Honor CEO, George Zhao, took to the stage at VivaTech in Paris this morning to talk about the brand’s ambitions with on-device AI. Surprisingly, this talk also went into some detail about the complex lighting and post-processing workflow of Studio Harcourt, the world’s most famous portrait studio. Yes, an Honor and Studio Harcourt collaboration is on the cards.
During the presentation, Zhao revealed that Honor’s 200 series phones, which launch next month, have a new portrait mode developed in tandem with the studio. We’ve seen smartphone manufacturers co-branding their camera systems for a while now, think of the OnePlus phones with Hasselblad lenses, or the Xiaomi phones with Leica lenses, but opting for a photography studio is something new.
Details are thin on the ground at the moment, but it appears that the Honor 200 series phones can recreate Studio Harcourt’s legendary black and white headshots using AI image manipulation. So rather than flying to Paris and handing over a massive sum, you can just snap a quick selfie on your upper mid-range smartphone instead.
The rest of the speech centered around the AI features that debuted with the Honor Magic 6 Pro, like Magic Portal and Magic Ring, which try to predict your intention to serve up useful shortcuts between apps. I’ve been hooked on Magic Portal, which I mostly use as a Circle to Search with Google alternative. It’s capable of many things, but it lets you drag any image into Google and quickly reverse-image search, and I find that super handy.
The good news is that MagicOS 8.0, and its brilliant Magic Portal, are making their way to the Magic V2 and Honor 90 later this month. No specific date was shared, but George Zhao said May, and there’s not much of that left.
The aforementioned Honor 200 and Honor 200 Pro launch on June 12, and they’re expected to bring some serious photographic prowess at a relatively affordable price point. Most of the specs are still under wraps, but Honor’s Chinese website already offers a glimpse at the striking design. I’m looking forward to learning more, but in the meantime, you can take your portraits to the next level with our guide to the best selfie sticks.