If you closely follow the release of new Android phones, you may think the Honor Magic8 Pro has been out for a while.
You’re not wrong, and it’s all to do with where the phone has launched, with our hands-on coming with the phone’s global announcement instead of the earlier announcement for China.
The Magic8 Pro is one of those phones which promises a lot, but to find the good stuff, you often have to wade through the bad. Here’s what it has been like.
Holding the Magic8 Pro
Both good and bad
The Honor Magic8 Pro isn’t a slim and lightweight phone. It’s 8.4mm thick and 219 grams, with a lot of the weight gathering at the top of the phone and around the huge camera module.
I love the curve at the edge of the screen, which comfortably leads into the warm aluminum frame, but am less taken by the rear panel. Honor doesn’t specify the material, but it looks and feels like plastic.
Plastic, or a material that feels like plastic, on a phone we expect to cost more than £1,000 doesn’t sit right with me. The material doesn’t have a high quality sheen, almost no grip, and a hollow sound when you run your fingers over it.
The phone is durable with an IP68, IP69, and IP69K dust and water resistance rating, but uses Honor’s own NanoCrystal Shield rather than a Corning Gorilla Glass over the screen.
Honor has jumped aboard the bandwagon by putting a button on the side of the phone to control AI features, and it also doubles as a camera control. It’s a direct copy of the button on the side of the Apple iPhone 17 Pro, right down to the menu to customize its action. Except the button isn’t as functional as the iPhone’s, and is also less responsive.
The other controversial design feature is the pill-shaped cutout at the top of the screen. While it’s not all that pretty, it does serve a purpose by containing a true, secure face unlock system. It’s very fast, and I’ve rarely had to use the fingerprint sensor, which is also sensibly set an inch above the bottom of the phone.
Software can frustrate
But some good features hide inside
My start to life with the Magic8 Pro wasn’t great. Upon setting it up, I installed apps and worked on getting the phone looking, sounding, and operating how I wanted while a software update downloaded in the background.
Unfortunately, the software update applied with a factory reset, forcing me to go through the entire setup process again. Since then, I’ve had repeated issues with MagicOS 10 adding in ghost home screens for no reason, and a refusal to silence different system sounds.
Honor installs a host of apps, including many of its own. Just like the Magic V5 folding phone, you have to spend a long time setting the software up, just don’t expect everything to be logical during the process. Trying to set the wallpaper is ridiculously complicated, for example.
Once you’re there, the notifications work well with plenty of interaction available. There’s a lot of customization, from the eye comfort settings to personalizing the screen, resolution, and lock screen. It’s worth playing around with the home screen folder sizes and widgets too, as there’s a great deal of additional features not found elsewhere.
Camera and performance
A glimmer of hope
The Honor Magic8 Pro has a 50-megapixel main camera, a 200MP telephoto camera, and a 50MP wide-angle camera. The telephoto gives a 3.7x optical zoom, and an AI enhanced 10x zoom.
The conditions where I live have not been very photography-friendly since starting out with the Magic8 Pro, but the shots I have taken look good, especially at 3.7x zoom. Sharp and detailed, with great color and white balance, the photos are very good. Even 10x shots are sharp and defined.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 powers the Magic8 Pro, and I was interested to see how it handled tough benchmark tests, considering overheating has been an issue on some other phones.
The good news is, the Magic8 Pro doesn’t overheat during the 20-minute 3DMark Solar Bay Stress Test. Unfortunately, this may only be because it throttled performance back midway through.
There is a Game Manager tool which pops up when you start a game app, with a setting to boost performance, which should mean the phone doesn’t quickly throttle performance when you need it most.
How much will the Honor Magic8 Pro cost?
Honor doesn’t sell its phones in the US, but the Magic8 Pro is available globally, with the UK being the most recent announcement. At the time of writing, the price has yet to be confirmed, and we will update here with details when they’re announced.
Worth buying?
So many alternatives
The Honor Magic8 Pro arrives in Europe just before the Samsung Galaxy S26 series, which will be its main rival when it’s released. The phone also challenges the Google Pixel 10 Pro, the OnePlus 15, and other phones including the Xiaomi 17 Pro and Apple iPhone 17 Pro.
This isn’t our full review, and I haven’t used it enough to assess battery life, overall performance, or to really understand the software. My initial time with the phone has been acceptable, but the typical Honor frustrations I also experienced on the Magic V5 remain.
It’s one to watch, but at this stage I wouldn’t choose it over the Pixel 10 Pro or the Apple iPhone 17 Pro. However, the OnePlus 15 should be looking with genuine concern in the Magic8 Pro’s direction, as its camera simply can’t keep up. If you’re looking at the latest OnePlus phone, keep the Magic8 Pro in your mind too.
