The Magic 6 Pro is Honor’s newest Android flagship phone. Launched a day before MWC 2024 kicked off in Barcelona, the Honor smartphone comes with AI features on board.
This is 2024, after all. Most flagships you’ll see this year will launch with some sort of AI features. Not all of them are generative AI features, either. You’re not just going to engage with a chatbot to have it generate text, images, and other types of content.
AI on phones also means better computational photography and novel features you haven’t seen before, like two of the Magic 6 Pro’s new tricks.
Magic Capsule and Magic Portal are AI features you won’t find on other devices. One lets you perform actions on the phone with nothing but your eyes. The other allows you to interact with the phone’s UI faster than before. I’ve tried both of them, but they’re not exactly magical. They’re not useless, though, especially the Magic Portal.
Do we need eye-tracking on phones?
Magic Capsule is a feature that Honor teased before the Magic 6 Pro’s announcement. Honor customized a car to work with a mobile app that lets users move a vehicle with their eyes. Magic Capsule tracks your eyes, which is unusual for a mobile phone. The Vision Pro spatial computer does this to let you navigate the operating system. That’s not the case for Magic Capsule.
Also, you won’t be moving any cars anytime soon. Instead, you’ll be able to turn off timers and alarms by just looking at them. I’ve tried the timer trick, and it worked, even though the phone was not set up to work with my eyes. The Magic 6 Pro features a Dynamic Island-like notch at the top that includes 3D sensors to scan your eyes.
I’m not sure if Magic Capsule is something I’d routinely use on a phone until it evolves into something more useful. I’ll also add that you’ll need to train yourself to hold your gaze where you want the action to happen. Look away from the notification, and you won’t trigger it.
Welcome to the Magic Portal
Magic Portal, on the other hand, has potential. I likened it to the Rabbit r1 initially. I thought the Magic OS AI would be able to do things similar to the Rabbit device. That’s not the case, though the goal is similar: To speed up your interactions.
The Rabbit r1 speeds things up by performing in-app actions for you. Magic Portal does so by guessing your intent and letting you skip a few steps to perform an action faster.
The demo I tried is fairly simple. It took place in the chat app WhatsApp. I pressed and held onto elements on the screen and then dragged and dropped them on the right side of the screen, where a dynamic vertical list of apps would appear.
If I picked up a photo, I could share it with an app like eBay to find similar products. I could also share it on social media by picking a different app from the list. The AI would learn from my actions and readjust the position of the apps on the right side accordingly.
But what’s even more interesting is the AI’s ability to read text. Say, for example, a friend sends you an address in a text that also contains other information. Tap and hold on to the message, and the AI will know the text message includes an address. Therefore, Google Maps will be the top app that appears on the right side of the screen.
Finally, if it’s just a string of text, you can move it to social media, email, and other apps that can handle text.
Magic Portal will work with many of the apps you have installed on the phone, but not every app will be compatible. According to Honor, Magic Portal supports around 100 of the most frequently used apps globally. That list should grow in the future.
The demo I tried focused on WhatsApp. You’d drag the bits of text or an image you selected to the app you want to use. Once you drop the item on the app, an app window will open on top of WhatsApp. This gives you a preview of the app you’ve shared content with, and you can tap a button to continue to that app or you can return to WhatsApp.
The Magic Portal gestures don’t work with every application, however. Also, tapping and holding on items in WhatsApp isn’t ideal. The underlying app thinks you want to react to a message with an emoji.
But Magic Portal proves that mobile experiences can get faster thanks to AI rather than faster hardware. The Magic 6 Pro runs on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip as the Galaxy S24 series and Xiaomi 14 phones.
