Honor wants its new Magic 7 series to serve up the most intuitive smartphone AI experience. Its not-so-secret weapon? An AI agent dubbed Yoyo Agent, which the company debuted on Wednesday at the launch of its new Magic 7 and Magic 7 Pro smartphones in China.
The Honor Magic 7 and Magic 7 Pro resemble their predecessors in design, but they also bring upgrades focused on camera capabilities and AI. The Magic 7 starts at 4,499 yuan, or roughly $630 and the Magic 7 Pro starts at 5,699 yuan, which converts to approximately $800.
This series arrives as Apple rolls out its AI platform, Apple Intelligence, across millions of devices in the United States. More broadly however, big name smartphone makers such as Samsung and Google (among others) have been leaning on AI, particularly generative AI, in a bid to drive sales. AI isn’t necessarily a contributing factor, but phone sales have been climbing this year. According to research firm Canalys, global smartphone shipments grew by 12% in the second quarter of this year, reaching 288 million units, with Samsung taking the top spot followed closely by Apple.
Read more: Your Apps Are on Borrowed Time. AI Agents Are on the Way.
Honor is also aiming to boost sales. The Magic 7 series is one of the first smartphone lineups to debut a so-called AI agent, which is designed to focus more on autonomous task execution and problem-solving than smart assistants. The company says you can simply tell a Magic 7 phone what to do and the AI agent will get it done — whether that means ordering your morning cup of coffee, canceling app subscriptions or even planning a trip overseas. The idea is to save you time and effort, so you won’t have to go through a series of steps to get those tasks done.
The higher-end Magic 7 Pro has a 6.8-inch display with a peak brightness of 5,000 nits. It has a large 5,800-mAh silicon carbon battery with support for 100-watt wired charging and 80-watt wireless charging. It also has a triple-camera module headlined by a 200-megapixel telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom and 100x digital zoom. It’s supported by a 50-megapixel main camera and a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera.
Honor made sure to build up the devices camera features at their launch event in China, emphasizing the AI-powered image sharpening capabilities of its devices.
Key to helping the AI operate smoothly on the Magic 7 is its top-of-the-line chipset from Qualcomm, or the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, which promises CPU performance increase by 42% and a jump in GPU. It runs on the Android 15-based MagicOS 9.0 skin out of the box.
While a US release is currently not part of Honor’s plans, the Chinese company confirmed a global launch “coming soon,” but hasn’t shared details on a timeline.
The Coolest Phones at MWC 2024 From Samsung, Honor, Motorola and More
