HONOR Magic9 Pro Max Makes Its First Appearance at Venice Film Festival

HONOR has used the 83rd Venice International Film Festival to showcase its latest imaging technology, including the HONOR Robot Phone and the upcoming HONOR Magic9 Pro Max. The company is the Official Imaging Strategic Partner for the International Promotion Program for Chinese-Language Films, making the film festival a fitting place to highlight its push into mobile filmmaking.

The Robot Phone, which was developed together with professional cinema camera maker ARRI, has been one of the main attractions. Its standout feature is a mechanical gimbal camera that can move on its own, paired with imaging features aimed at creators who want more control over their footage.

The HONOR Magic9 Pro Max made its first appearance at the Venice Film Festival, and one of the first things you’ll notice is its moss green finish. Its camera module also carries the ARRI logo, while the camera arrangement takes inspiration from ARRI’s professional cinema cameras. So, unlike most smartphones that simply focus on making the camera bump bigger, HONOR is clearly going for a more cinematic look here. More importantly, the ARRI partnership will bring some of the company’s professional imaging technology to HONOR smartphones.

For creators, HONOR says the partnership brings features such as ARRI LogC3, ARRI Wide Gamut 3 and ARRI Looks. In simpler terms, LogC3 helps retain more details in highlights and shadows, giving users more room to edit their footage later. Wide Gamut 3 provides a wider colour range, while ARRI Looks lets creators apply different cinematic colour styles. These features are already available on the HONOR Robot Phone, giving users a more complete workflow from shooting to post-production. It’s a different approach from simply letting the phone process everything automatically. Instead, HONOR and ARRI are giving creators more control over how their footage looks.

The same cinematic imaging technology will also be coming to the HONOR Magic9 series, which is scheduled to launch first in China in late September. For HONOR, the partnership combines its experience in smartphone cameras and image processing with ARRI’s more than 100 years of experience in professional filmmaking.

HONOR says the goal is to make some of the tools used in professional filmmaking more accessible to everyday creators, without requiring them to carry around a full cinema camera setup.The company has previously showcased the Robot Phone at major film events including Cannes, Shanghai and now Venice.

With the Magic9 series next in line, it looks like HONOR is betting on cinematic imaging as one of the key features of its upcoming flagship phones.