I took it on a much-needed vacation, ready to test its ultra-large sensors and AI features to see if it could preserve every scene exactly as I saw and felt it.
Gone are the days when travel meant lugging around a bulky camera, each shot delayed by changing lenses or fiddling with the settings in a race against the golden hour.
Smartphones have taken that place.
It’s not to say that modern travelers are fine losing the essence of the journey with grainy, underexposed photos. It’s just much easier to lean on accessible devices that can respond fluidly to the shifting scenery and still render that raw feeling. At the end of the day, will it really boil down to quality when fleeting, unscripted moments are now captured more effortlessly and shared just as quickly?
There’s no shortage of smartphones promising studio-level photography and “powerful” extras, but knowing which one will truly deliver, especially for making travel memories, is a different story.
So, I took a pre-planned trip with friends to Bolinao, Pangasinan, and saw it as the perfect opportunity to test one promising piece of tech. I had a clear checklist in mind: vibrant color, crisp details, a camera that could paint the emotional texture of the moment.
For that, I decided to trust the HONOR Magic7 Pro.
And trust is a big word. The AI-powered flagship smartphone has to serve as my main camera for the entire trip and deliver shots worthy of making it into my tightly curated, often overly scrutinized Instagram feed.
Specs in a nutshell
It’s not hard to pick a worthy contender, seeing that the HONOR Magic 7 Pro has earned its reputation as the newest pocket powerhouse among content creators and casual travelers in just a few months. It features a 6.8-inch OLED display with a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, and a third-generation silicon-carbon 5,100mAh battery with 66W fast charging for a longer lifespan and smarter power use. Outside, a design that exudes a cosmic aura in holographic Lunar Shadow Grey or peaceful Black.
HONOR Magic7 Pro joins the ultra-tough, ultra-durable roster with an IP68 rating and the NanoCrystal Shield, certified for high drop resistance even in trek trips. Audio gets a major boost, too, with large-amplitude dual speakers and an HONOR surround subwoofer that delivers deep, powerful bass, ideal for soundtracking a backyard liempo cookout with friends.
Smart features like Magic Portal for gesture-based shortcuts, AI Deepfake Detection, and live AI translation also make it a quietly brilliant productivity and everyday companion.
AI HONOR Falcon Camera
But let’s set all that aside to focus on its headliner and the feature I was most eager to put through its paces.
The HONOR Magic7 Pro 5G features a powerful triple rear camera system designed to adapt across conditions:
- Main Camera: 50MP Super Dynamic Falcon Camera with a large 1/1.3-inch sensor for better light capture, dynamic range, and vibrancy.
- Telephoto Camera: 200MP camera with 3x optical zoom, 100x digital zoom, and a 1/1.4-inch ultra-large sensor stabilization for zoom shots that don’t lose detail.
- Ultra-Wide Camera: 50MP Ultra-HD camera with a 122° field of view and a 2.5cm HD macro capability. It features an f/2.0 aperture and minimal distortion, perfect for wide-angle shots.
- Front Camera: 50MP Ultra-HD with a 90° wide-angle lens, f/2.0 aperture, AI anti-distortion, and the ability to shoot in 4K. This camera ensures natural skin tones and high-quality selfies outdoors.
These are supported by HONOR’s proprietary image engine, which works in tandem with AI Motion Sensing to freeze movements sharply and expose scenes accurately, even in the kind of unpredictable lighting you encounter during real travel: shades, haze, and the road at night.
The Perfect HONOR Magic7 Pro Shot
I discovered the best subject it could possibly capture: The sun.
Anyone who’s tried to shoot a sunrise or sunset knows it’s rarely as simple as pointing and tapping. They’re easy to admire with your eyes, but tricky to translate into a photo with blurry glow and none of the warmth. That’s why I use it as a kind of camera litmus test.
To see if it’s up for a challenge, I took these photos just before and just after: When the sunrise is bold and fiery, not theatrically pastel. When the sun has dipped below the horizon, but the light still lingers to cast its final hues. I wanted to see—could the camera preserve even half of that beauty, and still evoke the full feeling?
I guess it did.
Selfies and Portraits
Selfies
First things first. I like my selfie cams raw.
I appreciate how the 50MP front camera doesn’t completely blur out unwanted texture, unlike usual Android camera phones that give you an instant beautified effect (you don’t even need to zoom in to see my blemishes here).
Though it doesn’t impose itself, the feature is there with AI beauty, which acts like a built-in Face App without the premium subscription.
More on that later.
Portrait
Now, the portrait mode of the HONOR Magic7 Pro is really something to love.
Look at how crisp this shot of my friend turned out (taken outdoors in daylight under a concrete shade):
The edges are sharp, the colors pop without being oversaturated, and there’s a subtle grain that mimics the analog warmth of film photography. It captures depth like full-frame, wide-aperture digital cameras, locking in a shallow point of view that still feels contained and cinematic.
There’s a bit of a quirk to it, though. Loading the final image takes a bit longer than one might expect. It initially feels like lag, but then, the image resolves into a vivid, tactile-like portrait. There’s a moment of anticipation, and then, reward.
In Daylight
There’s not much I can say about its capabilities in well-lit conditions. After all, most cameras only live up to the hype on the surface when they’re using the largest sensor in their lens.
With the HONOR Magic7 Pro, the images carry a depth that doesn’t feel artificially enhanced. The AI works seamlessly in the background, adjusting for optimal exposure and contrast, giving you professional-level results that highlight the best in the scenery. No adjustments needed, even in harsh, broad daylight.
Low Light
The HONOR Magic7 Pro impresses in low-light conditions with a vibrant noise-reduced shot even at a high ISO. This photo maintains sharp interior details and rich color contrast, especially with the warm dashboard glow and cooler ambient tones. Credit goes to its triple camera system, which pulls off a wide, dynamic field with minimal distortion, while the smart shutter speed adds just enough motion blur to keep things full of life.
One of my long-standing frustrations with smartphone cameras is their tendency to miss the subtle roll of the waves, something I usually rely on my digital camera for. But the HONOR Magic7 Pro’s AI-Motion Sensing Capture held its own and set the sea in motion for this atmospheric twilight shot with striking silhouettes.
AI Capabilities
Telephoto and Zoom
To test out the HONOR Magic7 Pro’s 200MP telephoto lens, I took two different shots of the same wrinkly seascape—one at 288mm and the other pushed to a riveting 2400mm. The former delivers crisp, natural textures where each ripple shows confidence and restraint, while the more zoomed-in shot, though impressive in reach, trades clarity for distance, with some smoothed-over AI intervention at play. Still, it’s optically ambitious and would likely shine more in structured cityscapes than in textured, dynamic scenes like the ocean.
AI Eraser
The AI Eraser on the HONOR Magic7 Pro is among the best I’ve tried on any smartphone. With a simple swipe over the object, the phone detects the whole form like a magic lasso tool, removing any distractions without compromising resolution.
I tested it with a slightly complex spot including a bit of splash in the water, and it still handled the scene well.
AI Beauty
For fans of Snow and K-Beauty apps, HONOR Magic7 Pro has an AI Beauty feature that enables skin-smoothing, tone adjustment, and blemish blurring.
This was edited in Instant Beauty mode to see how far AI could go without piling on filters. The result? It’s… alright. A little too polished for my taste. If you don’t want to look like a vampire, you’ll want to manually tweak the settings for a more natural, just enhanced look.
I also tested the AI Eraser in the same frame since this was a cluttered selfie. Despite the front camera’s smaller sensor, typically a trade-off in precision, it did not introduce extra noise aside from the soft blur already baked into the AI “beautification” process.
AI Upscale
Now, this AI Upscale feature instantly optimizes your images, enhancing both resolution and lighting. I admit I wasn’t expecting much. It just seemed like the kind of tool that could easily oversaturate and throw off the natural tones, reminiscent of the overly tinkered images I used to create in Lightroom a few years ago.
But HONOR Magic7 Pro knows what it’s doing. This effortless, AI-enhanced image of our hotel against the vastness of the sea brought out the subtle, calming blues without the crazy brightness and tint boost.
It’s a small tweak that fits the photo perfectly, highlighting how this AI feature can punch up the liveliness of all the photos in your gallery.
(Before → AI Upscale Processing → After AI Upscale)
Verdict:
The HONOR Magic7 Pro delivers all the flagship power you’d expect for everyday use—but if what you’re after is an all-in-one camera phone that artfully balances exposure, color, and storytelling across every scene, from bright days to dim nights and everything in between, this is the device you’ll want in your hand when the memories matter most.
The HONOR Magic7 Pro is available at ₱59,999.00 with 12GB RAM + 512GB storage.
