In February 2017, I stumbled across the original Honor Magic at Mobile World Congress. I was really taken with the thing. It felt like a glossy pebble – the design was just stunning. Like nothing else on the market. Trouble is, it wasn’t destined for Europe, so unless you did some importing you wouldn’t find it in many pockets over here.
Now, at IFA 2018, the successor has been launched. It’s been a bit of a tease really, and it feels like it’s a few months away yet, but the Magic 2 has a full-screen display and a sliding mechanism to reveal the front-facing camera and other sensors. Honor call this “Magic Slide” and they’ve created it so that you get a proper full view display without a notch. Hmm… I’ve seen that somewhere before but I can’t remember as I type. Let me know in the comments if you remember! 🙂
Edit – Ah yes, it was the Oppo Find X !
George Zhao, President of Honor, was keen to again mention the AI capabilities to us…
The launch of Honor Magic two years ago introduced the concept of the AI smartphone to consumers. The first-generation Honor Magic was an era-defining smartphone that transformed the industry. In addition to AI-features that make the phone truly smart, Honor Magic’s ground-breaking all-curved panel design and powerful 40W charging support have reshaped smartphone design and become a benchmark for all smartphones. The developments of these futuristic flagship devices are closely followed by the smartphone and AI industry, and now the Honor Magic 2 has arrived.
The Honor Magic 2 is the first Honor smartphone powered by the Kirin 980 processor. The Kirin CPU’s are made by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon, and this will set a world record due to the 7-nanometer production. Chips are becoming more powerful and reduce power consumption. The 980 has four Cortex-A76 cores plus four smaller Cortex-A55 cores operating at up to 2.8 GHz.
What else do we know about the Magic 2? Well, not a great deal as yet. I’m personally hammering the PR team to try and get some prices, availability and specs, so I’ll let you know shortly. I’m also on the hunt for some closer pictures!