Honor unveils MagicOS 9.0 - its take on Android 15

24 October 2024

Honor unveiled the MagicOS 9.0 in China, a week ahead of the announcement of its Magic7 flagship series. It called it the world's first all-scenario personalized AI operating system and accented the deeper integration of the Yoyo voice assistant or AI Agent as they call it.

On the Android 15-based MagicOS 9.0 it will work across a number of applications, utilizing MagicLM, Honor's proprietary language model. The company claims it will understand natural language and computer vision, while also learning from your habits and being aware of context.

The in-app operation will let it order a coffee for you like a human assistant. It will make the purchase itself, and verify the payment with a single prompt.

While the new 3B parameter model has lower parameters than the previous 7B on-device model, here MagicLM should bring 80% less power consumption, 77% faster loading speed and 500% quicker word output speed; all of this means a reduction of 1.8 GB in storage and 1.6 GB of RAM consumption.

MagicOS 9.0 also comes with the industry's first AI Deepfake Detection feature against scams and safeguarding users.

Design-wise, the OS brings new features such as Versatile Desktop, Magic Lock Screen, and Magic Style – tools to thoroughly customize your experience. There is also an AI Gallery, AI Eraser, Face Restoration, and AI Image Expansion.

Honor has already confirmed three dozen devices will get the new update, along with a rollout timeline. However, it is for the Chinese market, meaning international units will have to wait a bit longer than that.

We expect MagicOS 9.0 to arrive globally in the first months of 2025, along with an international launch of the Magic7 phones. That's when we'll know more about a global rollout of the OS and when internationally available devices will get it.