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Honor Magic9 Pro Max in for review

Hollywood-favorite ARRI is partnering with Honor in an attempt to escape the movie studios and slide into more and more consumer pockets. Following the limited trial with the Robot Phone it's now faced with a far more substantial challenge - Honor's next flagship. The Honor Magic9 Pro Max is about to get its global debut and is looking to mount a serious challenge for the best cameraphone title.

We've got the Honor Magic9 Pro Max in the office and while it will be a while before we can share its full review we can now do an unbxoing. Ours is the Moss Green model, and it comes with a green-tinted transparent silicone case, a 100W charger, and a USB cable.

The charger has a USB-A port instead of USB-C, a shame in late 2026.

The Magic9 Pro Max is a definite step up from its predecessor, which was bland and uninteresting. It had a glass back, a plain circular camera island, and, in our case, a plain dark grey paint job. In contrast, the Magic9 Pro Max has a dynamic design, inspired by the ARRI movie cameras.

The green color is interesting and unique. The phone uses a single-piece metal chassis with a cutout at the rear for the glass insert needed for wireless charging. There are two special buttons on the phone: a customizable AI Button on the left side of the phone, and a dedicated camera control key with touch and press capabilities, similar to the iPhone Pro models.

The Magic9 Pro Max in hand

The camera hardware on the back is what makes this phone special. But as Honor learned over the past couple of years the top-tier hardware needs to be backed by equally good software to get the most out of it. This is where ARRI comes in and the logo on the glass offers a helpful reminder.

For those who aren't in the know, ARRI is the German video camera maker that builds the ubiquitous Alexa cameras. ARRI Alexas have essentially become the industry standard equipment for professional motion capture in the world.

The Magic9 Pro Max is equipped with ARRI's full set of tools for creators: from the ARRI Image Science color pipeline, through to ARRI Looks, its dedicated ARRI LogC3 Curve and ARRI's Wide Gamut 3 10-bit color (to the tune of full APV 4:2:2 chroma sampling, essentially a visually lossless format).

Special in-camera features

Shooting in 10-bit log enables you to tap into a deeper well of colors. You can tailor your footage to your own taste, or use any of the more than 10,000 LUTs supported by ARRI's LogC3 Curve (technically, a LUT (Look-Up Table) maps input color values to output color values. It can change contrast, saturation, color balance, and overall appearance). A nice pro feature is the ability to add a LUT to the camera app while capturing log footage: that way you're not looking at a low-contrast, desaturated image while recording, but at an approximation of your desired end result.

We got to attend Honor's special launch event for the Magic9 Pro Max in Los Angeles, where we naturally shot quite a few photos and videos with the phone. Here are just a few of those for you to enjoy right now (but more are on the way). These are shots from the pair of 200MP imagers on the Magic9 Pro Max in both good and low light. Enjoy!