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Honor’s Magic 2 hides its selfie camera behind a retro sliding screen

Honor’s Magic 2 hides its selfie camera behind a retro sliding screen

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Here’s your new fidget device

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Image: Honor

Honor’s Magic 2 phone is finally official. The handset, which features a bezel-less screen that slides down to reveal a front-facing camera, was previously teased with a short trailer that showed it being used to drum out a beat on a table. (Honor has yet to confirm whether drumming damage will be covered under warranty.)

The main event here is the sliding design, which can be used to automatically open the camera app when the 16MP selfie camera is revealed. The design means that the 6.39-inch AMOLED display achieves a screen-to-body ratio of close to 100 percent, which is further helped by its use of an in-display fingerprint sensor. The selfie camera is joined by a 24MP triple-lens rear camera array. Internally, the phone has the same high-end Kirin 980 that we recently saw on Huawei’s Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro. Here, it’s flanked by either 6GB or 8GB of RAM and 128GB or 256GB of onboard storage with a 3,400mAh battery.

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Image: Honor

The Honor Magic 2 follows a recent trend in Chinese smartphones that’s seen bezels shrunk smaller and smaller by hiding their selfie cameras when they’re not in use. However, while previous handsets like the Oppo X and Vivo Nex have had them automatically slide out when needed, the Magic 2 features a manual slider, which could either be less convenient or more durable, depending on Honor’s implementation.

Alongside the new phone, Honor also announced a new pair of true wireless earbuds called FlyPods and the Honor Watch. The FlyPods look and behave similarly to Apple’s AirPods, and they will launch on November 6th for ¥799 (around $115). The Honor Watch will launch in January 2019 at a price that’s yet to be announced.

Image: Honor

Prices for the new Honor Magic 2 range from ¥3799 (around $545) for a handset with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of onboard storage to ¥4799 (around $690) for 8GB of RAM with 256GB of storage. The phone will be released in China on November 6th, while an international release is yet to be confirmed.