#ShotOniPhone? How about shot on the new HONOR Magic9 Pro Max? That’s basically what the Chinese smartphone maker is trying to pitch here with its new flagship. For the flagship lineup’s 10th anniversary special, the company is bringing the big guns from cinema camera extraordinaire ARRI to give the flagship’s camera system a serious shot at the top.
HONOR Magic9 Pro Max: Unboxing
The box certainly looks different this time, with the ARRI logo proudly presented alongside the smartphone maker to make the new flagship properly known. Inside, you’ll find items no different than what most Chinese smartphone makers offer, which is to say they usually lean on the richer side of things – these include a USB-C cable, a 100W charger, a SIM ejector pin, a green-ish looking silicone case (we suppose other color variants of the Magic9 Pro Max likely have color-matched equivalents), and of course, the main subject.
First Impressions
I will say, by virtue of adopting the two-box design at the rear, it’s already halfway mimicking the modern-day iPhone Pros – still, I ought not to sound like a broken record this time, even though the result is very obvious at this point if you pay attention to any Chinese-made smartphones these days. Like the iPhone, the HONOR Magic9 Pro Max has three cameras, although in this case the telephoto lens gets a dedicated yet gigantic camera bump, presumably for design’s sake.
The hardware within is nothing short of potent: 200MP telephoto, 200MP main sensor (both CIPA 8.0 stabilization), and another 50MP ultrawide form the trifecta that HONOR believes is good enough to power a full-blown production shoot. That’s why the media and various people were invited to the FINAS Tower (Menara FINAS) to see the new phone up close, full of production set (to showcase ARRI LogC3 and various production-focused features), and got a professional to talk about the art of filmmaking. This is no Insta360 or DJI Osmos, mind you.
Beyond what’s onboard the smartphone, HONOR also joins the race of teleconverter accessories to produce massive zoom ranges. There are two versions – the 200mm teleconverter produces 2.35x effective zoom with up to 5,400mm focal range; while the bigger 500mm teleconverter maxes out at 5.88x zoom with up to 14,000mm of focal range. We suspect these figures are mixed with unrealistic (though technically possible) digital zoom levels which is impractical to use quality-wise, but something around 20x zoom should be achievable while still maintaining optical-level quality.
While the feature highlights is all camera and filmmaking thus far, HONOR didn’t forget about durability: the screen is so immensely tough, it claims 15x increase in wear resistance and 25x improved drop resistance. You could quite literally get an angle grinder on it and the thing wouldn’t even budge – and if the lessons learned from designing X9e Pro’s shock-absorbing system is worth anything, we are inclined to believe the Magic9 Pro Max is among the toughest-built flagships you can buy today.
Three color options will be offered for the flagship, and they are Moss Green, Glacier Silver, and Shadow Black. Consider myself surprised they didn’t try to attempt to clone iPhone 18 Pro Max’s color palette this time, given that they almost done so with the 600 Pro. At this point, just don’t expect much in terms of smartphone design on this side of the smartphone world until the people at Cupertino decided it’s high time to give its golden child a new piece of suit, for which it’ll take no time for the Chinese to give their most sincere form of flattery.
And that concludes our first look at the HONOR Magic9 Pro Max for now – if you want to know more, stay tuned for the full launch later this month, followed by our in-depth review right here at Pokde.NET.
