Surprise: HONOR is releasing its newest flagship phone, the HONOR Magic5 Pro, in the Philippines. We first saw a glimpse of this new device at the unveiling of the HONOR’s first-ever Experience Store in Fairview, Quezon City in April, and here are our thoughts about the new device.
The device is very reminiscent of its predecessor’s design with dual curved edges, a huge camera bump at the back, and a really polished look and feel. The back part features this Emerald Green colorway in a matte finish. It looks and feels great, akin to the previously released HONOR X-series devices we saw appear one by one this year.
The Eye of Muse, as HONOR calls its multi-rear camera setup, now features three lenses with LED flash in a symmetrical layout. It’s still protruding from the back and gives a bit of heft when you use the phone. It still has that 100x digital zoom you can use to capture shots from very far away and is still a device great to use even at night. Here are some sample initial shots:
Let’s look at the aluminum sides with a shiny chrome finish. The right side houses the volume keys and the power/lock button.
The bottom part, on the other hand, has the SIM card slot, the USB-C port, the microphone, and half of the stereo loudspeaker setup.
At the top is the other half of the loudspeaker grille which also acts as the call speaker, a noise-canceling microphone, and a sensor. Antenna bands that aid to improve the phone’s mobile signal reception can be seen on all sides.
The front features a 6.81-inch curved LTPO OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate, 1 billion colors, and up to 1800 nits of peak brightness. It also features the world’s first 2160Hz PWM Dimming for better screen readability, even during nighttime.
The front display features a pill-shaped cutout that houses a 12-megapixel front camera for selfies, and a TOF sensor for better depth for portrait shots.
Other internals include a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, 12GB of RAM, and 512GB of internal storage. Colors coming to the Philippines, as we have seen during the preview set up on the same day, are the matte Emerald Green and the glossy Midnight black colorways.
As with other HONOR devices launched since HONOR’s relaunch as an independent brand, the Magic5 Pro features Google Mobile services right out of the box, on top of the brand’s own HONOR App Market. It features the brand’s latest MagicUI 7.0 over Android 13, with promises of 5 years of security updates.
Rounding off its key specification is a 5100mAh nonremovable battery that can be fast-charged with HONOR’s SuperCharge tech, offering 66W wired and 50W wireless charging. You can also use it for reverse-wired charging at 5W.
The HONOR Magic5 Pro is slated to launch in June. HONOR Philippines gave us a chance to test the unit for a week and we’re excited to show you what we liked about the phone in our full review, so stay tuned.
