Honor’s Magic 3 is its first post-Huawei flagship

Honor has announced its first flagship smartphones since being sold off by former parent company Huawei: the Magic 3 series. The lineup consists of three phones, the Magic 3, Magic 3 Pro, and Magic 3 Pro Plus. They’re coming first to mainland China, but Honor says they’re getting a global release at a later date.

When they launch globally, the phones will come with Google’s apps and services, which Honor wasn’t previously able to include while a subsidiary of Huawei due to US sanctions. It should make the Magic 3 series much more competitive outside of China compared to Honor’s recent Huawei-era phones, which had to rely on Huawei’s own services and AppGallery to download software. This setup came with significant drawbacks.

Image: Honor

The Magic 3 Pro and Pro Plus are powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 Plus processor, while the standard Magic 3 has a Snapdragon 888 processor. Around front they have a 6.76-inch 1344p OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and an aggressive curve around the sides of the device.

Rear cameras vary significantly between the three phones. On the standard Magic 3, there are three cameras: a 50-megapixel 1/1.56-inch main camera, a 13-megapixel 1/1.31-inch ultrawide, and a 64-megapixel monochrome camera. The Magic 3 Pro adds a 64-megapixel telephoto camera with a 1/2-inch sensor, 3.5x optical zoom, and OIS. Finally, the Pro Plus increases the size of the main 50-megapixel sensor to 1/1.28-inches, and the resolution of the ultrawide sensor to 64 megapixels.

The Magic 3 Series has a battery capacity of 4,600mAh and supports wired fast-charging up to 66W. On the Pro and Pro Plus, there’s wireless charging up to 50W with support for reverse wireless charging, as well as an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance (the regular Magic 3 has an IP54 rating).

The announcement of the Honor Magic 3 series follows the launch of the V40 in January and the Honor 50 in June. However, despite confirming that the Honor 50 will eventually receive a global release, complete with Google’s apps and services, an exact release date is yet to be confirmed.

The Honor Magic 3 with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage will sell for €899 (about $1,055), while the Magic 3 Pro with the same configuration of RAM and storage will cost €1,099 (about $1,290). The Honor Magic 3 Pro Plus, which comes with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, will cost €1,499 (about $1,760). The exact date of the phones’ global release is yet to be announced.