Honor Launches Photography-Focused 200 Series Smartphones

Honor is on a roll. Fresh off the back of its recent collaborations with Porsche Design – including the unique Magic V2 RSR we recently reviewed – the brand has announced its new 200 Series, a duo of photography-focused smartphones developed in collaboration with the legendary Parisian photography studio Studio Harcourt. Claiming in its latest press release to be “the fastest growing smartphone brand in Europe”, Honor latest release is a double-drop that features the new 200 and 200 Pro devices – a confident move in today’s busy smartphone market and one, perhaps, that is testament to its ambitions.

Photography is at the heart of the Honor 200 Series and both the 200 and 200 Pro feature a shared line up of four onboard cameras; each device comes equipped with a 50 megapixel main camera, 50 megapixel telephoto camera, 12 megapixel ultra-wide camera, and 50 megapixel front-facing selfie camera. The telephoto, ultra-wide and selfie cameras are identical across the two devices, with the telephoto featuring Sony’s IMX856 sensor and the ultra-wide capable of capturing a 112° field of view. Whilst the IMX856 is quite dated now (having been released in 2018), it was once a flagship sensor from the Japanese photography giant and still holds up today thanks to its all-pixel autofocus, impressive double-exposure HDR functionality, and its ability to capture 4K video at 30 frames per second. The differences between the two phones are found in their main cameras; though they share the same 50 megapixel resolution, the main camera on the 200 uses the more recent Sony IMX906 sensor, while the main camera on the 200 Pro is held up by the same H9000 sensor found in the Honor’s flagship Magic6 Pro smartphone. The H9000 is a 1/1.3” sensor with a four-cell (Quad Bayer) filter array capable of rendering colors beautifully in both day and night scenes, and together with to the camera’s lens – stabilized and featuring a f/1.9 aperture, slightly bigger than the 200’s f/1.95 aperture – the main camera on the 200 Pro sounds very promising.

Hardware aside, Honor has worked with Studio Harcourt to co-engineer an AI-powered algorithm they say will improve portraits taken by users. The Paris-based studio, founded by French photographer Cosette Harcourt in 1933, lent the tech brand its near century-long knowledge of light and picture making, with the two teams working together to analyze “thousands of images” as well as “over 1,000 lighting scenarios and millions of datasets” in search of “the perfect balance of light and shadow in”, according to the press release.

Both phones are powered by Snapdragon processors, but it’s the Pro 200 that features one of the chipmaker’s latest – the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3. This chipset similar in specs to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 – Snapdragon’s current flagship mobile processor – that’s found in market-leading devices like the Samsung S24 and Sony’s latest Xperia 1 VI. It features an eight-core processor that, together with the onboard 12 GB of RAM, should make light work of demanding apps and games, adding to the Pro 200’s overall credentials as quite a versatile device. Supporting this is the Adreno 735, a highly capable GPU that will help to render graphics smoothly and seamlessly.

The Pro 200 features a 6.78-inch AMOLED, quad-curved display with a 120Hz refresh rate and a peak brightness of 4,000 nits; the 200 model features a very similar display, albeit slightly smaller at 6.7-inches. Honor’s proprietary “Eye Comfort Display” technology is found on both phones, a feature the brand has implemented to reduce eye fatigue in its users. It does this by adapting the screen brightness and warmth to a user’s environment, reducing blue light, as well using AI to detect a user’s circadian cycles and adjusting the screen accordingly. Both devices have also received Tüv Rheinland‘s ‘Flicker Free Certification’.

Holding everything in place on both models is Honor’s MagicOS 8.0, an operating system based on Android 14, but designed from scratch by the brand. Both devices feature an impressive 5,200mAh battery and are capable of 100W fast charging. They have Bluetooth 5.3 onboard for fast, seamless connectivity to peripherals like headphones and gaming controllers, as well as featuring dual SIM slots.

Both the Honor 200 and 200 Pro are available now in the UK via the brand’s website. Honor 200 comes in ‘Moonlight White’, ‘Emerald Green’ and ‘Black’, and is priced starting at £499.99 GBP depending on specs; Honor 200 Pro comes in ‘Ocean Cyan’, ‘Moonlight White’ and ‘Black’, priced at £699.99 GBP. Both models are launching in Europe soon.