I am so disappointed 😔

Y’all might have seen my other post recently, discussing how much I’ve been enjoying the Honor Magic V3 (global edition). Talking about its insanely great hardware, awesome battery life, and how I even love Magic OS, which has been a pleasant surprise.

Well I’ve got bad news: my review was premature. I hadn’t started using the cameras much. Well now I have, and they are bad. Like really, really bad.

Which, honestly feels like such an unforced error on Honor’s part. Like, the cameras aren’t actually bad at all. They are large sensors, wide aperture, good lenses, etc. Colors are great, exposure is good, lighting and shadow are handled pretty well.

But it’s the software that’s the problem. Specifically, the hyper aggressive AI “sharpening” (that can NOT be disabled) and does WAY more than simple sharpening. As you can see in the attached photo, which looks NOTHING like my daughter, the AI has basically smoothed/erased her actual face out of existence and crudely generated a cartoon AI face in its place. It’s horrific, creepy, and awful. No dad ever wants to see something like that happen to their kids 😅

Hyperbole aside, it really is quite bad, and it shows up in pretty much all photos to some extent, with the worst/most aggressive AI results showing up whenever the subject is even slightly out of focus (which basically means ALWAYS in medium or lower lighting.)

But wait, I hear you saying, can’t you fix this by using pro mode?? Technically yes, but as y’all probably already know, Pro mode is extremely limited and only works with the main camera/lens. That’s just not a viable solution on a device meant to take casual photos of your family and friends with on a constant basis.

Don’t believe me? Google “honor Magic ruins photos reddit”. You’ll see that I’m hardly the first to complain about this. It’s most noticeable on faces (because badly generated AI faces are the worst kind of creepy), but apparently it also applies to any other blurry-ish details in the photo that the camera is trying to “guess” at using AI.

It’s just such a let down because the teams at Honor obviously put so much amazing work into this phone specifically. It’s just a true technical marvel, a work of art. And yet due to this single glaring flaw, it suddenly becomes basically unusable for me (and others who have similarly reported on this problem.)

It’s heartbreaking!

Honor! Are you listening??! How can you let your teams down like this?? PLEASE fix this problem and you’ll literally have one of the best phones for sale in the world right now. Rivaling Apple and Samsung even!

Ok, I’ve said my piece. I hope someone at Honor reads this and is able to hear tbis criticism in the constructive manner I mean it. I/we truly want to love this phone. If not for this one awful bug, it would easily be a contender for best phone of 2024. Here’s hoping a software fix is on the way!! 🤞🤞🤞

Sincerely, Paul