the smartphone menu.
The menu even has a full animation that shows that the screen backlight initially operates at a frequency of 480 Hz, and then rises to 4,320 Hz. Accordingly, the backlight flickering frequency rises to 4,320 Hz only when the smartphone brightness is at low levels. At high brightness, the screen operates at a frequency of 480 Hz.
Keeping the backlight frequency at 4320 Hz all the time is, firstly, ineffective in terms of battery consumption, and secondly, it affects the quality of color rendering. However, again, not as much as some reviews wrote.
Reviewers simply poked at the “Enable all day” eye protection option and were horrified by the color rendering. The thing is that the “Eye Protection” and ultra-high backlight frequency options are not connected in any way. Eye Protection simply filters out blue light. And the smartphone automatically adjusts the backlight frequency regardless of blue light filtration.
If you are wondering how the color rendering deteriorates, here is an example. At minimum brightness, the colors are a little “lost”.
However, for the user these are trifles, because usually the screen at low brightness is used to comfortably read in the evening before going to bed. And what difference does it make that the background is not white, but with a slight gray tint. And if you read on a black background, the difference is completely unnoticeable.
What I didn’t like: HONOR, where is the artificial intelligence?
I didn’t have enough artificial intelligence capabilities.
HONOR presented cool AI capabilities at the presentation. For example, if you were sent an address, you can immediately drag it with your finger to the side panel with a map icon, and a route will be instantly laid out. Super! But it only works with Google Maps, which are no longer relevant in Russia. Plus, the option does not work in Telegram. It works in mail and WhatsApp.
Plus, there are no features that Google or Galaxy S24 Ultra have, when built-in neural networks can help rewrite text (I love this option when I write in English, because the neural network corrects my mistakes and selects beautiful phrases) or generate an image.
By the way, about the pictures! My girlfriend and I took a photo against the backdrop of a beautiful gate. Everything is fine, except for a woman straddling the center of the gate. No complaints about the woman. We have a free country. The complaint is about HONOR. On my Samsung, I would have highlighted the woman with my finger and erased her. The HONOR Magic6 Pro simply does not have this option. Of course, you can download an app from Google. But good apps cost money. And I already paid HONOR money for a flagship (well, if you imagine that I am a buyer of a flagship from HONOR).
This is how strange women are deleted from photos by Samsung. The result is not ideal, some applications can do better, but they are paid.
Perhaps, over time, HONOR will solve this problem, as the smartphone will receive 4 versions of Android and will receive security patches for 5 years.
Source: mobile-review.com
