Honor Magic 5 Release Date, Price and Specs Rumors

News is starting to emerge about Chinese manufacturer Honor’s next series of flagship phones, the Magic 5. It’s been almost a year since the latest generation arrived, so it’s no surprise that a launch is now confirmed to be coming soon.

Here’s everything we’ve discovered about the Honor Magic 5 so far.

When will the Honor Magic 5 be released?

Honor has now confirmed that it will launch the Magic 5 – along with the European debut of the foldable Magic Vs – at the MWC show in Barcelona, ​​with an event scheduled for February 27. The event will take place at 1:30 p.m. local time, which is 12:30 p.m. GMT / 7:30 a.m. ET / 4:30 a.m. PT.

The timing of the launch makes sense given that the Honor Magic 4 was revealed at almost exactly the same time at MWC last year. Despite this European launch event, only a few models are coming to Europe and other territories, but the standard and Ultimate models remained only available in China. As with previous models, you probably won’t be able to buy the Magic 5 in North America.

How much will the Honor Magic 5 cost?

There’s no official word from Honor on the price of the upcoming models, so we have to consider how much the previous generations cost:

• Honor Magic 4 – ¥6,725 (about $999 / £818 / €922)
• Honor Magic 4 Pro – £949 / €1,099 (around $1,159)
• Honor Magic 4 Lite 5G – £299 / €349 (around $365)
• Honor Magic 4 Ultimate – ¥8,677 (about $1,289/£1,055/€1,190)
• Honor Magic 3 – €899 (about $973 / £797)
• Honor Magic 3 Pro – €1,099 (about $1,189 / £975)
• Honor Magic 3 Pro Plus – €1,499 (about $1,622 / £1,328)

This list above makes for confusing reading as we have a mix of currencies which may not take into account local and other taxes. Honor announced the Magic 3 range with Euro pricing, although it didn’t release the phones in that territory. The Magic 4 phones had two Western models and two that remained in China, with prices reflecting this.

Putting it all together and assuming Honor mimics the Magic 4 generation lineup, here are the approximate prices we think you’re likely to see when the Magic 5 models appear:

• Honor Magic 5 – $999 / £799 / €899
• Honor Magic 5 Pro – $1,149 / £949 / €1,099
• Honor Magic 5 Ultimate – $1,299 / £1,049 / €1,199
• Honor Magic 5 Lite – $369 / £299 / €349

Obviously, these prices are speculative, but we think they should be in the right range. We saw a report online that featured a supposed spec sheet for the new models (the details of which we cover below) and had three models with the following prices:

• Honor Magic 5 – ¥4,999 (about $740/£599/€679)
• Honor Magic 5 Pro – ¥5,999 (about $888 / £719 / €819)
• Honor Magic 5 Prestige – ¥7,999 (about $1,185/£959/€1,093)

These seem cheaper, which would be a welcome change in these days of ever-increasing prices.

What features will we see in the Honor Magic 5?

As with the other sections of this article, we are still awaiting announcements from Honor regarding the specs of its upcoming handsets. But, a few leaks have already made their way into the public eye, and we can do some educational math on what the Magic 5 lineup will look like.

A few design renders have surfaced, with this one from Twitter leaker @ rodent950 being the most extensive. It shows a similar layout to the Magic 4 generation of devices, with the circular camera section the main feature on the back. Tellingly, the cameras here closely match the design of the official launch poster above, so it’s likely that this design is accurate.

A recent Weibo post from the wonderfully named The Factory Manager is Classmate Guan also seems to outline what the three potential Magic 5 devices will include. In a leaked spec sheet featured in the post, it says there will be a Magic 5, Magic 5 Pro and Magic 5 Prestige – which appears to be this year’s version of the Pro Plus or Ultimate.

All will feature Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipsets, 6.8-inch LTPO AMOLED panels with 1-120Hz variable refresh rates, 2160Hz high-frequency dimming, HDR10+, 480Hz touch frequency, sensors under-display fingerprint sensor and a peak brightness of 1,100 nits. Not bad at all.

The Magic 5 and Magic 5 Pro will be available in 8+256GB, 12+256GB, and 12+512GB configurations, while the Magic 5 Prestige offers a solitary 12+512GB model. Memory is LPDDR5X and storage is UFS 4.0.

The front cameras are the same across the range, with a 13Mp Sony IMX688 sensor, but there are some differences in the rear bays. The Magic 5 is expected to come with a triple array of primary 54Mp Sony IMX800, 50Mp Sony IMX758 and 64Mp OmniVision OV64B.

There are some tweaks with the Magic 5 Pro, which is listed as featuring a new Sony IMX878 sensor that comes with OIS support. The OmniVision OV64B reappears, but this time it’s joined by a Sony IMX516 sensor. For the Magic 5 Prestige, the list includes the Sony IMX989 1-inch sensor with OIS, a Sony IMX758 50Mp sensor, a Sony IMX516 sensor, plus an unspecified additional camera.

Battery life should be good, with a 5000mAh battery installed in the Magic 5 (including 66W fast charging) and 4800mAh batteries (100W wired/50W wireless) for the Pro and Prestige.

A few other differences include IPX54 waterproofing for the Magic 5 and IP68 for the others, while the Magic 5 will benefit from 2D facial recognition with the remaining two models using superior 3D recognition capabilities.

Most other specs are standard on all three models, including Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.3, USB 3.1, NFC, and MagicOS 7.0.

It won’t be long before we can see the Honor Magic 5 devices for ourselves, but until then you can check out our guide to the best smartphones to see which models the range will have to overcome, as well as the best phones coming out. in 2023.