Honor officially took the wraps off its latest high-end device, Magic 2, at an event in Beijing, trumpeting the device’s six cameras and a near 100 per cent screen-to-body ratio.

The device follows 2016’s Magic, which the Huawei-owned company said was the first “real” artificial intelligence (AI)-powered smartphone.

Magic 2 features triple camera set ups on the front and rear: a 16MP colour, 16MP ultra wide-area and 24MP monochrome lenses on the back; and a 16MP main sensor on the front accompanied by two 2MP secondary sensors to enable a 3D portrait mode on selfies and support high-quality face recognition.

The cameras use AI to identify “more than 60 object categories and hundreds of scenarios” in real time, to automatically adjust camera parameters according to the scene. It also supports artificial image stabilisation (AIS) to deliver high-quality night shots.

Magic 2 also incorporates a slider mechanism (an old familiar recently also adopted by Oppo) to provide an almost all-screen front panel. By concealing the cameras under the sensor, it also does away with the need for a notch, giving the 6.39-inch screen a cleaner look. It also includes an optical in-display fingerprint scanner.

As with Huawei’s latest Mate 20 line, it is powered by a Kirin 980 processor (the first in the line using a 7nm manufacture process) with a dual-core neural processing unit. It has an octacore CPU.

It also supports an AI assistant called Yoyo.

Sales will start in China on 6 November. Available through a number of online stores, pricing will be CNY3,799 ($547) for a 6GB RAM/128GB storage configuration, CNY4,299 (8GB/128GB) or CNY4,799 (8GB/256GB).

Colour options are black, red and blue. Launch plans for other markets were not revealed.

Honor Watch
The event also saw the brand unveiling what it called its “first flagship watch”. Honor Watch has a 1.2-inch AMOLED round screen and double-sided strap.

It is said to offer seven days of use on a single charge and support functions including real-time heart rate monitoring, precise navigation and health tracking.

Global release is slated for January 2019.