Honor Magic 3 series: Google apps are back, along with an IMAX-enhanced camera

Honor has launched a new smartphone which supports Google Mobile Services, and there’s plenty more to get excited about too.

Honor is back. The cult smartphone brand that was previously a subsidiary of Huawei has since gained its independence, and with it the right to have Google Mobile Services on its devices. The first smartphone that the brand will release since its new start will be the Honor Magic 3, and from a look at the specs sheet it sure is making up for lost time.

#HONORMagic3 and the #HONORMagic3Pro don an 89° Super Curved Display, Quad-Camera Computational system equipped with the powerful @Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 Plus Chipset and the first ever IMAX® Enhanced smartphone. Retweet if you can’t wait! #BeyondEpic pic.twitter.com/2Pe7n8ia8F

— HONOR (@Honorglobal) August 12, 2021

The camera, mysteriously dubbed ‘the Eye of Muse’, is surely going to attract a lot of interest. It’s a multi-lens menagerie that is claimed to be ‘IMAX-enhanced’, and it is composed of a 50-megapixel wide camera, a 13-megapixel ultra wide lens, and a 64-megapixel monochrome lens. The Pro edition additionally offers a 64-megapixel telephoto lens that boasts 3.5x optical zoom and 100x digital zoom.

The screen is also eye-catching, with an 89-degree curve at the edges and ultra thin bezels to really maximise its presence, while the 10-bit display boasts incredible colour accuracy and is enhanced by HDR10+.

On the inside you’ll find a flagship-worthy Snapdragon 888+ 5G chipset which is enhanced by OS Turbo X (in order to improve fluency, anti-aging, and multi-tasking) and GPU Turbo X, which is designed to boost gaming performance. The battery has a capacity of 4600mAh, and supports blistering charging speeds of 66W wired and 50W wireless. 

However, if you’re hoping that Honor is here to regain its previous reputation for brilliance on a low-budget, you might have to dig a little deeper in your pockets than expected. The standard Honor Magic 3 (with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage) will cost €899 (~£765), while the Pro version is priced at €1,099 (~£935). The Pro Plus edition, in a 12GB RAM and 512GB storage configuration, will cost €1,499 (~£1,275).

The series will first become available in mainland China, so its launch date for the UK and Europe will be revealed at a later date.