Honor Magic 7 Pro vs Honor Magic 6 Pro: All differences explained

The Honor Magic 7 Pro made its Chinese debut on October 30, and subsequently launched globally on January 15. We've finished all the tests and we're ready to announce the final verdict. Is the new model better than the old one? Read on to find out!

The main design difference between the Honor Magic 7 Pro and its predecessor is the transition to an overall flatter design, including the screen. For many people, this will be an upgrade, but bear in mind that the phone is slightly wider due to that flatter design.

On the other hand, the Magic 6 Pro features a quad-curved display—not too drastic, but still, the frame is kind of thin on both sides of the phone. In terms of materials, there's nothing too different here; we have the same glass and metal sandwich, but the new Honor Magic 7 Pro brings something called Rhino Glass.

The back of the Magic 7 Pro is also flatter compared to the previous model, but the camera housing follows the same Jade Cong shape philosophy. It's a circle inside a square with slightly bent sides, but this time around the bezel is much more subtle and looks like a regular circle.

Inside the new model there are four holes for the cameras and the depth sensor, making the design symmetrical, unlike the three cameras on the Magic 6 Pro.

As far as colors are concerned, the Chinese hues have been officially unveiled, but we don't know whether or not there will be additional or different hues for the global version. Below you will find the color options for both phones.

Honor Magic 7 Pro colors:

• Black
• White
• Gray
• Blue

Honor Magic 6 Pro colors:

• Black
• Green
• Blue
• Purple
• White

Sadly, inside the box you won't find a 100W charger, even though the new phone supports wired charging with such speeds. Starting with the Honor Magic 6 Pro, the company has removed the included charging brick from the retail box.

Moving to the display panels of both phones, there aren't many differences in technology, resolution, refresh rate, or pixel density. The new model might be brighter, but we have to test it to find out. The Honor Magic 6 Pro recorded 1,536 nits (APL 100%) in our display test, so we can't wait to measure the Magic 7 Pro (check the results down below).

Meanwhile, while we wait, let's quickly sum up the specs of both displays. Both phones come with 6.8-inch AMOLED panels with a refresh rate of 1-120Hz (LTPO tech) and a resolution of 1280 x 2800 pixels, resulting in a pixel density of around 453 PPI.

Display Measurements:



Well, the tests are in and these two displays are almost identical. The brightness figures are the same at 100% APL (we started testing at 20% APL as it's closer to real-life conditions), the minimum brightness is the same. What's interesting is that the color accuracy out of the box is better on the Honor Magic 6 Pro, as is the color temperature. The difference is not big but it's there. 

The bezels on the new model are much more prominent, due to the fact that the display is flatter, also reducing the overall screen-to-body ratio from 91.6% to 89.9%. Taking all this into account, the Honor Magic 7 Pro seems like a bit of a downgrade in the display department, which is sad, to be honest.

Finally, the biometrics have been upgraded on the Honor Magic 7 Pro; the phone now features an ultrasonic under-display fingerprint scanner, much like the Galaxy S-series. The Magic 6 Pro, on the other hand, features a more conventional optical fingerprint reader. The facial recognition is also onboard, and it's a 3D scan of your face similar to Apple's Face ID.

Unsurprisingly, the new Honor Magic 7 Pro comes with the latest Qualcomm silicon, the hyped Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. We say hyped because all the leaked benchmarks, mostly from Chinese flagships, show that Qualcomm has finally bridged the gap to Apple's A-series chips and even surpassed the previous champion in some tests.

The previous model is equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, not a slouch by any means, but still around 20% slower than the new chip. Speaking of which, the Snapdragon 8 Elite scores around 10,000 points in the Geekbench 6 multi-core performance test and around 3,300 in the single-core part of the same test. For comparison, the Honor Magic 6 Pro (with its 8 Gen 3 chip) managed 6844 and 2188 in multi- and single-core Geekbench 6, respectively. 

Performance Benchmarks:

Our head-to-head performance comparison showed the same thing, with a noticeable difference in favor of the new phone. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is indeed a beast, and the Honor Magic 7 Pro managed one of the highest results on our all-time list. That said, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-equipped Magic 6 Pro isn't a slouch either and in normal day-to-day use you probably won't notice a difference.

The RAM situation is identical between these two phones; the base configuration is 12GB of RAM coupled with 256GB of storage, and the next two versions come with 16GB of RAM and either 512GB or 1TB of onboard memory.

As far as software goes, all the MagicOS tricks will be onboard of the new Honor Magic 7 Pro, and we also saw a new AI assistant called YOYO Agent during the Chinese launch. For software support, the Honor Magic 6 Pro comes with four years of major OS updates, and we expect the new model to mimic this.

The Honor Magic 6 Pro boasts an impressive camera array on its rear, arranged in the distinctive Star Wheel layout. The periscope zoom camera is the most distinctive part of the system, with a huge hole in the center of the camera bump. The size is justified, as it houses a powerful 180MP sensor—among the highest megapixel counts ever for a dedicated telephoto lens.

But guess what? Honor has decided that 180MP is not enough for a telephoto camera and slapped a 200MP sensor on the new model. It's the 1.4-inch Samsung S5KHP9 also found on the Vivo X100 Ultra.

The main camera is the same on both phones, and it features a 50MP H9000 (a rebranded OV50H OmniVision) sensor with variable aperture. Its physical diaphragm allows for aperture adjustments between f/1.4 and f/2.0, making it a portrait wonder.

The same goes for the 50MP ultrawide camera, offering a broad 122-degree field of view. Honor has decided that the hardware is good enough and the Magic 7 Pro doesn't need a new ultrawide sensor. 

This one's really interesting. Our lab tests showed that the main camera of the Honor Magic 6 Pro performs better overall than the one on its successor. Again, the difference is not huge, but it's there. This might be down to the new AI algorithms doing their work less than flawlessly. 

Not that the camera of the Honor Magic 7 Pro is bad in any way. It just doesn't appear to be the upgrade we would've loved to see. The other cameras are pretty similar in quality on both phones, the 20 more megapixels on the telephoto don't do much in terms of resolving additional detail. 

Honor was the first company to bring the silicon-carbon battery tech outside China with the Magic 6 Pro (the Magic 5 Pro featured different batteries on the Chinese and the global versions). The new model comes with the third generation of that tech. To put it simply, there's silicon imbued in the graphene anode, and this expands the overall capacity by around 20% compared to conventional lithium-ion batteries.

The above is the main reason Honor was able to fit a 5,850 mAh cell inside the thin and sleek body of the Magic 7 Pro. The previous model featured a 5,600 mAh battery and scored pretty decent in our battery test, to put it mildly (number 2 for phones tested in the past 2 years with a battery estimate of 9 hours and 27 minutes).

Sadly, the global version of the Honor Magic 7 Pro features a 5,270mAh battery, which is actually worse than the one in the previous model, probably due to stricter battery regulations outside China. This doesn't look good but let's check out how both phones performed in our battery benchmarks.

PhoneArena Battery and Charging Test Results:

Unsurprisingly, physics won another battle - more capacity equals more battery life. In this case, the Honor Magic 6 Pro outperforms its successor by 2 hours overall, and loses only an hour in browsing.

As far as charging goes, the Chinese version of the Magic 7 Pro launched with 100W wired charging support and 80W wireless and the global model carries those over. You will need Honor's proprietary wireless charger to climb up to those advertised speeds but even without it, both phones will charge faster than your average iPhone or Galaxy device, both wired and wirelessly.

Here's a quick side-by-side specs comparison; for a more detailed one, head to our full Honor Magic 7 Pro vs Honor Magic 6 Pro specs page.

So, to sum things up, the new Honor Magic 7 Pro brings some upgrades to the telephoto camera and the charging speeds. Furthermore, it features the latest Snapdragon chipset and now comes with a flatter screen.

All other areas are more or less the same between the two phones, and there are even some peculiar downgrades. The screen is a tad better on the old phone albeit curved, and the battery (due to EU regulations) is smaller on the Honor Magic 7 Pro (compared to the Chinese version and the previous model as well). 

The predecessor, the Magic 6 Pro, is an amazing Android flagship in its own right, and if you own it, there's little to no reason to switch to the new one. But if you're choosing between the Galaxy S25 Ultra, OnePlus 13, Xaomi 15, and the Honor Magic 7 Pro, things get much more complicated.

The way we see it, if you don't need raw Snapdragon 8 Elite power, the Honor Magic 6 Pro is still the better choice here, especially if you get it on a deal now that the successor is out. It delivers better battery life, and its camera also performs slightly better. It's a surprising turn of events but there you go.