It's no secret that some Android OEMs love to use Apple's overall design philosophy as inspiration when launching new products, whether it's an operating system redesign or new hardware. Honor's latest phone may take the top spot among the undisguised clones, while falling short of the one criterion that made the iPhone Air appealing in the first place.
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The Honor Magic 8 Pro Air is official, and at first glance, it certainly looks like an iPhone Air knockoff in more than one crucial area. Honor's latest flagship manages to look like every current generation iPhone rolled into one device, with little of its own identity. Place it next to last year's Magic 8 Pro , and it's hard to argue that the two devices belong to the same brand.
At its core, the Magic 8 Pro Air looks more like the iPhone Air, with a slim build, wide, oval camera shape, and a large circular housing for its main sensor. Honor has managed to incorporate a few differences between its device and Apple's, including two additional sensors (a 64MP periscope telephoto lens and a 50MP ultra-wide) arranged in a very Pixel-esque manner.
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The Magic 8 Pro also includes a 5,500mAh silicon-carbon battery, though that does mean a bulkier 6.1mm build — a half-millimeter increase from the iPhone Air's 5.6mm build.
The rest of Honor's changes are essentially taken from Apple's other iPhones. The orange hue is the most notable example, an obvious reference to the iPhone 17 Pro's signature. The flat, matte sides on the Magic 8 Pro Air also seem to draw inspiration from the rest of the iPhone 17 lineup. From the front, it looks more like Samsung's Galaxy S25 Edge than anything Honor has released in recent years.
Regardless of the design, its spec sheet looks pretty impressive. A 6.31-inch QHD+ AMOLED display that reaches a whopping 6,000 nits of brightness; A 50MP 1/1.3-inch f/1.6 main sensor in a device of this size; 80W wired charging combined with 50W wireless charging ;
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The Honor Magic 8 Pro Air also comes in black, purple, and white and starts at CNY 4,999 (or about $717). It will be available in China starting January 23.
