The Honor Magic 8 Pro’s smaller battery is its downfall in Europe
15/1/2026
Translation: Eva Francis
Pictures: Jan Johannsen
The Honor Magic 8 Pro is a powerful smartphone with outstanding cameras and a bright display – in short, an excellent phone. The bad news? A large camera bump, confusing AI tools and a smaller battery in Europe than in China.
Three months after its launch in China, the Honor Magic 8 Pro’s now also available in Europe – with a smaller battery. Overall, this top-of-the-range smartphone impresses with its powerful performance and excellent cameras. However, I can’t help but feel the battery life should be longer. In addition, the shutter button for photos is a good idea, but poorly implemented.
Large camera bump and bright display
With its sturdy metal frame, the Honor Magic 8 Pro looks and feela high-quality and robust – even the plastic back does. Visually, the circular camera bump is very dominant. It protrudes much more than, for example, in the Poco F8 Pro or the OnePlus 15. The two latter smartphones have a bump that sticks out by 2.2 and 2.6 millimetres – with the Magic 8 Pro, its 5.7 millimetres.
Having said that, the bump doesn’t make the Magic 8 Pro awkward to hold, except in landscape format where I have to wrap my fingers around the protruding circle. That’s a bit uncomfortable. At least Honor’s balanced the phone so well that it hardly wobbles when it lies on the table, even though it’s at an angle due to the height difference.
The front features a 6.71-inch OLED display with powerful and natural colour reproduction. The resolution of 2,808 × 1,256 pixels is high, as is the refresh rate of 120 Hertz. With a maximum brightness of 1,800 nits, the screen’s easy to read, even in bright sunshine. With HDR content, it even briefly reaches a maximum of 6,000 nits.
Honor uses its own NanoCrystal Shield to protect the display. It’s designed to withstand falls from a height of two metres. The smartphone is dust- and water-resistant according to the IP68 rating. This means it survived laboratory tests where it was submerged in 1.5 metres of deep, clean fresh water for 30 minutes.
D ## More computing power than any other smartphone – so far
Honor’s equipped the Magic 8 Pro with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, currently the most powerful smartphone chipset by Qualcomm. The phone features 5G, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and 12 GB of memory. Together, they not only outperform the Honor Magic 7 Pro with its predecessor chipset in benchmark tests, but others too. The OnePlus 15 also achieves slightly lower results with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. The Realme GT8 Pro, on the other hand, squeezes a bit more performance out of the chipset.
Overall, the Magic 8 Pro performs at a very high level. However, the extra computing power isn’t noticeable in everyday use. If at all, it would only become evident during computationally intensive tasks such as rendering videos.
Smaller battery in Europe
The Magic 8 Pro’s battery has an above-average capacity of 6,270 mAh. But it could be even more. In China, the smartphone boasts 7,200 mAh. According to Honor, this [isn’t possible] outside China due to international shipping regulations(/page/oppo-find-x9-und-honor-magic8-groe-akkus-die-in-europa-kleiner-werden-40031 "Oppo Find X9 and Honor Magic8: large batteries that smaller in Europe"). Strangely though, OnePlus seems to be allowed to sell the OnePlus 15 with 7,300 mAh in Europe.
PCMark’s battery test measures a runtime of 15:10 hours for the Magic 8 Pro at 50% display brightness. That’s good and enough to get you through the day. But it’s nowhere near the OnePlus 15 and Realme GT8 Pro, which both lasted over 24 hours in the same test. And at 19:01 hours, the Poco F8 Pro also performs better with a similarly large battery to that of the Honor.
The Honor Magic 8 Pro’s charged with up to 100 watts via a USB-C cable. A full charge takes around 40 minutes, which is fast compared to most of the competition. Wirelessly, it’s only slightly slower and charged at up to 80 watts.
Outstanding camera system with interactive shutter button
When it comes to the Honor Magic 8 Pro’s camera system, the telephoto camera resolution stands out. It features 3.7 times the focal length of the main camera. While all other cameras offer 50 megapixels, its image sensor has a resolution of 200 megapixels. Thanks to pixel binning, i.e. the pulling together of adjacent pixels to increase light sensitivity, all cameras feature a default resolution of around twelve megapixels, which is perfectly adequate.
There is another button on the right edge of the Magic 8 Pro below the power button, which doesn’t stick out. When the camera’s on, it acts as a shutter release and controls the focal length. To do this, you swipe your finger over it to the left or right in landscape format. If you’retaking photos in portrait mode, the button functions as a shutter release button. It always works reliably and quickly and without me shaking the smartphone.
In my opinion, this button’s a great idea. However, there are two problems with the Honor. Firstly, the range of movement for adjusting the focal length is small. This means you have to swipe several times to move through the entire focal length. It’s faster done via the touchscreen. Secondly, and even more annoyingly, the button’s not close enough to the edge. This means, if I hold the Magic 8 Pro in landscape format, I have to really stretch my finger. That’s uncomfortable.
Back to the cameras. The main camera delivers a very high level of detail and a sharp image right across the entire picture.
The colour reproduction is vibrant and natural. The smartphone automatically compensates for strong contrasts.
The ultra-wide-angle camera’s also impressive. However, it delivers somewhat duller colours than the main camera. And the blurring in the corners is also to be expected from this type of lens with sometimes strong distortions.
There’s no distortion in the corners with the telephoto camera. The entire picture shows a high level of detail. To make sure you get a sharp image, however, it’s all the more important to make sure the correct area is in focus. The lens doesn’t have a focus range of several metres.
In daylight, all three rear cameras deliver excellent photos that I can hardly criticise. In the dark, the quality differences become more apparent, both between the cameras and between automatic and night mode with a longer exposure time.
Night mode on the main camera doesn’t only bring light into areas that the automatic mode leaves dark, it also ensures that bright areas aren’t overexposed. All while keeping the night atmosphere.
The ultra-wide-angle camera shows the same result. However, the automatic function produces much darker images in which hardly anything is recognisable.
With the telephoto camera, on the other hand, there are only tiny differences that you’ll only spot if you look really closely. And this doesn’t only apply to this motif, but also to others.
Overall, I really like the Magic 8 Pro’s photos taken in the dark. A comparison with the Pixel 10 Pro XL shows how large the differences in colour reproduction can be. The differences are particularly noticeable in the green of the artificial grass pitch and the yellow of the pitch lighting in the Millerntor stadium. In my eyes, the Honor’s rendition is more realistic.
The front camera delivers beautiful selfies with a high level of detail and natural colour reproduction. In the dark, it depends on how much light’s available. If there isn’t much light, the picture turns out blurred, even in night mode. If you can make use of the street lighting, the result will be much better.
Chaotic AI and long update period
The default operating system on the Magic 8 Pro is Android 16 and its user interface is MagicOS 10. In addition to Honor apps, the latest version includes translucent visual design, i.e. transparent elements that look very much like Liquid Glass, which Apple introduced with iOS 16. What’s also inspired by Apple is that music players and other apps running in the background are arranged around the front camera. Honor’s version of the Dynamic Island expands when tapped and displays further information. With some apps, it also includes some control elements.
Honor’s installed many of its own apps on the Magic 8 Pro. Together with the default Google apps and advertising apps from third-party providers, that’s quite the app overload. At least the third-party apps can be uninstalled with just a few clicks. The AI possibilities are also confusing. On top of Gemini that’s pre-installed as an AI assistant, there are also plenty of Honor’s own tools. Honor AI and Honor AI Space are located on the start screen, as well as the AI Reminders once they’ve been activated. In the settings, I also find a menu item called Honor AI, which is very different to the app, although it’s called the same
In the Honor AI app, I see AI Reminders and another AI Photo Agent, which offers the same functions as AI editing in the gallery app. The third tool in the Honor AI app is the AI Hiring Agent. You can use it to change settings by voice command – think increasing the volume or switching off Bluetooth.
I find even more AI tools in the Honor AI menu item in the settings. This is where you activate AI tools or make adjustments to them. Among other things, you can choose what you want the AI button to do. The AI button’s the one that also serves as the shutter release button and zoom control on the camera. You can assign three functions to it and, for example, access the AI Settings Agent at the touch of a button.
The Honor Magic 8 Pro is promised to get up to seven Android updates – and security updates for just as long. That’s a great setup for a smartphone.
In a nutshell
The large battery isn’t large enough
The Honor Magic 8 Pro is very powerful and boasts an excellent camera system. The display’s bright and the battery lasts a long time. A perfect phone? Not quite. As so often, the devil’s in the detail. And it might be these details that are preventing me from being 100% convinced.
The massive camera bump surely won’t be a crowd pleaser and the camera shutter button is badly positioned. The AI tools are arranged in a confusing way and the battery is smaller than the one on the Chinese market’s model. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a good battery, but it lasts several hours less than the OnePlus 15 or the Realme GT8 Pro. Offering the same powerful chipset and an equally good camera system, these two are obvious alternatives.
Pro
- Great camera system
- Good battery life
- Seven Android updates
Contra
- Bulky camera bump
- Chaotic arrangement of AI tools
- European model features smaller battery
Header image: Jan Johannsen
Jan Johannsen
Senior Editor
Jan.Johannsen@galaxus.deAs a primary school pupil, I used to sit in a friend's living room with many of my classmates to play the Super NES. Now I get my hands on the latest technology and test it for you. In recent years at Curved, Computer Bild and Netzwelt, now at Digitec and Galaxus.
These articles might also interest you
6 comments
later