The Honor Magic 7 Pro has made its debut in China, and it's poised to pack a punch, especially in the camera zoom department. Not only does it match the Vivo X200 Pro with its 200MP telephoto camera, it’s also set to feature the world’s first cloud-based AI zoom on a smartphone.
The Magic 7 Pro is also the first Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite phone we’ve tested, it overhauls the traditional Honor Magic curved display design for a new, Xiaomi 14-style quad-curved look, and it’s filled to the brim with AI features, some of which look set to be China-only, but others likely to make their way to the West. Arguably the most impressive upgrade is the silicon-carbon battery, which ups the capacity by almost 20 percent despite the phone’s slim profile.
So how does the Honor Magic 7 Pro stack up to the recently announced Oppo Find X8 Pro and Vivo X200 Pro, and where does this leave the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, expected to launch in January?
Stripped back style
The Magic 7 Pro is a simpler-looking phone than its predecessor, though it’s also more impressive in a few ways.
Honor has ditched the curved screen of the Magic 6 Pro, which rounds off on the left and right, swapping it out for quad-curved glass on the front and back. This removes the distortion on either side where curved screens bend while retaining a smooth hand feel. This design choice aligns with the trend we've seen in flagships like the OPPO Find X8 Pro, Vivo X200 Pro and Xiaomi 14 Ultra.
The phone feels reassuringly robust and well-built. At 223g and 8.8mm thick, it's neither the slimmest nor the lightest phone on the market, but it feels comfortable and well-balanced in hand.
The back of the phone looks like it has four cameras, but there are, in fact, three, and the circular camera bump is comparatively unassuming when set against the Magic 6 Pro. In China, the phone is available in Black, Blue, Gray and White. While the Chinese phone ships with a case and a power brick, it’s likely the European Magic 7 Pro won’t, with brands like Honor and OPPO following Apple and Samsung’s lead in reducing packaging size and contents.
Despite the possibility of no case in the box, the Magic 7 Pro looks set to be tough with IP68/IP69 water and dust resistance, a pre-fitted screen protector, and Military Standard durability.
Screen and speakers
The Honor Magic 7 Pro boasts a big 6.8-inch LTPO OLED display with a crisp 1280 x 2800 resolution, resulting in a pixel density of around 450ppi. The display's brightness is standout when playing back HDR content, reaching a typical brightness of 1600 nits and an astounding peak brightness of 5000 nits for HDR videos and photos.
If you’re thinking about importing the Chinese model, it's important to note that it will miss out on support for Western HDR standards, such as Netflix HDR, as well as handy features, such as Android Auto and Wear OS support. So if those are important to you, then we'd suggest waiting for the European or global version.
Honor has upped its audio game with the Magic 7 Pro, boosting depth, clarity, and richness of sound and rivalling the speakers in the iPhone 16 Pro Max, a gold standard for smartphones.
The speaker placement, however, might not be a hit for gamers. Positioned on opposite sides of the phone, one speaker is prone to being covered when the phone is held horizontally. This can disrupt the stereo effect, particularly during gaming or movie watching.
Eye care also gets an upgrade for the Magic 7 Pro, with a new feature that can encourage blinking and save you from dry eyes, along with Honor’s existing features, including high-frequency PWM dimming to help with eye strain and the AI Defocus tech introduced on the Honor Magic V3.
Honor Magic 7 Pro cameras
The triple-camera setup around the back of the Honor Magic 7 Pro brings back the same primary and ultra-wide cameras featured on the Magic 6 Pro, but upgrades the telephoto camera with a further-reaching zoom and a higher-resolution sensor:
The Magic 7 Pro also introduces AI Cloud Zoom, a world-first feature that takes advantage of cloud AI to enhance image detail at zoom levels beyond 30x. When this feature is activated, the image is stripped of identifiable information and then uploaded to Google servers, where it is intelligently upscaled to improve sharpness and detail.
While this feature holds immense potential, it wasn't available for testing during the initial hands-on period, as it's slated for a later release in China. And it remains to be seen whether this feature will be available in the global version of the phone.
For zoom levels between 12x and 30x, the Magic 7 Pro relies on on-device AI processing to optimize image quality, and beyond 30x, AI zoom kicks in.
So while we’ve seen AI zoom before across OPPO and Samsung smartphones, it’s always been on-device. We’re excited to see if Honor’s implementation actually takes this tech to the next level, and curious as to whether cloud AI zoom, a potential privacy concern, will make it to Western devices.
While it's too early for a camera review of the Magic 7 Pro, we have included a handful of photo samples captured in our 24 hours with the phone above.
2025-grade power and battery
The Honor Magic 7 Pro is powered by Qualcomm's latest flagship chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, built on a 3nm process. This powerful processor, coupled with either 12GB or 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage, should deliver blazing-fast gaming.
In our day with the phone, it warmed up more than the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 powered Oppo Find X8 Pro and Vivo X200 Pro, but when processing non-gaming day-to-day tasks, it kept its cool.
Complementing the powerful processor is a massive 5850mAh silicon-carbon battery. This innovative battery technology allows for a higher energy density than past lithium-ion batteries, so despite its extra capacity over the 5000mAh Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and the 4685mAh iPhone 16 Pro Max, it isn’t significantly thicker.
In real-world use, the battery life is exceptional. Streaming an hour of YouTube content at 2160p resolution and 60fps only depleted the battery by three percent, a promising stat.
The Magic 7 Pro also charges quickly, supporting 100W wired charging and 80W wireless charging. These rapid charging capabilities put Apple, Google and Samsung charging speeds to shame, ensuring minimal downtime, even if you manage to drain the massive battery.
Running on Android 15 with Honor's MagicOS 9 overlay, the software experience on the Honor Magic 7 Pro is both intuitive and customizable, and the phone’s loaded with AI software features. This is likely where the Chinese version we tested and the upcoming global Magic 7 Pro look set to differ the most, so check back in the coming months for the full review when we dive into the AI interface details.
Honor Magic 7 Pro early verdict
There’s a lot to like about the Honor Magic 7 Pro on first impression, with the most notable highlights being the 200MP telephoto camera and the phone’s huge battery capacity. The primary camera and ultra-wide are also competitive, albeit without being class-leading, and the screen’s eye care credentials and Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset will also be attractive for power users.
Most intriguing for photographers is the cloud AI zoom, a feature that hasn’t even dropped in China yet. If this ends up making its way to the Western Magic 7 Pro, it could mark the beginning of a shift for camera phones at large, leveraging super-computing power to clean up and, potentially, totally reconstruct zoomed-in shots.
We hope to get our hands on the European Honor Magic 7 Pro in January or February for a full review, so check back for that, and if you just can’t wait for your next upgrade, these are the best camera phones of 2024 .
