Honor’s Magic 8 Pro is getting a new AI button

Honor has revealed the design of its upcoming Magic 8 Pro flagship in a selection of images shared exclusively with The Verge, confirming that the phone will include a dedicated AI button. When the Magic 8 series launches in China next month, the phones will be among the first powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, which was announced today by Qualcomm.

The Magic phones are Honor’s flagships, and the Pro models tend to launch first in China and then later in Europe, where they typically cost upwards of €1,000 (around $1,200) and lean on flagship chips, big batteries, and powerful cameras. From what we know so far, the Magic 8 Pro will be no exception.

In broad strokes, the Magic 8 Pro looks much like the Magic 7 Pro. The phone’s back is flat, rather than having subtle curvature like the previous model, but otherwise things seem familiar. Even the light blue color looks a lot like one of last year’s hues.

The biggest difference is on the phone’s side, where we can see an extra button in addition to the fingerprint sensor and volume rocker. Honor tells me that this is a dedicated AI button, rather than a camera control, though exactly what AI functions it will enable I don’t yet know. Honor is also announcing a new AI feature called Magic Color, which lets you restyle images and videos using the color palette from another image of your choice, but presumably it has more AI tricks in mind for the phone.

On the back we can see a round rear camera island, boasting what looks like four camera lenses, but is most likely three plus a ToF (time of flight) sensor for depth detection. We don’t know much about those cameras, but Honor’s CMO Guo Rui did share a camera sample to Weibo taken on a 200-megapixel, 85mm-equivalent, f/2.6 camera, which should mean a more powerful telephoto than the Magic 7 Pro’s 72mm periscope.

Honor has also confirmed that the Magic 8 phones will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the latest iteration of the company’s flagship phone chip. Honor isn’t the only company ready for the 8 Elite Gen 5 though. Xiaomi has previously announced that the new chipset will be used in its Xiaomi 17 series, set for a full reveal Thursday.

Last year Honor announced the Magic 7 and Magic 7 Pro, eventually joined by a Lite model too, so I’m expecting the company to announce two phones at its Chinese launch event on October 15th. They’ll be joined by the MagicPad 3 Pro, also powered by the 8 Elite Gen 5, and will hopefully see a European release some time early next year. The company is rumored to be working on new Magic 8 Ultra and Mini models too, though those will also reportedly arrive in 2026.