Honor Magic 6 Pro Review: If only it remembered it’s running Android

Name: Honor Magic 6 Pro
Item: Honor Magic 6 Pro
Rating: 4

Ben Schoon | Apr 12 2024 - 11:30 am PT

“The best phone.” It’s a tough crown to achieve, because there’s a lot to balance in terms of hardware, software, and the overall experience. Despite a hefty Android skin, though, I think the Honor Magic 6 Pro gets really close to this title, or at least it would, if its best features remembered how Android actually works.

I haven’t used an Honor smartphone in ages. In fact, the last one I really remember spending time with was the Honor 5X, the brand’s first device released in the United States, which debuted at CES 2016 right before I started working for 9to5Google. That device still earns the crown for the weirdest smartphone launch event I’ve ever attended, as documented by 9to5 alum Stephen Hall at the time.

So when I got my hands on the Honor Magic 6 Pro this year, I was really curious how I’d feel using it.

In short, I’m pretty darn pleased.

After a few weeks with this device, I truly do believe it would be, arguably, the best Android phone. It has excellent battery life, fast charging, a gorgeous display, a stunning camera, good biometric unlock options, and so much more.

Starting with the hardware, the aluminum and glass slab is a sturdy, if typical smartphone design in 2024. There’s definitely some identity to Honor’s design, especially in the camera, but nothing about it is particularly eye-grabbing, at least in the black color I’ve been using. But under the hood, there’s some really good stuff. That includes the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which keeps the heavy “MagicOS” skin chugging along at full speed – more on the software later. There’s also a huge 5,600 mAh battery using Honor’s silicon-carbon tech. And, as that number would imply, battery life is fantastic. This is easily a two-day phone for me.

There’s also the display. The 6.8-inch display is just over 1080p at 2800×1280, but it’s sharp and looks great with its 1,600 nits of general brightness (5,000 peak in HDR)n and 120Hz refresh rate. Topping the display is curved glass – meh – which has Honor’s “NanoCrystal Shield” for improved drop resistance. That doesn’t do much to improve the scratch resistance, though, as this phone picked up a heck of a lot of damage while in the hands of my colleague Max Weinbach, as is his trademark.

One notable thing about the display, though, is that it has a bigger cutout than most.

Up at the top of the panel, there’s a cutout for two cameras and an additional sensor. It’s smaller than what you’d see on an iPhone, but contains all of the hardware needed for secure face unlock that works at night with an IR projection. It works wonderfully fast, and I really enjoyed having a combination of fully secure face and under-display fingerprint unlock. This is easily the best biometric setup on Android today, even if Google Pixel does the software side of this experience better. Like Samsung and OnePlus, these two biometrics fight each other a bit in the software.

Then, there’s also the camera setup.

Honor Magic 6 Pro has a 50MP primary camera backed up by a secondary 50MP sensor for ultrawide. The third sensor is what really caught my eye, though, at a whopping 180MP with 2.5x optical zoom. The three combine for super sharp pictures that look amazing. This is one of the best cameras I’ve tested in quite some time.

The only thing that irks me about the camera experience is the zoom. Below 5x, it’s stunning. Shots are crisp and it’s easy to shoot them. But to go anywhere beyond 5x, you have to toggle on “AI” in the camera, a setting that must be enabled each time you open it. This slows down taking a shot, though it also does prevent Honor’s hit-or-miss AI from potentially ruining a shot. Anything beyond 10x is usually solid, but as you get deeper, things can get a little wild. Honor also pushes you through zoom very quickly, which isn’t a pleasant experience.

Oh, and also Honor doesn’t support the double-tap of the power button to open the camera, instead using a double-tap of the volume button exclusively when the screen is turned off. This is common among Chinese smartphone brands, but it remains outright stupid.

Ultimately, the only thing that takes the Honor Magic 6 Pro down a notch for me is the software, and that’s not because the software is bad.

Honestly, MagicOS has been surprisingly pleasant overall, with one of the only core issues for me being the aggressive background app management so common to Android phones from China. Whille there’s a whole conversion to be had over Honor’s choices to mimic iOS, I think it’s done well, with most elements being different enough to where they bridge the gap of Android and iOS tastefully, like the Quick Settings which move onto their own half of the pull-down shade. Of course, there are also some things, like Honor’s ripoff of iOS’ StandBy feature, which are more clearly just copying for the sake of copying.

The ultimate issue with the software isn’t around the design, though, it’s that all of Honor’s good ideas are based on niche interactions.

Magic Portal is probably the best example of this. The idea here is to drag and drop text and images from apps to the side of the screen, only for AI to take overand give you a list of apps that the content best interacts with. It might be the most clever idea I’ve seen in years, but in practice, it’s utterly useless. That’s because drag and drop is barely used on Android. In the vast majority of messaging apps, where this feature would be the most useful, there’s no way to drag and drop text, as a long-press usually reveals an additional menu. Again, I love the idea here, but the implementation is worthless, and I think it just comes down to “MagicOS” forgetting how Android, the underlying platform, actually works.

This demo of Magic Portal is one of the only places you can actually use it

A similar argument could be made for a feature attached to the “back” gesture. If you hold it, a menu pops out with apps. This is handy from the perspective of having the shortcuts in reach at all times, but it also goes contrary to the thinking behind the back gesture, which Google typically wants left alone to prevent confusion with users.

But, when I just use it as a normal Android phone, I generally forget all of that. Unlike many skins, MagicOS doesn’t really feel in the way. Its features sort of hide in the background. Ready if you want them, but out of sight when you don’t. There are visual things I’m not a fan of, like the split Quick Settings and also an out-of-place 3D animation when you swipe away recent apps, but the long and short of it is that, like OnePlus and OxygenOS, the experience here is beyond serviceable.

Sadly, Honor Magic 6 Pro isn’t sold in the US market. I do think, with software changes, it’d be a compelling device here. But if you live in the EU, UK, or other international countries, there’s a good chance it’s available and, if so, it’s at least worth considering.

Honor Magic 6 Pro is available now in the UK starting at £1,099, and in other countries throughout Europe and Asia.