Honor 200 Pro Smartphone Review – Will It Crush The iPhone And Samsung Galaxy Phones?

When the first smartphones arrived on the scene roughly 15 years ago, OEMs started more or less on equal footing. However, Things quickly changed with the landscape dominated by the big three. With the pace of new technological development and price reduction, more OEMs entered the smartphone market. Most of these players operated in the entry-level to mid-tier bracket. Fast-forward to the past few years, which has changed again, with those OEMs now offering high-end and premium smartphones. One such brand is Honor. And with the release of its latest flagship, the Honor 200 Pro, the brand has showcased what it can deliver to the public. 

Having entered the foldable market with its Honor Magic V2 earlier in 2024, it’s shaping up to be quite a solid year for the brand. The Honor 200 Pro sets the tone for what is achievable from the previously considered, predominantly entry-level to mid-tier OEM. The big question is whether the 200 Pro can compete at the top with the big three.

Build and Design

Unlike most modern smartphones, the Honor 200 series features a curved design on the front and rear of the device. It’s reminiscent of an era roughly 10 years ago when every other phone featured this aesthetic. It stands out from the crowd by switching things up in this sense. 

Another of its standout design aspects is its elongated camera housing. The design takes its queues from the Casa Milá architecture prominent in Barcelona. It protrudes quite a bit from the base and is noticeable on a flat surface. It won’t wobble around, however, unless you press down on it so that it won’t bother users too much in the long run. 

Its rear is labelled “Elegant Coastline Design,” featuring a wave texture. This is meant to resemble the waves of the ocean, further emphasised by its ocean-cyan colour. But it’s not just for aesthetics, with the texture offering decent grip when in use, giving users confidence using it one-handed. 

Screen and Display

A noticeable uptick in lower-tiered smartphones has been the inclusion of more advanced screens. With the Honor 200 Pro, this includes the addition of an OLED panel. The 6.78” screen also features 120Hz and HDR support with brightness up to 4,000 nits. 

With a resolution of 1,224×2,700px, it has a pixel density of 437ppi. It may still be somewhat down from the 500+ pixel density of the leading brands, but it’s a significant jump from the brand’s 2023 offerings, which measured below 400ppi. 

The device is quite tall in comparison to other smartphones. It measures 163.3×75.2×8.2mm, even taller than the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. With its dimensions, it has a 90.8% screen-to-body ratio, primarily thanks to its curved display. 

In terms of the quality, it looks fantastic. You can easily spend hours watching 2K YouTube videos in 120Hz. When playing videos or listening to music, you minimise the app, which minimises the display cutout around the front-facing camera. This is a very nifty way to use the space on the screen, and it can also be clicked to expand additional options for the respective apps from there. 

Performance and Battery Life

The Honor 200 Pro features the same Qualcomm chipset as the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. However, the CPU featured on the Pro is a more conservative option of the two – the Qualcomm SM8635 Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 (4 nm)  versus the Qualcomm SM8650-AC Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (4 nm). 

The complete hardware specifications include an Octa-Core CPU with x1 3.0GHz Cortex-X4, x4 2.8GHz Cortex-A720 and x3 2.0GHz Cortex-A520. This option includes the Adreno 735 GPU. 

There are four options to choose from regarding internal storage and RAM. The two 12GB RAM options offer 256GB and 512GB storage, whereas the 16GB RAM options offer 512GB and 1TB internal storage, respectively. 

The device runs on Android 14, with Honor confirming up to 4 major Android upgrades. The UI atop the firmware is Honor’s own MagicOS 8, which offers plenty of productivity tools, AI support and many useful features added to the mix. 

Performance is solid, with multitasking a breeze. Even with the lower-powered Qualcomm option, it was more than able to hold its own. During the weeks of testing and putting the device through testing, I didn’t experience any lag or jitter.  

The battery life is excellent. With its 5,200mAh battery, more often than not, I was able to push the gaps between recharging close to two full days. Even on a day of heavy usage and content creation, which included a few hours of video recording, I could still push the battery to a full day’s use. 

Camera and Photography

In terms of its camera hardware, the Honor 200 Pro features a triple-lens camera with the following specifications: 

• 50MP (Main), f/1.9, 1/1.3″, 1.2µm, PDAF, OIS 

• 50MP (Telephoto), f/2.4, PDAF, OIS, 2.5x optical zoom, 50x digital zoom 

• 12MP (Ultrawide), f/2.2, 112˚ angle, AF 

The camera combination takes perfect images. Colour reproduction and clarity are excellent, especially for outdoor photos in bright sunlight.  

Nighttime photography is also decent but doesn’t quite match the quality of the top brands. It’s sometimes a bit inconsistent and needs a steady hand to get quality images. However, the images can be significant when you hit the sweet spot. Using the pro settings options on the camera, I could take a decent video of the full moon using a gimbal to stabilise the shot. 

However, Honor has branded the device as a “portrait master.” This title was cemented when the brand announced its partnership with Parisian portrait photography house Studio Harcourt. The duo worked on the configuration settings of the device’s portrait capabilities, co-engineering what’s labelled as the Honor AI Portrait Engine. 

The presets enabled when switching to portrait mode – not to be mistaken with a selfie mode, as it utilises the primary camera – the settings and filters used deliver professional-grade quality portraits. There are three colour palettes: Vibrant, Colour and Classic. Vibrant features the conventional colour palette, with colour adding a gradient filter, and classic features a black-and-white image. These offer effects like bokeh, focus, vignette and many other behind-the-scenes settings to get the most out of the portrait image. 

Is the Honor 200 Pro Worth It?

The Honor 200 Pro is a great device. With a brilliant screen and camera, it offers an excellent bang for your buck. It’s not quite at the high-end level compared to the iPhone and Galaxy S series. And, with a price just below the R20,000 mark, it features more as an upper mid-range smartphone while offering some high-end features. It delivers a pretty well-rounded performance. 

Compared to the Honor 200 Lite

In the weeks before receiving the Honor 200 Pro, I also had the opportunity to have some hands-on experience with the Honor 200 Lite. 

For the most part, the Lite offers users a similar experience. The most significant differences are the camera, chipset and battery. The design lacks the curved approach of the Pro, with the screen featuring an AMOLED panel with a 90Hz refresh rate.  

The camera on the Lite also features a triple-lens configuration with a 108MP, 5MP and 2MP setup. It isn’t a bad camera, especially for a mid-tier price range. However, compared to the Honor 200 Pro, it can’t compete with the quality. 

With a retail price of R9,999, it’s quite an impressive offering.