Honor Magic7 RSR Porsche Design review

MagicOS 9 on top of Android 15

The Magic7 RSR Porsche is running the latest Android 15, with a layer of the in-house MagicOS on top, v9 in this case. There is no official statement on the guaranteed updates, but Honor is promising 5 years of software support for the Magic7 Pro for both OS releases as well as security patches, and we do hope this applies to the RSR version, too.

The Magic7 RSR includes an additional Porsche Design theme, which is a major overhaul of the whole system UI - the entire color scheme and icon set, plus the wallpapers, to be specific.

Other than that, not a lot has changed going from MagicOS 8 to 9, and we're getting a visually pleasing experience overall. The basics are covered in more or less standard ways, with the most notable generational change being the now rounder and more bubbly quick settings buttons.

Magic OS basics

MagicOS also has some features that we don't see everywhere, like the iOS-like pill-shaped Magic Capsule notification - useful for stuff like timers, and background music and video playback. Large folders can be seen on most Android builds by now, but on the Magic7 RSR you can even resize them. The cards functionality is also present - the widgets that you can add for in-house apps, indicated by a bar under the app icon.

More Magic OS

Then there's the Magic Portal functionality - Honor's system-wide copy-paste solution. You long-press on, say, an image, and a bar appears on the side with pre-selected apps and actions allowing you to extract the text from it, do a search, email it, or put down a note about the highlighted item.

Magic Portal

Naturally, you get Google's Circle to search feature, as well as the Gemini assistant, and a live translation capability. AI summary for texts and AI minutes for voice recordings are also available.

Google AI bits

There's also some AI-based photo editing in the gallery, but it's limited to just erasing stuff - we didn't get a reflections eraser or a detail boost feature like we've seen on some other phones (not that their success rate and general usefulness makes them essential or anything).

AI Editor

Honor is also promising to add AI Deepfake Detection feature for video calls - to be released with an OTA in April 2025.

Performance and benchmarking

The Magic7 RSR Porsche Design is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite, Qualcomm latest high-end chipset that can be seen in the majority of Android flagships in 2025. We've had a bunch of them over for review already, so we have a pretty good idea of what numbers can be expected from the Elite and its custom CPU cores, as well as how it compares to Mediatek's top-tier SoC, the Dimensity 9400 that ticks inside major Magic competitors like the vivo X200 Pro or the Oppo Find X8 Pro.

Memory configurations of the Magic7 RSR vary by market, as usual. Most markets would get the 24GB LPDDR5X / 1TB UFS 4.0, but there is also a more limited 16GB/512GB version in existence, too.

The Magic7 RSR benchmark scores were pretty high for its hardware in our experience and its numbers were above average for this year's crop.

The sustained load turned out better on the Porsche version than on the Magic7 Pro. Here the one-hour CPU Throttling test returned the same impressive 86% result with a beautiful graph. But the RSR model managed to complete the GPU sustained load test with a 50% score, unlike the Magic7 Pro, which always crashed due to overheating.

CPU test • GPU test

The Honor Magic7 RSR Porsche Design has the most powerful chip on the market and it offers superb performance across the board. The premium version of the Magic7 Pro features improved thermals that allow it to do better in long gaming sessions. The phone becomes warm under heavy stress testing, but never hot, and it does excel where it matters - in smoothness and incredibly fast operations. Overall, a typical flagship behavior.

Camera

The Honor Magic7 RSR has a similar triple camera setup as the Magic7 Pro - a 50MP OIS primary with f/1.4-f/2.0 variable aperture, a 50MP AF ultrawide, and a 200MP 3x periscope zoom camera but with a larger f/1.9 aperture. That last bit should translate into more light coming through the sensor compared to the Magic7 Pro's f/2.6 aperture. Honor also added a LiDAR sensor on the Magic7 RSR to help keep video stabilization in check.

The front camera is still a 50MP AF unit with a 3D ToF system.

The photo and video capabilities and quality remain the same as on the Honor Magic7 Pro, despite the couple of improvements outlined above. If you are eager to explore the camera - you can read more about it here, in our Honor Magic7 Pro review.

We may throw in a proper camera comparison between the two phones in the coming days, so let us know in the review comments if you'd like to see that.

Our verdict

The Honor Magic7 RSR Porsche Design launches at €1,799 (£1,549 in the UK) for the 24GB/1TB version, which is a hefty price tag for sure. Then again, this is cheaper than the 1TB versions of the iPhone 16 Pro Max and the Galaxy S25 Ultra, so it's all relative.

The Honor Magic7 RSR Porsche Design is great at everything important - screen, battery life, charging speed, speakers, performance, camera, and connectivity. It may not be as competitive as the industry darlings from Samsung and Apple, but if you value its premium market positioning and exclusive features, the Magic7 RSR is worth considering.

Pros

• Unique design, durable.
• Superb display w/Dolby Vision.
• 3D Face Unlock and ultrasonic fingerprint scanner.
• Excellent battery life, fast charging.
• Outstanding speakers.
• Flagship performance.
• Top-notch camera experience and quality.
• Wi-Fi 7; eSIM support, IR blaster.
• Rich retail bundle.

Cons

• Exclusive branding comes with a salty price tag.