How does the recently launched Honor Magic 6 Pro compare with the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra?
Both phones promise fast and powerful performance, AI features and long-lasting battery life, but does one triumph over the other?
Read on to find out how both smartphones compare and see which one is better suited to you.
Pricing and availability
Both the Honor Magic 6 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra are the most recent smartphone offerings respectively from Honor and Samsung.
Although more recently launched, the Honor Magic 6 Pro is currently the cheaper of two, retailing for £1099.99/€1299.99, and is not available in the US. The Galaxy S24 Ultra is currently retailing for £1249.99/€1449/$1299.99
Design
Both handsets have a 6.8-inch screen, but the Honor Magic 6 Pro has a curved display whereas the S24 Ultra is totally flat, which is a change from previous Galaxy generations. In his review of the Magic 6 Pro, Lewis Painter hailed the device as “easier to wield than the comparatively boxy 6.8-inch Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra.”
Both displays use an AMOLED screen with LTPO-enabled 1-120Hz refresh rate, but the Magic 6 Pro currently boasts a seriously impressive 5000-nit maximum brightness when watching HDR content. The S24 Ultra’s maximum 2600nits is still a decent offering though.
Samsung and Honor have also made their new flagship smartphones more durable than ever, with Samsung being the first manufacturer to use the new Gorilla Glass Armor, that’s 4x stronger than previous versions and reduces screen reflections by up to 75%. Honor, instead, opted for its in-house developed NanoCrystal Shield that it claims is “10x more drop-resistant than its predecessor.”
Camera
The Magic 6 Pro has a trio of cameras at the rear, consisting of a 50MP main lens, 180MP 2.5 periscope lens and a 50MP ultrawide lens. In comparison, the S24 Ultra’s camera setup includes a 200MP main lens, 50MP 5x periscope lens, 12MP ultrawide and 10MP 5x telephoto lens. Its front camera is a sufficient 12MP lens.
It might be easy to dismiss the Magic 6 Pro’s 50MP main lens when compared to the S24 Ultra’s 200MP, however thanks to Honor’s “industry first customised HDR sensor with ultra-large dynamic range,” the main camera excels in low-light conditions.
Lewis reports the Magic 6 Pro “offers way more true-to-life colour tuning than Samsung’s flagship.” He found in his S24 Ultra review that although it can capture a stunning shot with little effort, vibrant colours can be “sometimes too much.”
However, the S24 Ultra has the edge when it comes to editing, thanks to the new AI-powered photo editing tools. You’ll be presented with bespoke edit suggestions based on each shot, and extra features include erasers and generative edit means distractions and crooked images can be restored accurately.
Performance
The Honor Magic 6 Pro runs on Qualcomm’s top-end 2024 chipset, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Similarly the S24 Ultra runs on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy processor, which (as the name suggests) is exclusive to Samsung Galaxy devices.
We confirmed in our benchmark tests that both Magic 6 Pro and S24 Ultra boast impressively fast performance, thanks to their chipsets. The Magic 6 Pro and S24 Ultra were evenly matched in both our Geekbench 6 single-core and multi-core scores, with the Magic 6 Pro scoring 2232 and 6711 respectively. The S24 Ultra scored 2229 and 6853.
Unsurprisingly as top-end Android smartphones, both come running on Android 14, with the Magic 6 Pro running Honor’s MagicOS 8 skin and the S24 Ultra running Samsung’s OneUI skin. Lewis reports that “the updated MagicOS 8 is arguably the closest to iOS you’ll get on an Android right now” but “it’s still not quite up to the super-polished levels of iOS.” In comparison, the OneUI skin has a range of tweaks and new features that give the Samsung experience “a much needed refresh.”
Another similarity between the two is their incorporation and utilisation of AI. Samsung turned heads with Galaxy AI, an umbrella term for the AI-powered tools available on the S24 lineup, that includes the aforementioned photo editing features and live translation. The Magic 6 Pro somewhat similarly includes MagicPortal and MagicLM, which offer a unique approach to AI.
MagicPortal can analyse messages and images to provide shortcuts to apps, while MagicLM is an on-device assistant that can handle general knowledge queries. However, as both of these features are new, Lewis notes that “Samsung’s Galaxy AI tools are way more helpful in day-to-day life than what the Magic 6 Pro offers.”
Battery life
As with most Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 powered smartphones, battery life is incredibly efficient, and this is certainly the case with both the Magic 6 Pro and S24 Ultra. We found the Magic 6 Pro would end a 16-hour day with around 45-50% battery remaining and the S24 Ultra would end a 16-hour day with around 50-60% left.
The Magic 6 Pro does, however, support faster charging with 80W Honor Supercharge and 66W Wireless Supercharge, although the chargers are sold separately. However, it’s worth noting that the S24 Ultra does still offer 45W charging, which isn’t to be sniffed at.
We found the Magic 6 Pro went from 1-100% in just 45 minutes, compared to the S24 Ultra’s 71 minutes. 30-minutes of light gaming drained the S24 Ultra by 7% whereas the Magic 6 Pro drained by just 6%.
