HONOR 400 Hands-on, First impressions: AI Everything

Initial verdict: The HONOR 400 might come with heavy AI messaging in its marketing in the Philippines but make no mistake, it’s not a 1-trick pony. It performs well as a mid-range smartphone, packing serious hardware and optics that make it a serious contender in its price range.

Pros

Excellent cameras
Lots of AI features

Cons

Not as premium-looking as the CN version

HONOR is launching its 400 series smartphones in the Philippines on June 17, kicking off with the non-pro model. Despite the strong emphasis on AI features, the HONOR 400 isn’t just about flashy tech. Look past the buzzwords, and you’ll see it’s a strong competitor in the mid-range smartphone market.

HONOR 400 First Impressions Philippines: Design

Let’s address the elephant in the room first – yes, the HONOR 400 looks a lot like the newest iPhones. That’s not new or novel, but it’s an important observation to make nonetheless. The phone’s relatively flat with curved corners, interrupted only by the camera module stuck on the upper left side of the phone. I like that HONOR has gone with a different module design than the usual giant circle at the middle that’s been popular nowadays, which gives the phone a slightly different look than other mid-range phones in the market.

The phone is slightly smaller than your typical phone although I wouldn’t call it compact. The smaller overall footprint makes it a little better to handle than the brand’s flagship, but not by much. I like the overall fit and finish of the phone, though I’m a little puzzled why the global variant of the HONOR 400 doesn’t have a glass back like the Chinese version does.

HONOR 400 First impressions Philippines: Display and Camera

Like I said earlier the HONOR 400 has a smaller display compared to the brand’s other phones, making it a little more compact. The phone packs a 6.55-inch AMOLED panel with all the bells and whistles you’d expect, including a 120Hz refresh rate, HDR, 5000 nits peak brightness and 3840Hz PWM dimming.

Overall image quality is very good, and as mentioned the phone uses a flat panel rather than a curved one. While preference for the former over the latter is quickly becoming a personal one for most people, no matter where you land on that side of the debate you’ll find that the display is, for the most part, stunning.

On the camera side of things, you’re looking at a 200-megapixel main camera that has a f/1.9 aperture, OIS and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera.

We’re still doing our tests for the camera but the results are very impressive so far. The HONOR 400 does extremely well in both bright, well-lit environments as well as low-light situations. Exposure is good, there’s plenty of detail in shots. Dynamic range is handled well, and while there are tiny traces of the software algorithm trying to massage the image, overall picture quality is very, very good.

HONOR 400 First Impressions Philippines: Hardware and Software

The HONOR 400 is equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, though we’re not sure what the storage/RAM variant will be once it drops in the Philippines.Our review unit came with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage.

Benchmark scores put the phone squarely in mid-range territory, and while the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 processor isn’t necessarily what you’d think of when it comes to gaming, it can hold its own in titles like Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves.

What’s more interesting is the fact that the HONOR 400 is the only device right now that uses Google’s Veo 2 video generation model, which allows it to generate AI videos from photos taken by the device. This means you can animate most, if not all, photos that you take (or download off of the internet) though you’re limited to just 5 seconds of footage. That includes old photos of loved ones that may have long shuffled off the mortal coil, and the result is fairly good (and tear-jerking, if the said loved one’s passing is relatively recent).

You’re also limited to just 30 image to video generation requests a day, likely to prevent spamming and backing up Google’s image to video generation capabilities. There’s also the question of how much this will be once it becomes a paid service, because HONOR clearly states that the feature is on a limited free trial.

Software-wise you’re treated to the same, not-exactly-EMUI-but-looks-a-lot-like-it software layer that they’re dubbing MagicOS 9. It gives you a relatively easy to understand interface and lots of customization options, but it still retains the same look and feel as the EMUI, so take from that what you will.

The phone ships with a 6000mAh battery inside of it along with a 66W charger and we expect it to be able to last the whole day on a single charge. We’ll report back with a more solid performance number once we get through our full review.

HONOR 400 First Impressions: Initial Conclusions

While HONOR’s AI marketing for the HONOR 400 might seem overbearing, the phone itself is a solid device. The styling is great, the cameras are solid, the display is fantastic and performance is generally what you’d expect from an upper-midrange phone.

The only thing left here is the price. We’re hoping that HONOR gives their latest mid-ranger a competitive price since the mid-range market in the Philippines is already stacked with all the new releases from their competitors.