The Honor Magic 2 is so tantalizing, it will have you spellbound

Honor’s presentation at IFA 2018 was primarily based around the high-powered gaming phone, the Honor Play. But right at the end of the event, Honor gave us a tantalizing glimpse at the sequel to the Honor Magic: The Honor Magic 2. We weren’t allowed to see much of the futuristic phone, which is in the late stages of development; but it still has us extremely excited.

Release

We’ll start with the bad news. The Honor Magic 2 will only be released in China, just like the original Honor Magic. The reason is likely the same as the first phone, that it’s costly and time consuming to further localize the Magic’s in-depth artificial intelligence features, and forge new partnerships with apps and services outside China.

The release date is unknown, but the original Magic was announced on December 16, 2016, which may give us a hint of when the sequel will arrive.

Design and display

The original Honor Magic was a design triumph at the time, and the Honor Magic 2 also promises to look spectacular. However, the space-age all-screen design with a pop-up camera means it closely resembles the Oppo Find X. It’s not clear which company got to this design first, although Oppo is seemingly first to get its version on sale.

Like the Find X, the Honor Magic 2 will also have at least a front-facing camera that pops up from the frame when required. In a brief onstage demonstration, the camera module appeared to be motorized. Despite seeing the phone in the hand of George Zhao, president of Honor, at IFA 2018, there’s still a lot we don’t know about the Honor Magic 2’s design. We don’t know how large the display is — though it was clearly a large phone — and we don’t know what sort of material the phone is made from. We don’t even know how many lenses the phone has on the back, or whether those lenses are built into the pop-up section that houses the front-facing camera. It seems likely that they will be, but at this point nothing has been confirmed.

Specs

We don’t know much about the Honor Magic 2’s specs, but the fanfare suggests it’ll be a powerful flagship phone. The one thing that we do know is that the Honor Magic 2 will come with Huawei’s new Kirin 980 chip. It has not been officially announced by Huawei at the time of writing, but is likely to be the successor to the exceptionally powerful A.I.-driven Kirin 970 that powers phones like the Honor Play, the Huawei P20 Pro, and the Honor View 10.

Battery

The Honor Magic 2 will come with a new 40W Magic Charge power system. The original Honor Magic came with Magic Power — a charging system that used new materials to charge a battery incredibly fast. Honor claimed the Honor Magic could charge up to 70 percent of its battery in 20 minutes. If Honor has found a way to speed that up, then the Honor Magic 2 could be a very special beast indeed.

Software

While Android is a safe bet, the rest of the Honor Magic 2’s software is less clear cut. Artificial intelligence will be a large feature, just like the first Magic phone. It wowed us at CES 2017 with its amazing range of A.I. powered skills, including smart facial recognition and recommendations based on your usage. Honor usually uses Huawei’s EMUI user interface on its phones, but because the Magic 2 is destined only for China, and is likely going to have a lot of AI features baked in, it may run a unique version made especially for the phone.

But it seems that there may be more to the Magic 2’s A.I. than we’ve seen so far. At the end of the Magic 2’s video presentation, a voice was heard saying “hello Yoyo”. The Magic 2 seemingly replied “I’m here, what’s up?” in a conversational and startlingly lifelike voice. While it’s likely the interaction wasn’t entirely truthful to the phone’s capabilities, it does imply that Honor is seeking to push the boundaries of A.I., and introduce a more conversational A.I. of its own.

We’ll keep you updated on the Honor Magic 2.

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