Design
The honor magic 5 Pro is well do I even have to point out that it’s bloody enormous like pretty much every other phone right now the curves at the edge of the display are a bit more subtle a bit more gentle compared with last year’s flagship phone similar to what Samsung did with the Galaxy s23 Ultra although I’ve got to say it definitely still had some responsiveness issue when I was reclined on a sofa using the phone just clutching it that little bit more tightly and also I really struggled whenever I swiped from the bottom of the screen to try and minimize an app or bring up that recent apps menu quite often this does take two or three attempts which is a minor pin in the arsal region but on a more positive slightly less whiny note that finish is rather fetching especially in this lovely metal green color the eye of muse camera does stick out a fair distance although this is mostly must by honors smooth Contours which incidentally were apparently inspired by that Spanish genius Gowdy which just to my mind sounds like an excuse for the design team to bugger off to Barcelona for a week of research fair play and when this phone is sat on a table it doesn’t wobble and it’s also inclined towards you thanks to that camera bump so I’m all good and after a week of pretty rough handling it’s still in perfect Nick as well not single scratch or scuff on that ass end and you’ve got a pre-installed screen protector and like all good Flagship smartphones the honor magic 5 Pro is ip68 water and dust resistant.
Magic OS & features
The software slapped on here is the magic OS 7 one launcher based on Android 13 and that comes with the added reassurance of three years of Android OS updates and five years of security updates as well which is better than more basic budget-friendly honor smartphones and On a par with most Android Flagship Rivals as for magic OS well it’s your typical Chinese launcher with its fair share of quirky Shenanigans shall we say brace yourself for some lower league morning because it is minor complaints Roundup time so first up I have on occasion had an app just completely freeze up on me for bugger or Reason usually it’s just a case of swiping it we’re starting again but occasionally I have had to reboot the phone fully in order to get it back in full working order also not being able to swipe down the notifications bar from anywhere on your desktops is bloody annoying and it also risks serious thumb strain also notifications don’t always pop up in a super timely manner sometimes apps are just kind of snoozing a bit in the background when they shouldn’t be so I’ll open up the email app for instance and all of a sudden I’ll have half of it doesn’t messages fly into my inbox and also the yo-yo assistant that slaps on this thing is about as helpful as an automatic crotch kicking machine if you want anything beyond basic weather updates then just don’t even bother and frankly if you live in blighty then at the moment you definitely do not want weather updates but thankfully the indisplay fingerprint sensor works just fine and the honor magic 5 Pro also serves up a bit of 3D face scan in action like those iPhones hence the whopping grit selfie cam orifice which includes a depth sensor.
Display & audio
This also does a bang-up job it recognized me even when I was rocking Shades and even in quite dim light and thankfully this only blocks a small portion of the 6.8 inch AMOLED screen which stretches almost the entire front end of the honor magic 5 Pro and this display I can happily see is right up there with the very best smartphone Flagship panels right now it’s powerfully bright it’s punchier as heck and it’s got the latest ldp or Tech to scale the refresh rate from one Hertz to 120 hertz an honor is also chucked in features like motion blur cancellation as well as SDR to HDR upscaling but it is on the hdr10 plus compliance however there’s no Dolby Vision action just like with Samsung’s blowers unlike most other flagships you’ve got a whole bunch of tools chucked on here to reduce eye fatigue as well like some Dynamic dimming all kinds of smarty pants stuff and yeah no real surprises on the audio front those stereo speakers are powerful enough to make the honor magic 5 Pro herds and even rather noisy circumstances the subtle headphone jack on here as usual but I had absolutely no issues with Bluetooth streaming to headphones or my car stereo or whatever you’ve even got dtsx Ultra support.
Performance & gaming
Good news for gamers with a cracking set of supported headphones and it’s not exactly a massive shock to discover that qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset is stashed inside of the honor magic 5 Pro as this is the chosen platform for most 2023 Flagship phones so yeah you can expect creamy smooth performance just like other Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 smartphones that I’ve reviewed recently no worries if you want to get gaming on gentian impact another memory goblin games they all run perfectly here even if you’re dodging work and playing for a good couple of hours straight there’s no Troublesome heat buildup to slow things down and send your pinkies plus that magical s adds in a decent game and toolbar with the choice of two performance mods and the usual notification blocking features and other useful stuff.
Battery life
Stuffed inside of this enormous gorgeous slab is a 5100 milliamp hour capacity battery so it’s not a massive shocker that battery life is certainly a highlight of the magic 5 Pro so if you’re a moderate user this phone can basically survive a couple of days in between charges and even with heavy use I’m talking six to seven hours of screen on time of day with lots of camera player all of that good stuff I still ended most deers with at least 33 left in the tank and if you do need to give it a quick boost where you’ve got 66 watt wide charging support here so that’s better than your apples your Samsung’s your Googles and you’ve also got wireless charging support on top.
Cameras
One of the biggest features of the magic 5 Pro both metaphorically and literally is that flipping massive camera which dominates the ass end all of honors marketing Shenanigans are pretty much entirely focused on that eye of muse camera Tech to the point where they’ve even partnered up with the Guinness Book of World Records where they showed off an impressively sharp photo of a sporty man doing jumpy stuff but anyway what you have here is a 50 meg primary sensor the Sony imx878 which is a mine bigger than Samsung’s s23 Ultra sensor although not quite as big as the xiaomi 13 Pros I’ve had no issues at all using the camera that shutter speed is crazy quick and the fun does a blinding job with live and breathing subjects who refuse to keep still for more than three milliseconds I was particularly impressed with the portrait mode which captures faces and objects cleanly keeping them nice and crispy while smudging out the background with some sexy bulky style blur and textures and tones give a natural vibe to your picks and this is true no matter what you’re shooting be it food feel lines huge off buildings whatever you fancy and the honor magic 5 Pro can handle strong contrast dodgy lighten and other testing conditions just as well as other popular Flagship blowers in more ambient environments those detail levels stay strong and colors are still accurately captured and then for low light snaps that sizeable sensor is supported with some tasty Optical image stabilization so you’ll get bright crisp snaps to rival the s23 ultra and as well as the 878 the magic 5 Pro also sets up two additional lenses a 50 meg Ultra wide angle shooter and a 50 meg telephoto option that ultrawide is one of the better efforts that I’ve tested lately as not only do you get shop finely detailed picks but those tons don’t take much of a hit while strong and crappy lighting is again handled well and if you’d rather get closer to the action instead the telephoto Snapper serves up a 3.5 times optical zoom that Rivals Samsung’s s23 Ultra and the pixel 7 Pro this once again maxes out at 100 times total Zoom just like zombies space Zoom Shenanigans although yeah once you zoom in too much things do get a wee bit abstract it is still mightily impressive however with image stabilization to help prevent blurry snaps and as always you’ve got plenty of other camera modes to Peddle about with as well the likes of a pro mode your obligatory macro stuff as for video that can be captured at up to 4K resolution there’s no 8K option here unlike many other flagships these days but Ultra HD does a great job for your whole movies most of the time at least those visuals can be a little bit poppy occasionally dipping a tour into oversaturated in quite bright conditions and in softer light I did find that the primary lens occasionally struggled to figure out what it was supposed to be focusing on it’s not quite a Samsung or an apple beta then but it’s still respectable with strong audio capture oh and if you fancy yourself as a bit of a Spielberg there is a movie mode with various filters to play around with just to change up the mood a bit and finally up front the magic 5 Pro serves up a 12mm megapixel selfie shooter with a company in-depth sensor and as long as you stay reasonably still you will get a good looking shot nine times out of ten it’s not too put out by strong backlighting while the portrait mode once again does a cracking job and that in a nutshell my lovelies is my full final Frank review of the honor magic 5 Pro which is hitting the UK imminently and I gotta say it as far as the hardware goes it’s right up there with the very best flagships right now but on the software side of things is where it starts to fall apart a little bit not quite as stable and not quite as premium as a lot of the other options.
That said unless you’re going full-on stock Android with the likes the pixel phones that does tend to be a little bit of Chunk involved with pretty much every launcher out there at least you’ve got the guaranteed years and years of os un security updates which is highly commendable and to be fair expected these days.