Honor has launched its new Magic 9 flagship phones in China, and the Magic 9 Pro Max carries the fingerprints of Arri, the cinema camera maker Honor has partnered with. It is the company's first major flagship launch since that partnership was announced, the Robot Phone aside.
The first visible consequence is the camera island, which borrows Arri's “three-lens turret” design first seen on the 1937 Arriflex 35, complete with a knurled texture around the main lens. Arri's involvement goes further than looks: the phone can shoot in Arri LogC3, ships with 14 preset Arri Look LUTs, offers access to Arri's wider library of official and third-party LUTs, and supports the APV 10-bit 4:2:2 codec.
## The camera hardware Behind the turret sit a 200-megapixel main lens using a 1/1.28-inch-type sensor, a 3.5x telephoto with the same resolution on a 1/1.4-inch sensor, and a 50-megapixel ultrawide — though that last lens does not support every Arri Cinema Mode feature. A “cinema-grade” directional microphone is meant to help video recording too. Less technically impressive but just as useful is a square-format selfie camera that, like Apple's Center Stage, can capture in either landscape or portrait.
## Battery and silicon Honor says the wider camera island is more space-efficient, freeing room for an 8,800 mAh battery with up to 40 percent silicon content. The Magic 9 Pro Max is powered by a Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 and will be available in mossy green, black and silver.
Honor has not yet announced pricing or availability outside China; the details above come from the Chinese launch.
