Shooting Video With Honor’s New Magic 9 Pro Max Lets You Feel Like a Movie Director – CNET

While standing on the roof of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles for the primary time, I pulled out my cellphone to commemorate the second by filming a video that pans towards the Hollywood signal. And then I did it once more, utilizing a particular cinema mode created by the legendary film digital camera firm ARRI to present it some previous Hollywood aptitude. The second video had a grainier look and will have been shot within the Sixties, with the sky showing teal.

This would possibly seem like a filter, but it surely’s really ARRI’s Nostalgia look — one in all many coloration configurations out there on the corporate’s cinema cameras, which begin at $80,000. I’m utilizing it on a smartphone from the Chinese firm Honor.

This Honor Magic 9 Pro Max, introduced Wednesday, appears loads like an iPhone 18 Pro Max, with an analogous unibody steel design and two-tone again glass. I used the cellphone in a comforting moss inexperienced, but it surely additionally is available in shadow black and glacier silver.

Honor’s give attention to video manufacturing underscores the rising pattern of smartphone use in studio environments. And the corporate is banking on its partnership with ARRI to assist its Magic 9 Pro Max stand out amongst a lot of telephones with their very own Hollywood pedigree — together with the iPhone.

Even when you aren’t accustomed to ARRI, you’ll doubtless know films filmed with the corporate’s cameras, similar to 2022’s Everything Everywhere All at Once and 1947’s Dark Passage, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. ARRI’s cameras are designed for film units and priced accordingly, costing $65,000 to upward of $95,000 new. Instead of making a less expensive digital camera, ARRI is bringing its coloration know-how to the Magic 9 Pro Max’s digital camera app, which features a devoted ARRI Cinema mode.

This cinema mode makes use of the cellphone’s 200-megapixel broad and 200-megapixel telephoto cameras and allows you to seize video with a wider 2.39:1 facet ratio — much like what’s utilized in theatrical releases. Cinema geeks could also be notably within the mode’s entry to ARRI’s Look Library and its capability to put in LUT recordsdata. Some are preloaded, whereas others will be downloaded from Honor’s and ARRI’s web sites.

To put it as merely as I can, Looks and LUT recordsdata can help you report video with a wide range of cinema-like appears, together with settings that may intently mimic an ARRI Alexa digital camera. 

During a media demonstration at ARRI’s Los Angeles facility, two totally different movie units have been recorded by each an Alexa digital camera and a Magic 9 Pro Max with related appears and LUT settings. Both units had excellent lighting, however the recorded footage confirmed related coloration shading and element. An ARRI rep identified that it’s a must to have a look at the effective particulars, just like the shadows of a bookshelf, to see the variations between the cellphone and cinema digital camera. Clearly, the Alexa digital camera was much better at capturing the scene, because it ought to.

Using the Magic 9 Pro Max, I filmed my very own fake rainy-evening scene that includes darkish inexperienced partitions, a brown set and two actors talking to one another. While I do just like the set’s movie-like look, I used to be extra impressed after I shuffled by way of the totally different ARRI Looks whereas watching the sundown at Griffith Observatory. Like the iPhone’s Photographic Styles for nonetheless photographs, ARRI Looks provide loads of decisions for video, together with a number of black-and-white choices. It’s enjoyable to know that they’re the identical choices out there to digital camera groups utilizing ARRI’s full-fledged cinema cameras.

Honor hasn’t shared the Magic 9 Pro Max’s worth or launch date, but it surely received’t be coming to the US. However, it does have fairly the spec record past its ARRI Cinema mode, together with a 6.8-inch show, an 8,000-mAh battery with 100-watt wired charging and 80-watt wi-fi charging. The cellphone’s powered by the brand new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 processor. 

A 50-megapixel ultrawide digital camera joins the broad and telephoto cameras, but it surely doesn’t help the ARRI Cinema mode. The 55-megapixel front-facing digital camera makes use of a sq. sensor, like Center Stage on current iPhones, permitting vertical selfies whether or not you’re holding the cellphone vertically or horizontally. Honor stated it is a first for Android. I’m hopeful that extra Android cellphone corporations will convey this function to their front-facing cameras in 2027.

The cellphone additionally ships with Android 17 and Honor’s MagicOS 11 overlay (it appears loads like iOS 27), and joins different Android telephones with help for Apple’s AirDrop by way of Quick Share.

As it stands, Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro Max is being utilized in some baseball broadcasts, and the 2025 movie 28 Years Later was shot primarily utilizing the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Honor’s partnership with ARRI would possibly result in extra cinema-quality options on smartphones, particularly if extra productions resolve the pocket-sized digital camera is the best option to inform extra big-screen tales.

Editors’ notice: Mike Sorrentino’s journey prices for the Honor occasion have been coated by Honor. The judgments and opinions of CNET are our personal.

Mike Sorrentino

Senior Editor

Mike Sorrentino is a Senior Editor for Mobile, overlaying telephones, texting apps and smartwatches — obsessing about how we are able to take advantage of them. Mike additionally retains a watch out on the film and toy trade, and outdoors of labor enjoys biking and pizza making.

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