Honor wants to take back what is his (and more): Honor 70, foldable, tablet and MagicOS

This isn’t the first time we’ve talked about Honor in terms of a company it wants take back his place. In our opinion this is just the demonstration that Honor really has “serious intentions” in the field of telephony and beyond. We find it courageous and in a certain sense reassuring that Honor has chosen then IFA 2022 as a stage for its new launches, one of the most important technology fairs in the world, which unfortunately, like all of them, has lost some of its centrality after years of difficulty in organizing these events due to the pandemic. And so Honor takes all the spotlight of the event for the launch of its Honor 70. And not only that.

Let’s go in order though. The protagonist of the launch is definitely Honor 70the company’s new mid-range smartphone, the spiritual successor of Honor 50. The smartphone has some points in common, such as a very similar design and a version plus of the same processor, but it also has some distinctive features that make it, at least on paper, that make it something more than the umpteenth Android mid-range

Honor 70 technical sheet

• Display: 6.67 “FHD +, 120 Hz, HDR10 +, OLED, FHD + (1080 x 2400 px)
• Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G Plus 5G
  
• RAM: 8 GB
  
• Internal storage: 128/256 GB
  
• Battery: 4,800 mAh with 66W charging
• Rear camera:
  • Principal: 54 megapixels, f / 1.9
    
  • Wide angle: 50 megapixels, f / 2.2
  • Portrait: 2 megapixels, f / 2.4
• Front camera: 32 megapixel ƒ / 2.2
  
• Audio: Stereo speaker
  
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6, 5G, Bluetooth 5.2. NFC
  
• Dimensions: 161.4 x 73.3 x 7.91 mm
  
• Weight: 178 g
• Safety: fingerprint reader under the display, face unlock
• Operating system: Magic UI 6.1. based on Android 12

The smartphone therefore has a lot to tell, starting with the version plus of the Snapdragon 778G already landed on some recent smartphones. A somewhat conservative solution, but the daughter of a period in which technology was stranded by inflation and the scarcity of devices. The leap forward for the battery is remarkable, which not only maintains a very high charging speed, but which grows in capacity up to 4,800 mAh. The sector on which the company has focused the most is certainly the photographic one, with an absolute first, the sensor Sony IMX800 1 / 1.49 “54 megapixel. This comes flanked by a very high resolution wide angle camera. Too bad for the absence of a zoom sensor, unfortunately disappeared from the entire mid-range (and from the high-end) for all brands.

The front display is then curved on four sides, a highly scenic solution that we support in favor of differentiation, but which not everyone is interested in having on their smartphone. The display OLED it is officially HDR10 + certified and offers a refresh rate of up to 120 Hz, as well as a touch sampling at 300 Hz.

The smartphone also supports new video recording modes: one Only Cut which allows you to highlight your face in a video vlog and Dual Video Streaming to record with the main and wide-angle camera at the same time.

As we know, Honor also has 70 Pro and Pro + models in its Asian list, which however will not be launched in our market. These are smartphones equipped with Mediatek Dimensity 8000 and 9000 processors, with even faster charging speeds and with a 3x zoom camera.

Although Honor 70 is launched with Magic UI 6.1, the latest interface of Honor, during the event there was also talk of Magic OS, or the next iteration of the Honor system. Magic OS 7 will allow users to control an Honor notebook, smartphone or tablet using a single keyboard and mouse. All the details of this integration are not yet known, but it is still interesting how Honor is aiming to simplify the integration between its various devices. And it does so thankfully by embracing open standards – the company has joined various IoT contests recently, such as Matter and Ola.

More details on Magic OS 7.0 in a separate launch during the last quarter of the year. In the short term, however, we will see an integration of Phone Link from Microsoft within European Honor smartphones. To date this function, which allows you to integrate your Android smartphone on a Windows PC, was only available in Chinese smartphones. Honor Magic 4 Pro is one of the first international models to get this function and obviously it will also arrive on Honor 70 with an update.

This is perhaps one of the most delicious news of the event: Honor will officially arrive in the international market, and therefore in Europe, with its folding smartphones and curved displays on the edges. Honor calls it strategy Dual Flagship, essentially that of Samsung, to have two top of the range in two different categories (classic and folding) every year. Unfortunately, we do not currently have an official date for this European opening.

The occasion was also right to launch a new Honor MagicBook 14 notebook. As far as we know at the moment we have an increase in autonomy up to 20.8% (what a precise number!), The twelfth Intel Core i5-12500H processor. generation, will also have the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2050 and a 75Wh battery.

Unfortunately we have no details at the moment, but we will not fail to let you know.

And there is also a tablet. After Realme and OPPO, Honor also decides to open up to the European tablet market. And Honor also does it with a mid-range device, equipped with a 12 inch 2K (2000 x 1200 pixels) and a 7,250 mAh battery.

The company is no more unbalanced than in saying that it is equipped with an Android operating system with Magic UI 6.1 and (obviously) Google services. Among other things, the arrival was promised only in some European markets, not specifying for now which ones.

If it is the already known international model we are dealing with a product equipped with a Snapdragon 680 processor, 128 GB of internal memory and 5 megapixel (front / back) cameras.

A great calederone. We don’t really like events where too much meat is thrown into the fire, as it often denotes little concentration on one’s strategy. What we see here, however, is a great desire to do, a great desire to recover the position that Honor had a few years ago on the market and also the slice leaves “free” from Huawei, in every field. Not just in smartphones. We obviously defer to the judgments that we can give you after a thorough test, but this Honor 70 it looks like the first real smartphone of the post-Huawei era and that’s good. Because it means that Honor has its own strategy and how.