Having recently reviewed the best phone I have ever used and then one that any other company apart from Google would have consigned to the bin 18 months ago this was always going to be, shall we say, difficult. In the past I have reviewed several other Honor offerings, so to be as fair as possible I took a good bit longer before presenting my thoughts.
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click image to enlargeThe Honor Magic 4 Lite measures 16.5x7.5x.8cm and weighs 192grams. The 6.8 inch display is 1080x1980.
The right side has the volume rocker and recessed below this the on-off button. The base has the USB ‘C’ connector for charging and data transfer via an OTG device, also a microphone and SIM entry point. Both the left side and top are clear.
The rear is dominated by a raised circular Matrix at the top end which contains its three cameras and LED flash.
As regular readers will know I am one of the small minority that switch phones off at night so the boot up time is something that matters to me and 63 seconds is vastly excessive, when I queried this with the PR person he checked and said ‘it’s because its Beta software normal boot would 5-6 seconds’, well I can only mention what I get sent to use. Once booted doing normal tasks it was perfectly normal so maybe he is right.
The Android version is 7. The processor is a Snapdragon 695 Octa core offering running at 1.8GHz. It has 16GB of storage and 4GB of RAM, the shipping units are said to have 6GB RAM.
The reason for the early version of Android is a dispute between Honor and the USA but note the security of the unit is still 2022 and Google Play is right up to date. These problems do not seem to affect the phone in any way.
I regularly take photos at an event with a wide stage and not a lot of depth to step back so the lack of a ultra-wide angle lens enabling me to capture the whole seen is a problem for me.
It has three rear cameras a 48MP f/1.8, 2MP Macro f/2.4 and f/2.4 Bokeh offering.
It is supplied with 66W charger able to take the phone from 0% to 80% of charge in just 30 minutes. The 4800mAh battery is stated to give nearly 13 hours or video playback on a single charge.
The unit sent to me was Titanium Silver which has a matt finish so no finger marks showing on the back.
I would have been happier reviewing a unit that was not Beta software but that was what I was offered.
At the time of publication the Honor Magic 4 Lite is available from Amazon for £273.48.
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