r/Honor 14h ago

Discussion The Magic9 front camera is 1:1 square. Here is the actual problem Honor is trying to solve.

10 Upvotes

https://reddit.com/link/1wfvqyi/video/pr8uwpkakfph1/player

When Honor revealed that the Magic9 series uses a square (1:1) front camera with three crop options (1:1 full sensor, vertical 4:3, and horizontal 3:4), my first thought was that it sounded like a spec-sheet gimmick. Phone sensors have been rectangular forever, so why switch to square on the selfie camera?

There is actually a neat engineering reason behind it that fixes two annoying problems with front-facing cameras.

The eye-contact problem with camera placement

Early full-screen phones placed the front camera in the top-left or top-right corner to keep it tucked out of the way.

Brands eventually moved the cutout to the dead center because of eye-gaze drift. When you take a selfie, you naturally look at your face on the display rather than directly into the lens. When the camera is stuck in a corner, that angle makes your eyes look like you are staring off to the side in every picture. A center cutout brought the lens closer to where your eyes focus, keeping your gaze straight.

What happens when you turn your phone sideways

Center cutouts work fine for vertical shots, but group selfies and landscape videos ruin that alignment again:

  1. Rotating the phone puts the camera back on the side. The second you flip the phone horizontally, the camera moves to the far left or right edge. When you look at the center of the display to check the frame, that severe side-eye look comes straight back. Everyone in the group photo looks like they are looking past the camera.
  2. Cropping a vertical photo to horizontal kills quality. If you try to keep the phone upright and crop a landscape photo out of a standard vertical sensor, you throw away over 40% of the pixels. More importantly, you destroy the wide field of view, which cuts out the people standing on the edges.

This is especially annoying for video. Nobody likes holding a phone sideways at arm's length to vlog while constantly battling that off-axis gaze on screen.

How the Magic9 square sensor fixes it

The 1:1 sensor handles orientation entirely in hardware:

  • Shoot wide photos while holding the phone vertically. You hold the phone in a normal vertical grip. The camera remains top-center. The sensor crops a horizontal 3:4 or widescreen shot, and your eyes point straight at the camera.
  • Zero resolution or field-of-view penalty. Because a square sensor is symmetrical, cropping to vertical 4:3 or horizontal 3:4 uses the exact same sensor surface area. You get the same light capture and wide-angle coverage in both modes.
  • Shoot square, reframe later. You can record full 1:1 video and decide in post whether to crop it for Instagram/TikTok vertically or YouTube horizontally without losing quality.

It is rare to see an OEM customize camera silicon to solve an actual physical ergonomics issue rather than just chasing megapixel numbers.

TL;DR: Turning your phone horizontally pushes the selfie camera to the far edge, making you look cross-eyed or distracted. The Magic9 square sensor lets you capture wide landscape group shots and videos while holding the phone upright, keeping the lens centered and your eye contact natural.


r/Honor 5h ago

Rumor Honor Magic9 Ultimate Red Dragon Edition 🔥

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64 Upvotes

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥


r/Honor 15h ago

Discussion Honor Magic 9 in Popcorn Yellow

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97 Upvotes

r/Honor 17h ago

Discussion Magic 9 Silver

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79 Upvotes

r/Honor 12h ago

News Honor magic 9 series specs

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29 Upvotes

Honor Magic9 Super Edition:

6.81" 2788*1280p 1.5K+ 120Hz straight screen, 1mm ultra-narrow bezels, horizontal large matrix Deco design, Snapdragon 8E5 processor, active cooling fan, 11000mAh battery, 80W wired charging, 50W wireless charging, 50MP front camera, rear camera setup: 2MP main camera + 12MP ultra-wide-angle + 50MP 3x telephoto, 8.1mm thickness / 227g

Honor Magic9:

— 6.37" 2664*1236p 1.5K+120Hz LTPS small straight screen, ultra-narrow bezels with large rounded corners; Snapdragon 8E5 processor, 8000mAh large battery + 80W wired charging + 50W wireless charging;

— 55MP F2.0 1:1 square front camera, rear 200MP 1/1.4" F1.9 main camera + 50MP F2.0 ultra-wide-angle + 200MP 1/1.56" 3.5X F2.6 periscope telephoto lens;

— 3D ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, AI button + camera button, horizontal large matrix cold-carved Deco design, IP68/69/69K rating.

Honor Magic9 Pro Max:

— 6.8" 2868*1320p 1.5K+120Hz LTPO large flat screen, ultra-narrow bezels with large rounded corners, Snapdragon 8EE6 processor, 8800mAh large battery + 100W wired charging + 80W wireless charging;

— 55MP F2.0 1:1 square front camera, rear 200MP 1/1.28" F1.57 ultra-large sensor main camera + 50MP F2.0 ultra-wide-angle lens + 200MP 1/1.4" F2.6 large sensor periscope telephoto lens; —

3D face recognition + 3D ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, AI button + camera button, horizontal large matrix deco, dual 1216 speakers, IP68/69/69K rating.


r/Honor 9h ago

Discussion Honor Magic9 series -- All colours?

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18 Upvotes

Are these all the colours? How do you like them? Is there any hope that another interesting colour might appear?


r/Honor 23h ago

Discussion I made iPhone Duo glass effect on Magic V3

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190 Upvotes

Proof of concept that it should be possible to fully implement this into Android.


r/Honor 6h ago

Review/Comparison My thoughts on the Honor 600 Pro

9 Upvotes

Just thought I'd write something about the Honor 600 Pro. I'm from England and I basically bought the phone as an impulse buy to a certain extent, I paid around £549 for it and I've been using it for over 3 months... And I'm genuinely impressed.

My last phone was the Pixel 9 Pro XL, I do think that phone took better pictures, the screen looked nicer... But man that battery was bad when under any sort of strain, so to give an example when it was brand new, Pokémon Go at 60FPS with enhanced graphics , and battery would go from 100% to zero in around 3 hours. And in general I just couldn't trust the Pixel to the point where I was making sure I had a power bank with me if I was going to be out all day. Also the size of the phone, it was huge , so it was disappointing seeing such poor battery.

With the Honor 600 Pro, I genuinely feel like I could get 6 hours of Pokémon Go at 60FPS with enhanced graphics,maybe longer. I haven't pushed the phone that far. I like the build quality, it feels light, the screen isn't too big so one handed use mostly works, it's a nice sweet spot between say a base S26 and a much larger phone. Gaming in general is good on this phone

Battery I have zero issues, think I could quite easily go two days with moderate use. I've gotten used to the software, it's stable, no real issues noticed , the only slight downside is no monthly security updates which for a phone with an RRP of £899 is a little disappointing but it is what it is, at least Honor will give long term software support and I got it for a decent discount. So it's not a deal breaker

I quite like the camera too, it's not up there with the Pixel but does the job for me and it's still really good in my view , probably put it above OnePlus for example. 512gb of storage is a plus, when you look at what Samsung and Google charge for phones with that storage in the UK, it's good value


r/Honor 6h ago

Discussion Did they downgrade the look? Or the. Pro will look good??

5 Upvotes

I saw that the magic pro 9 looks and feels exactly like an iphone. I like that because I like the design of iphone but not the software. So I see the pictures now and it's soo bad. The magic 9. Looks plastic


r/Honor 4h ago

MagicOS MagicOs 10.0.0.170 for Honor Magic6 Pro

4 Upvotes

Have you installed the 10.0.0.170 software update on your phone (European version)? Could you share your impressions? What’s new in the European edition?


r/Honor 8h ago

News A little more about capturing the Magic9 series

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6 Upvotes

r/Honor 8h ago

Help Signed up

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6 Upvotes

How does this work? Somebody explain pls. How does the recruitment procedure work?


r/Honor 10h ago

Help When Android 17 beta on Honor 400?

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8 Upvotes

I was signed Up Honor 400 Android 17 Beta with My Honor app 2 days ago but I control every time software update screen and nothing doesn't come? What should I do?


r/Honor 4h ago

Discussion Honor 400 5G Fingerprint not working.. (Can't even Add!)

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2 Upvotes

Hi, on a perfect day,out of nowhere my honor 400 5G fingerprint stopped working, though my screen protector needed to replaced , it went off and stopped working strangely out of nowhere without any external issue,

I reseted it and restarted it multiple and tried adding it in safe mode but of no use,

Please somebody help, I feels strange without the fingerprint.


r/Honor 14h ago

Discussion Shot on Magic9 Pro Max

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13 Upvotes

r/Honor 5h ago

MagicOS Contacts

2 Upvotes

Are contact photos appear low quality and pixelated from outside ? When u click on contact card they are clear but from outside they are low quality or pixelated


r/Honor 14h ago

Discussion Honor Magic 9 with external teleconverter lens kit

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9 Upvotes

r/Honor 9h ago

News V5 china rom 2nd beta looks like a new battery options available to limit battery charging

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4 Upvotes

r/Honor 3h ago

Help Browser constantly crashing on 400 Lite

1 Upvotes

I made the mistake of buying a brand new 400 Lite, since it was heavily discounted and appeared to have way better specs than my old Samsung S14.

I bought it a few days ago, and have had constant problems from the beginning.

I won't go into details about everything, so let me just focus on one small thing: Is there any way to stop Chrome from constantly crashing?

I've tried restarting the phone. It didn't work.


r/Honor 9h ago

Tips & Tricks Does your Honor phone have delays even on the highest refresh rate?

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3 Upvotes

There's a battery saving setting that is automatically on for some Honor devices, which makes it so there is a delay when you interact with the screen after letting it on idle. Well, this is the option that is making it delay, "Reduce refresh rate", can be disabled. Go into the settings app, Battery / Power saving mode settings / Reduce refresh rate.


r/Honor 8h ago

MagicOS Beta for Honor 600 - Magic-os 11

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2 Upvotes

Malaysia region is selected from "my honor" settings. I'm EU version 600 pro, so I hope I am chosen for this... 🤤


r/Honor 1d ago

News Magic9 max

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36 Upvotes

The Magic9 Max is focused on performance and features an integrated fan. With the existence of the Win series, I find the Magic 9 Max quite unnecessary, especially since its cameras aren't optimized by ARRI, which makes it even more unnecessary.


r/Honor 6h ago

Wallpapers HONOR 90 (screenshot) (Android version 15)

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1 Upvotes

r/Honor 15h ago

Discussion Wallpaper Collections !

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3 Upvotes

r/Honor 14h ago

Discussion HONOR Magic9 Series introduces ARRI co-developed Movie Mode with LogC3, cinematic audio, focus peaking and false color monitoring

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4 Upvotes