Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra vs Honor Magic 6 Pro: AI Wars – Ultra-Sim

Samsung raised the bar with the Galaxy S24 Ultra, but at MWC 2024, we witnessed another flagship contender worthy of fighting for the Android crown – the Honor Magic 6 Pro. Both phones have some pretty interesting features, and even though they look different at first glance, there’s real rivalry here.Both sport very bright and fast screens, the latest Snapdragon chipset, great camera systems, and ample batteries. Both place an emphasis on AI in their software, and both cost way north of $1000.

In this article, we pit against each other these two flagships to find out every little difference and, ultimately, help you decide which one is the better choice for you.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra vs Honor Magic 6 Pro differences explained:

Table of Contents:

There’s one big conceptual difference between the Galaxy S24 Ultra and the Honor Magic 6 Pro. The former switched to a flat screen, while the latter sticks with the quad-curved design Honor has been pushing for the past couple of years.

There are pros and cons to both designs. On one hand, the flat screen of the Galaxy S24 Ultra is more comfortable to work on (there are no distortions toward the edges, and less accidental touches), on the other hand, the Magic 6 Pro feels more compact and looks more premium as well. So, barring the width dimension, both phones are comparable and also weigh almost the same.

There are other design differences as well, the Magic 6 Pro features a textured back on its Epi Green version, and it resembles faux leather. All in all, we really liked it, as it’s easy to grip and fend off fingerprints. The Galaxy S24 Ultra relies on a glass back, it’s a frosted, matte look, and also does a good job keeping fingerprints away.

Oh, and we forgot to mention the titanium frame on the S24 Ultra. Honestly, we don’t think it’s a game changer, but if you want some titanium inside your phone, the S24 Ultra has it. The Magic 6 Pro uses good old aluminum.

Display Measurements:

As far as display quality goes, both the S24 Ultra and the Magic 6 Pro have great OLED panels. We’re into the brightness wars these days, and manufacturers quote some crazy numbers in the nits department, but thankfully, we have our own independent tests to show the actual typical brightness across the screen.

The Honor Magic 6 Pro wins this battle, as it can output 250 more nits than the S24 Ultra. In practice, there’s no such big difference between the two, and the S24’s anti-glare coating more than offsets for the slightly lower brightness levels.

Both phones feature LTPO panels with 1-120Hz dynamic refresh rates, always-on options, and some deep color settings, and both scored well in our color temperature and accuracy tests. The choice here boils down to flat versus curved.

Things are a tad more complicated when it comes to biometrics. The ultrasonic fingerprint on the S24 Ultra works faster and is more reliable than the optical one on the Magic 6 Pro. On the other hand, the Magic 6 Pro has sophisticated facial recognition onboard, and it works pretty well.

The thing with flagships nowadays is that the hardware is pretty identical, especially when it comes to raw performance. Whether or not we need all these petaflops of floating point calculation power is another question altogether.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra and the Honor Magic 6 Pro both come with the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, coupled with 12GB of RAM. Unsurprisingly, synthetic benchmark scores are really close (the single core Geekbench result is actually down to a point difference).

As you might imagine, the real world performance on both is top-notch, you just won’t experience any lag or stutter. To be fair to Honor, the Magic 6 Pro comes with 512GB of base storage, while the S24 Ultra has a 256GB version, but on the performance front, these two are identical. The software situation is a bit different.

Performance Benchmarks:

The year is 2024, or year 1 of the ChatGPT era. Tasteless religious jokes aside, every big tech company is doing AI now in some shape or form. Samsung announced Galaxy AI, while Honor is doing its own thing with the Magic Portal functionality.

Without getting too technical, we would say that Galaxy AI looks much more polished than Magic Portal, at least at the moment. You can do all kinds of AI magic, translate voice and text in real time, search contextually in photos, etc. Magic Portal has a lot of potential, but it faces difficulties as most of the cloud services are in China, and the company would have to deal with regulations and other hurdles to bring the complete AI experience worldwide.

Another big advantage of the Galaxy S24 Ultra is the software support. Samsung decided to go the seven-year route after Google surprised the industry with its super-long support for the Pixel 8 family. Honor, on the other hand, promises four major OS updates and five years of security patches, which is better than what we had on the Magic 5 Pro but still far from seven whole years of support.

The camera system is where the magic happens nowadays, as it’s the area smartphone manufacturers develop the most. Both the Galaxy S24 Ultra and the Honor Magic 6 Pro come with upgrades in that regard.

The S24 Ultra features a 200MP main camera sensor under an f/1.7 lens, a 12MP ultrawide camera, and two telephoto cameras: a 10 MP zoom camera with a 3x telephoto lens and a 50 MP one with a 5x lens.

Honor has a different solution to the smartphone photography equation. The Magic 6 Pro comes with a 50MP H9000 OmniVision sensor under a main lens with variable aperture support. The ultrawide camera is also 50MP, while the telephoto sports an impressive 180MP sensor. These are all just numbers, though. Let’s take a look at some samples below.

Both phones can snap amazing photos, but one thing we’ve noticed is that the Honor Magic 6 Pro has more saturation and contrast going on. This might trick some people into thinking the photos look more detailed and have a higher dynamic range, but we’d say that the Galaxy S24 Ultra main camera samples look closer to reality. Again, both are really, really good.

Main Camera – Low-light

Low-light samples are sometimes hit-and-miss, and in some cases, the night mode on the Honor does a better job at revealing details in high-contrast scenarios, while at other times both produce very similar results.

Zoom Quality

The Galaxy S24 Ultra comes with two zoom lenses, so it’s definitely an advantage, at least on paper, plus the periscope one has 5x optical zoom. The Magic 6, on the other hand, can do 2.6x optical, but with its dense 180MP sensor, the phone can crop and make up for the lack of a second zoom camera. If you’re using the native 2.6x zoom on the Magic 6 Pro, we think it’s slightly better than the 3x on the S24 Ultra, but it’s really close. 

Funnily enough, the same goes for 5x and 10x samples. The high pixel count on the Honor Magic 6 Plus, along with clever processing algorithms, makes the phone keep up with the S24 Ultra even at higher zoom levels.

Portrait Mode

Portrait mode is very good on both phones, you can use the zoom cameras to get better portrait framing and ratios, both phones can do pretty convincing bokeh effects, and the Magic 6 Pro can also open up the diaphragm on its main lens to get more optical bokeh at f/1.4.

Ultra-wide Camera

The ultrawide samples are pretty close as well. The Magic 6 Pro tends to oversaturate a bit here as well, probably due to the post-processing algorithms. The Magic 6 Pro also has a tad wider field of view, compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Selfies

Selfie shots look more realistic and have more detail on the Galaxy S24 Ultra. The Honor Magic 6 Pro is not far behind, and you can also use ultrawide mode to capture more in the frame, so there’s also that.

Video Quality

You can check out our video comparison above. What do you think? Which phone does a better job?

Audio Quality and Haptics

Battery Life and Charging

Silicon Power!

PhoneArena Battery Test Results:

But it’s not just a capacity advantage. Honor’s lithium-silicon battery can also withstand lower temperatures and discharge less in extreme conditions. And we could definitely feel that during our day-to-day experience. The Honor Magic 6 Pro was able to last longer, especially in the cold February weather.

As far as charging is concerned, the Honor has an advantage on paper but we couldn’t test it. Stay tuned for updates here, as we’re going to get a proper wired and wireless chargers to give this puppy maximum juice (sadly, the Honor Magic 6 Pro no longer comes with a charger inside the box). 

PhoneArena Charging Test Results:

Specs Comparison

Summary and Final Verdict