for those of you who don't already know huawei was the parent company of honor until late last year
huawei themselves stated that in order to keep the company afloat they had no choice but to sell
their sub-branded smartphone company honor what some of you may not know however is that huawei
sent thousands of their employees to work for the quotes unquote new on a phone company this has led
me to think that this was an extremely strategic move to ensure that huawei could continue to
release true flagship huawei smartphones under the honor brand the main reason for this is to regain
google services within their smartphones this is a very well implemented loophole if you ask me since
the u.s sanctions are still in full force against huawei that leads us to this the honor magic 3 pro
plus an almost identical device to last year's huawei mate 40 pro rs porsche design edition but
adds in google services magic ui5 which is largely inspired from huawei's emui software and yes a
fully fledged qualcomm snapdragon 8 plus chipset with 5g connectivity the honor magic 3 series
devices are on his first set of premium flagship smartphones to release since their huawei breakup
and the honor magic 3 pro plus which is the device that i have with me here today is an
absolute powerhouse which ticks all the right boxes and exceeds my expectations but in doing so
cost an insane amount of money that being said the chinese price is more than reasonable for such a
premium smartphone here in china the honor magic 3 pro plus is actually cheaper than the iphone 12
pro max or samsung galaxy s 21 ultra the global price is however 500 euros more expensive and
even though it will certainly be released in other regions there is still no exact sale date yet the
honor magic 3 pro plus goes all out in terms of box contents which includes a premium case type c
earphones a usb type c cable and a 66 watt charging brick but now it's time to unwrap
the star of the show the honor magic 3 pro plus comes in just two color variants that being
ceramic white and ceramic black the phone only comes in a 12 gig of ram 512 gig variant nothing
more than that and nothing less than that looks absolutely stunning from the back and yes you
do get that included premium smartphone case in the box which is why i constantly say that other
smartphones house cheap silicon cases in the box when you're paying this kind of money for a phone
you expect a great case like that we get a 4 600 milliamp hour battery with 66 watt wide charging
and 50 watt wireless charging a snapdragon triple a to plus a 5g cpu run on 5 nanometer tech
12 gigs of lpddr5 ram and 512 gigs of ufs a 3.1 storage it is indeed ip68 dust and water resistant
up to 1.5 meters for 30 minutes and of course there is also 5g wi-fi 6 bluetooth 5.2 and nfc
huawei um excuse me i mean honor have included nano crystal shield glass on the front which is
apparently three times tougher than typical panels it also has a nano ceramic back which is the only
device of the honor magic 3 lineup to do so and it includes an aluminum frame wrapping down the
middle it is quite a chunky boy at 9.9 millimeters thick thanks to that waterfall display and it is
pretty hefty at 236 grams we get an 11 millimeter 64 megapixel ultra wide sensor a 23 millimeter
50 megapixel imax 700 main sensor a 23 millimeter monochrome sensor which is indeed 64 megapixels
we also get a 90 millimeter periscope telephoto lens which is also 64 megapixels it also adds in a
3d atop sensor with laser autofocus a color temperature sensor and a flicker sensor to prevent
flickering when taking snaps when looking at the ultra wide shot of the honor magic 3 pro plus
against the huawei p50 pro on the left-hand side and samsung galaxy s21 ultra on the right-hand
side the honor has a lot more color to it it is slightly less bright than the other two
but holds light slightly better and i do think that the colors are slightly more accurate not
to mention the insane amount of field of view at an incredible 126 degrees when taking a
main shot without using pixel binning we have 15 megapixels main as opposed to the 108 megapixel
main on the samsung galaxy s21 ultra and though it doesn't show quite as much detail as samsung's
i do feel like it is a better all-round photo taking the main sensors and using pixel binning to
get super pixels the huawei and honor are sitting at 12.5 megapixels where the samsung is sitting at
12 megapixels since the samsung uses nine to one pixel bending from 108 to 12 and the honor and
huawei use four to one pixel binning from 50 to 12.5 the honor magic 3 pro plus does an arguably
better job than the s21 ultra but i do feel like the huawei p50 pro has a little more life going on
in terms of the photo and brightening things up a tad though the honor does show a tad more detailed
than the other two once again zooming in by three times which is what the samsung can do optically
the other two are lacking optically since they are only kicking the optical telephoto sensors
at 3.5 times zoom but nevertheless digital zoom on these guys don't look that half bad the huawei
actually looks on par with the samsung though i must say the honor magic 3 pro plus doesn't look
quite as good at three times digital zoom when it comes to using the periscope sensors on the
huawei and honor using the exact same sensor with 3.5 times optical zoom you can see the snapdragon
version of the phone outshining the huawei's kirin 9000 chip over here showing more detail within
color however the huawei is still a bit brighter and gives a tad bit more of warmth in terms of
colors without washing them out like you see on the on a phone just behind buzz the samsung gets
a nice balance between all of that even though it is just using digital zoom over here though all
three of these phones can hit a hundred times zoom or surpass that we'll be testing that out in the
full review for now we're looking at the ten times digital zoom on the huawei ten times hybrid zoom
on the honor and 10 times optical zoom using the samsung's secondary telephoto lens which is also
periscope over here giving you 10 times optical zoom comparing the honors hybrid zoom to samsung's
optical zoom samsung is using a completely different lens for this compared to the telephoto
shots we took earlier and i do feel that the honest hybrid zoom using that same periscope lens
we saw on earlier with 3.5 times zoom actually looks better than samsung's it doesn't hold light
as well as the samsung's does but it's brightening it up a bit and showing a tad more detail it looks
a hell of a lot better than that seen on the huawei p50 pro even though they're sharing
the same telephoto periscope sensor when taking a depth shot the huawei slightly over saturates the
color of this ps5 controller the honor really over saturates it's turning it from a pinkish
red wine color to a dark red the samsung is the most accurate in terms of color grading over here
though i do feel like the honor has the best sense of depth perception thanks to that the tough lens
at the back i also feel like the honor is doing the best job in terms of edge detection when
turning all the lights off closing the curtains and closing the door to make sure there is no
light getting into my studio at this point in time it is pitch black all of these phones can see
more than i can see with my human eye when taking a snap with night mode off over here i feel like
the huawei p50 pro has the best balance in terms of detail and brightness the honor magic 3 pro
plus is lacking in detail and every time i try to take a shot with night mode off it couldn't really
handle it leading to blurry pictures the samsung is pretty great all round with great detail and
lighting though it is slightly too dim and adds a bit of a hazy pixelated effect with night mode on
however the honor magic 3 pro plus truly shines it picks up all the colors perfectly other than
the controller being a bit too oversaturated once more though it brightens up the shot just enough
so that you can still see it is an evening shot and not too much so that you can still see all
the detail the samsung's night mode looks great but once again starting to pick up a haze effect
and the huawei's looks a bit too smoothed out they can all record 4k at 60 frames per second
over here and i must say the honor is doing the best in terms of focus and overall quality
color me impressed honor have overtaken samsung we even have 4k 30fps a 21x9 imax movie mode using an
lut classic filter over here it looks absolutely fantastic though it struggles with light a tad bit
the huawei and honor both sport monochrome sensors which was last seen on the huawei p20
pro and though they both do a great job over here the extra megapixel counts within the honor magic
3 pro plus truly does stand out when comparing it to the huawei p50 pro 64 megapixels as opposed to
40 megapixels doesn't seem that great a difference but when you truly look at the detail over here
the honor is handling the light better and picks up a hell of a lot more details than the huawei
p50 pro that hexagon shaped camera bump at the back isn't protruding that much even though it
takes incredible photos it is quite large though it is pretty flat and looks absolutely incredible
if you're a fan of dslrs we have a power button on the right hand side as well as a volume rocker ir
blaster on the top as well as the first dual stereo speaker another stereo speaker at the
bottom over there and we do have a usb type-c 3.1 ports at the bottom next to that alongside a dual
sim 5g slot over here unfortunately no expandable storage options over here though there is a water
resistant seal unlike the huawei p50 pro the honor magic 3 pro plus retains the pull shaped
notch at the top left hand corner whether you like the design aspect of this or not
it does include an impressive ultra wide selfie cam which is 13 megapixels and goes all the way
up to 100 degrees field of view it also includes a tough 3d sensor for depth effect as well as 3d
facial recognition which is lacking on the p50 pro taking a selfie snap of me over here compared to
the huawei's 13 megapixel snap and the samsung's 40 megapixel snapper which has actually been down
to 10 megapixels i must say the honor magic 3 pro plus is snap looks so darn clean it is
almost perfect however the samsung's one does look a tad more natural especially in terms of my hair
over there otherwise they all look pretty superb when taking a bokeh selfie portrait over here they
all have pretty decent edge detection however you can see my little hand statue behind my right ear
the way you're looking at the screen right now my actual left ear on the honor magic 3 pro plus and
samsung galaxy s 21 ultra making me look like i have a bit of mumps on the samsung side of things
you can't see this on the huawei because my head is completely covering that object
otherwise the edge detection is near perfect on all three devices the selfie camera might not be
the best around but is certainly capable of a lot more including ultrawide which i'll get to in my
full review turning on the device will welcome to an always-on display and an in-display fingerprint
sensor over here we can also use a 3d facial recognition for payments and secure locking it is
housed inside there with that little laser blink that you saw there which is great we are skinned
over android 11 with magic ui5 which is very similar to huawei's emui before they shifted
over to harmony os and i have promised two major software updates likely android 12 and android 13.
we do have google services in the global variants but when it comes to the chinese variants
we are lacking this it is not fully fledged google within china though i'm pretty sure
this will change once the global versions do get released there will be a software update for the
chinese variants you'll be able to easily pop the google play store on the chinese variants
otherwise you can just load the global rom software since they're using the same hardware
once it is available so i'm not too phased about that and yes you can actually install things
using a third-party app installer such as the google app google chrome as well as google maps
over here but for some reason it doesn't pick up my location even though i have my location enabled
and all permissions enabled and yes youtube does work as well though you do have to install an
older version and no you cannot sign in though you can sign in to google chrome but only within the
browser and not the phone itself the hardware specs are incredible to say the least and yes
we do have a resolution somewhere between qhd and full hd it is a 6.76 inch oled 20x9 pretty
much curved waterfall display with 456 pixels per inch 1 billion colors hdr 10 plus i measured 1000
units of peak brightness using my lux meter 120 hertz refresh rates and an impressive
300 hertz touch sampling rate i love the fact that you can decide between 60 hertz 90 hertz
or 120 hertz when it comes to refresh rates and there's also a dynamic option which can fluctuate
all the way from 10 hertz all the way up to 120 which is fantastic the huawei p50 pro cannot do
90 hertz it is either 60 hertz or 120 hertz so once again another pro for the honor magic 3 pro
plus the honor magic 3 pro plus is an absolutely gorgeous device with an incredible water floor
design display an incredible hexagon camera setup that is not just for aesthetics but actually takes
insane pictures and videos i cannot wait to deep dive into those camera sensors in my full review
as well as touch on every little nitty gritty thing within the phone make sure to like subscribe
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which should be sometime next week this is tech nick and i'll catch you in the next one