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Honor’s Magic phone looks infinitely better than any of its devices released in the US

Honor’s Magic phone looks infinitely better than any of its devices released in the US

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We covered the Honor Magic phone when it launched in China last month, and pointed out its sharp look and crazy AI features. The Magic can be set up so that it only displays notifications when your face is in front of it, for instance, and it can pop up information when it detects that you’re chatting about something that could use additional context, like movie times. Is this creepy? Maybe a little bit. Could it be useful? I’m sure.

I got a chance to do a mini hands-on with the Magic at CES this week. Unfortunately, none of its AI capabilities worked because the phone couldn’t connect to a US network, but I did go through the steps to set up facial identification for notifications. The setup process, which we tried to capture in my photos, was incredibly simple. The phone took a couple photos of my face, one with my glasses and one without, and processed them. Presumably from then on, the phone would only display notifications for me. Easy.

1/4

Ashley Carman

The cameras also worked well. I especially appreciated the wide aperture mode, which created a nice bokeh effect, as well as the perfect selfie mode, which took my photo from multiple angles to create my best look. These camera modes are already available on other Honor devices, including the new Honor 6X, which the company announced this week, but it doesn’t hurt to have them on the Magic, too.

Because I can’t speak for the software, I can only say that the Magic did actually look lovely in person, and I’d love to see similar designs from Honor in the future, particularly stateside. The curved display, the rose gold finish on the bottom, and the glass back all look fantastic, even if they do collect fingerprints easily.