Image Source: Honor

BEIJING, March 17 (TMTPOST) — Chinese smartphone brand and Huawei spinoff Honor launched its Magic 4 series on Thursday at a launch conference held in China, starting from 3,999 yuan.

Honor announced that there will be two flagship models for the Magic series this year——Magic V and Magic 4. The difference is that the former adopts a foldable design while the latter adopts a conventional screen design.

There are three smartphone models on this year’s Magic 4 series: Magic 4, Magic 4 Pro and Magic 4 Ultimate, starting from 3,999 yuan, 5,499 yuan and 7,999 yuan respectively.

Honor’s CEO Zhao Ming said in an interview that it is Honor’s goal to create competition in the high-end smartphone market in China and challenge Apple’s dominant market status. Zhao said that Apple has become the dominant player in the high-end market in China after Huawei’s smartphone business was hammered by the blacklisting by the United States.

Zhao believes that the competition in the high-end smartphone market has been increasingly fierce and mostly focuses on hardware, performance and camera system. Despite the fierce competition, the user experience has not been improved accordingly, he said, adding that Apple is dominating the market.

At the launch conference, Zhao made direct comparison between the new Magic 4 series and iPhone. He claimed that Magic 4 Pro outperforms iPhone 13 Pro in both gaming use scenes and other mixed usage scenes.

It is worth noting that the Magic 4 series has an ultimate version for the Chinese market, which has a more advanced camera system. According to statistics from Honor, Magic 4 Ultimate ranks first on DXOMARK with a score of 146.

Honor also announced that it has reached a strategic partnership with Midea, Microsoft and Lixiang on different use scenes. The cooperation with Lixiang, a Chinese EV brand, has caught media attention. Zhao has clarified that Honor will not opt into the car-making business for an extended period of time but would focus on innovations in smartphone’s usage in cars. He also said that Honor will work with car makers to bring about new experiences.