Barely 24 hours after Xiaomi, it is Honor’s turn to announce the upcoming arrival of its first smartphone equipped with Qualcomm’s latest mobile processor, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. This is the Magic6, the successor to the Magic5 . Honor also announces the arrival in 2024 of a first product under Snapdragon X Elite and better interoperability between tablet, smartphone and PC.
During Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit, many brands were invited to speak to discuss their projects involving a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, a Snapdragon X Elite or an S7 / S7 Pro. Some did not want to reveal too much. This was the case for Lenovo, Asus, Bose and even HP. Others, conversely, took advantage of the media space to announce their future launches. This was the case with Xiaomi which opened the announcement ball yesterday.
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The Chinese firm has unveiled the Xiaomi 14 which will be presented in detail in a few hours. A smartphone that will also inaugurate XiaoAI, Xiaomi’s generative artificial intelligence model. It was enough for a direct competitor to also make the trip to Hawaii to make some important announcements. This competitor is Honor, represented by its boss, George Zhao.
The Magic6 will also be well equipped with Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
He made three announcements. The first concerns smartphones. The boss confirmed the upcoming arrival of the Magic6, successor to the Magic5 (a model exclusive to China) and holder of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. It will certainly have a few variations (Pro, Ultra), some of which will also be equipped with the Qualcomm SoC. A component which, as a reminder, is capable of running, without help from the cloud, a generative AI model like Llama 2 from Meta.
The second announcement concerns generative AI. Honor confirms that the Magic6 will also be equipped with it. It remains to be seen whether it will be its own AI, a strategy adopted by Xiaomi, or an already existing model, like Llama 2 or ChatGPT, with an interface adapted by Honor. The brand’s boss simply indicates that this model supports 7 billion parameters, like a large number of generative models today. The launch date for the Magic6 has not been confirmed.
The latest announcement concerns PCs. And in particular the MagicBooks. George Zhao confirmed the arrival of a laptop under Snapdragon X Elite. The product launch is not expected before mid-2024. We will therefore have to be patient before knowing how Honor intends to stand out from the competition and on what price level the brand intends to rely on for this first product.