This surprise Android phone gives the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra a run for its money

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is just a day away from its official launch, but Honor is jumping into the ring early to challenge Samsung with its Magic 7 Pro. I’ve been daily-driving the flagship phone and it’s packed to the brim with features, making it a serious competitor.

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With a refined design, a 200MP periscope telephoto camera, Snapdragon 8 Elite performance, and a silicon-carbon battery, the Honor Magic 7 Pro positions itself as a formidable alternative to the upcoming Galaxy S25 Ultra. Here’s how the Honor stacks up to the current Galaxy S24 Ultra, and what more Samsung will need to deliver this week to surpass them both.

1. A mighty camera system

The Honor Magic 7 Pro features a 200MP periscope telephoto camera with an f/2.6 aperture and a 1/1.4-inch sensor, which is larger than both telephoto cameras on the current Galaxy S24 Ultra. I appreciate the larger sensor especially, which provides more natural bokeh and finer details in shots. That’s accompanied by a 50MP Super Dynamic Falcon main camera and a 50MP ultra-wide lens.

I recently took a trip the Slovenia, with the Magic 7 Pro in hand, and the results I got from the cameras were impressive.

The 3x zoom captures a sufficient amount of detail, as evident in the photo above. See the dog’s face, for example, which is sharp on both sides, with sunlight making her right eye pop while retaining details in the shadowed areas. 

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I’ve been just as satisfied with the ultra-wide-angle camera as it’s produced equally superb results with accurate white balance and tone. The second shot was captured against the sun on the ultra-wide camera and it demonstrates the excellent dynamic range of the sensor, with vivid yet natural colors.

The phone’s 6x lossless zoom also performs brilliantly, maintaining clarity and detail. In comparison, when I used the Galaxy S24 Ultra earlier this year, it couldn’t capture as much detail. The colors remain consistent across lenses and it’s better than Samsung at capturing fast-moving subjects. 

While the Honor Magic 7 Pro’s camera system is better than the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s, it does have some occasional inconsistencies. For example, it tends to overexpose shots in direct sunlight.   

One unique image feature with the Magic 7 Pro is the Harcourt profiles in Portrait mode, which come in three flavors: Vibrant, Colour, and Classic. Each has a distinct feel, but all deliver detailed shots with accurate edge detection. 

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Naturally, there’s a new AI toggle in Portrait mode that optimizes details in your portraits. I found the feature to work well occasionally. Fortunately, you can compare the AI-enhanced shot with the raw shot side-by-side before saving one.

2. A media powerhouse that lasts all day

The Honor Magic 7 Pro features a 6.8-inch AMOLED display with 5,000 nits of peak brightness for supported HDR content and a 120Hz dynamic refresh rate. The vibrant colors and excellent contrast make it a treat for content consumption. It certainly helps that the screen is now less curved, reducing glare on the sides.

That said, the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s anti-reflective Corning Gorilla Armor — a feature likely to appear on the S25 Ultra — offers a better visual experience. The reduction in reflections is a big win. However, Honor’s 4320Hz PWM dimming makes its display less burdening on the eyes. A high PWM dimming rate means the display flickers faster, causing less eye strain than Samsung’s slower alternative.

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Powering the Honor Magic 7 Pro is the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, paired with 12GB RAM and 512GB storage. From my testing, the device handles demanding tasks like heavy gaming without any issues, and the stereo speakers sound great. In day-to-day use, it’s hard to find faults in the performance, seriously.

The phone, with its 5,270mAh silicon-carbon cell, easily lasts a full day on a single charge, even under heavy use. That’s compared to Samsung’s 5,000mAh lithium-ion battery. You also get 100W fast charging (charger sold separately) and 80W wireless charging with a proprietary charger. I’d take those numbers over Samsung’s 45W wired charging any day of the week.

3. Samsung still has one big advantage

The Honor Magic 7 Pro runs MagicOS 9.0 based on Android 15, and while I like some parts of it, it’s simply not as polished as Samsung’s OneUI. 

One positive includes home screen folders that can be expanded into a column or row view while remaining inside a box, offering better usability than traditional folders. You can directly access apps without needing to tap the folder and expand it — or pull up an app drawer.

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Another standout feature is Honor’s Magic Portal, which lets you transfer text, links, or images between apps seamlessly. It’s easier to access now, as all you need to do is circle anything on-screen with your knuckle to pull up actionable tasks.

Despite these software tricks, though, there are some longstanding bugs that I’ve noticed over the years. For instance, switching from a standard home screen with installed apps to an app drawer resets your widget and app placements.

Bottom line

The Honor Magic 7 Pro is relatively expensive at 1,300 euros in Europe, which translates to roughly $1,340 in the US. (Keep in mind that these conversions are almost always inaccurate of what actual market prices would look like.) Going by the European pricing, the Honor phone is still more affordable than the Galaxy S24 Ultra (launched at 1,450 euros) and I expect it to remain that way when the Galaxy S25 Ultra launches tomorrow. 

The big takeaway from testing the Honor Magic 7 Pro is that while Samsung has the software going for itself, it’ll need to adopt better camera hardware and silicon-carbon battery tech to compete with flagship phones in 2025.