Honor Magic8 Pro Review

Rounding off the year is the Honor Magic8 Pro (AED 3999 or AED 4299 for the 16GB model), the latest flagship entry from Honor and likely the last major non-foldable release before we wrap up 2025.

It slots itself neatly among the big names with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, a gorgeous 6.71” AMOLED display, one of the strongest camera systems we’ve seen this cycle, a seriously large battery, and all the premium features you’d expect from a top-tier slab — including an “AI Button” that feels very familiar.

Design, Display, and Features

 Am I the only one who finds the Magic8 Pro’s design a bit…bland?

Or, maybe I am just used to the eccentric designs of the many phones I have reviewed this year, some that feature transparent backs with camera modules that look like a mutated spider, or eye searingly bold colors with a dual-tone cutout for the vapor chamber for some reason.

So, yeah, the Honor Magic8 Pro does look a bit basic in comparison. Honor has gone for a classic slab look -  simple, clean, and admittedly boringly functional. It’s not changed much from the Magic7 Pro, so I understand that they want to keep it in the “family”. It’s just that it doesn’t have a ‘flagship look’ to its design, like say the Magic V5 did, which certainly looked and felt like the price it commanded.

It’s not a bad design by any means, but it is heavy - top heavy. At 219g, although not the lightest around, it’s not that much heavier than my daily driver, the iPhone 17 Pro, but I felt uncomfortable using the phone throughout. There are two factors to this - the top heaviness almost certainly comes from the bulging camera module at the back that makes it a little ungainly in the hands.

The second is the curved screen. I am not a fan of such displays, and you can’t convince me otherwise, but my mind immediately makes me hold the device differently, wary of any ghost touches (though the phone does a good job of rejecting them most of the time).

This makes the phone awkward to hold - the weight sloping and slanting on my palm, while I struggle to convince myself that the curved screen won’t catch any unwanted touches. What helps is putting on the included plastic case, which alleviates all of the problems. The weight distribution becomes more even, and the screen's curvature disappears immediately. It feels so much nicer to hold and use the phone like that.

Elsewhere, the one new addition to the phone is the Honor AI Button, which is almost directly inspired by the camera button Apple introduced with the iPhone 16 series. It looks, is sized and placed exactly like that, but in typical Honor fashion, they made it much more useful than Apple would ever be willing to admit that it could be. 

The AI Button can be configured to launch different functions on a single press, double press and a long press, but the quirk is that you can only launch different AI modes from Honor, such as the AI Memories, AI Phone Agent, AI Screen Suggestions, and Google Lens, along with the camera, of course. While I appreciate the flexibility, I do wish the button could be mapped to regular apps. I feel like it would have been far more useful as a multi-functional button instead of just launching various Honor AI apps.

Everything else remains the same - there are the power and volume buttons on the same side as the AI Button, while the left side is kept clean. At the bottom, you will find a speaker grill, a USB-C 3.2 port for charging, a SIM card tray, and on the top, you have an IR Blaster along with another speaker grill.

Speaking of speakers, it’s top-notch. One of the best I have heard from a smartphone, in fact. I guess the top speaker not being embedded inside the display helps a lot, but the audio quality is loud, clear, with a hint of bass and sharp details. It’s great for watching YouTube videos and maybe even some casual music listening, and if you turn on the Dolby surround sound, it does give some semblance of spatial awareness.

The speakers are paired with a 6.71” LTPO OLED panel, which is expectedly great. All the OLED panels in smartphones are great these days, so it’s not surprising. This one can do 1800nits in HBM and a staggering 6000nits peak, and also supports 120Hz refresh rate, Dolby Vision, HDR, and ultra-high frequency 4320Hz PWM dimming.

Camera

A few clicks with the camera shut me up about the whole bulging back and the device being top-heavy. Who cares when the cameras are this good? We can always count on Honor shipping some excellent cameras for their flagships, and the Magic8 Pro is just as wildly good as you expect.

The phone features a 50MP main camera with an f/1.6 23mm lens and OIS; a 200MP 3.7x telephoto with an f/2.6 85mm lens and OIS; and a 50MP ultra-wide snapper with an f/2.0 12mm, 122-degree lens. 

The primary camera is capable of taking great shots in the right hands (certainly not mine), capturing highlights, dynamic range, and colour contrasts extremely well while keeping most details intact, in direct sunlight and indoor conditions. The only complaint I have is that you can see some hints of over-sharpening when you zoom into shots for detail, which I am not particularly fond of.

The 200MP telephoto lens is arguably my favourite aspect of the cameras. It uses an actual 3.7x 85mm lens, and can take shots at up to 10x without any noticeable loss in quality. The range it provides, and the capacity to retain colours, highlights and details, make framing shots a whole lot easier, knowing that you will get great results regardless.

Beyond 10x, you will have to rely on AI generation to boost the image quality, the results of which will vary depending on the subject captured. It’s great for boosting known details like building material, greenery, etc, but any kind of fine detail like text will be lost in literal translation.

Night-time shots, including zoom shots, are equally great. It captures plenty of light and detail without introducing any sort of compression, noise or artifacting. 

Software and Performance

The Magic8 Pro runs on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, paired with UFS 4.1 storage and up to 16GB RAM. It’s a top-tier configuration, no doubt, and the phone feels incredibly fast as a result. Daily tasks fly, transitions are smooth, and the OS remains consistently responsive no matter how quickly you hop between apps. There is no stutter or lag anywhere, with animations rendering as buttery smooth as they can.

MagicOS 10 sits on top of Android 16 and feels very similar to MagicOS 9. It’s more refined in subtle ways, but keeps the layout familiar while sprinkling in some new tricks. One of the big visual additions is Zero-Gravity Transparency, which applies translucent layers across menus, notifications and the lock screen. Again, the design influence is clear - Apple’s Liquid Glass aesthetic - but the implementation here is more subtle, leaning towards mild transparency rather than a full visual overhaul.

AI Memories automatically stores screenshots and text saved from webpages and arranges them into a searchable memory list. It feels a bit undercooked - more like a passive scrapbook than a productivity tool, and kind of reminds me of a less feature-rich Nothing Essential Space. It doesn’t summarise, categorise or intelligently resurface anything; it just stores. I didn’t find much use for it, except for maybe saving webpages in text form for easy shareability. 

Magic Portal, however, continues to be one of the best features in Honor’s software. The ability to drag content - text, images, screenshots - from one app into another app’s floating target is incredibly fluid, and makes sharing content so easier and intuitive. 

The biggest drawback of MagicOS continues to be the bloat. Honour pre-installs a barrage of first-party apps, suggested categories, and even third-party apps like Facebook, LinkedIn, UAE Pass, etc. Most can be removed, but I certainly don’t want to spend 10-15 minutes hunting down unwanted apps after setting up a flagship device.

Battery Life

Battery life is one of the Magic8 Pro’s clear strengths. The global variant ships with a 7100mAh cell - significantly larger than most mainstream flagships, and it shows. In my usage, which included doom scrolling, messaging, web browsing and tons of YouTube videos, the phone comfortably lasted two full days on a single charge, and still had around 15% left in the tank at the end of the second day.

Charging is equally strong: 100W wired and 80W wireless. There’s also reverse wireless and 5W reverse wired charging. The only drawback is the lack of Qi2 support - no magnetic alignment for accessories, which is indeed a bummer. 

Should You Buy the Honor Magic8 Pro?

The Magic8 pro gets the fundamentals so incredibly right that it's hard not to recommend it. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 delivers performance that matches anything Samsung or Apple can throw at it, while that 200MP telephoto camera is one of the best I have used. And then there's the battery - possibly the highest capacity in its category and easily lasts two days, and gives both the Samsung S25 Ultra and the iPhone 17 Pro a run for its money.

Sure, the bland design won't turn heads like the other more decorated flagships, the curved display remains an unnecessary annoyance, and uninstalling bloatware on a flagship device shouldn't be part of the setup experience.

But none of those issues fundamentally undermines what makes this phone excellent, with MagicOS still remaining a top-tier Android experience and the new chipset maintaining its butter-smooth performance.

Honestly, Honor Magic8 Pro truly nails what a flagship phone should be and in many ways, is better than the iPhone 17 Pro and the likes.

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