Honor enjoyed a great 2025! It’s been hard to find any losers in the maker’s lineup, thanks to thoughtful upgrades and great deals throughout the year.
Let’s look at how it did.
Winner: Honor Pad X9a and MagicPad 3
Honor made a few solid tablets in 2025, but the affordable Pad X9a and flagship MagicPad 3 were able to stamp their authority on markets such as Malaysia, where Honor was the number one tablet maker!
Honor made both tablets competitive starting from the specs page, and then bolstered their sales with regular promos.
Winner: Honor 400 and 400 Pro
The Honor 400 and 400 Pro were fan favorites from the start. Both feature durable yet elegant designs (the Pro is IP69), a big 200MP 1/1.4-inch main camera, and big batteries with fast charging.
Honor 400 5G
Now, as has become the case this year, there was some disparity between battery sizes. In the case of the Honor 400 and 400 Pro, Chinese models got a whopper of a cell at 7,200mAh. The rest of the world’s countries (excluding Europe) got a smaller 6,000mAh pack. However, European markets got the short end of the stick with only 5,300mAh of the original 7,200mAh. So Europe is a loser in this situation, but the Honor 400 series was a definite win for Honor.
Honor 400 Pro 5G
Winner: Honor 500 and 500 Pro
The Honor 500 series, launched in China, aims to build on the success of its predecessor. The Honor 500 and Honor 500 Pro kept the formula intact – a 200MP main camera, potent Snapdragon chipsets, and even bigger batteries! The pair now pack 8,000mAh units with 80W charging!
And, they look svelte even if more than a little reminiscent of an iPhone Air. We just have to wait and see whether these phones make it to the global stage with all their milliamps intact.
Winner: Honor Magic V5
Honor’s book-style foldable Magic V series has been a hit since day one, but truly hit its stride with last year’s Magic V3. It had great cameras, a lovely profile, and was the first truly hardy foldable from the company.
This year’s Magic V5 is the evolution of that all-around complete foldable. It looks great, it’s only 222 grams, and just under 9 millimeters when folded shut, making it feel normal when posing as a regular bar phone.
However, Honor managed to fit a 5,820mAh battery inside, along with a better all-around camera system, which is everything Magic V3 users wanted. Well, that and the faster charging Honor also delivered. The seven years of promised software support were a nice touch, too.
Loser: Honor Magic V Flip 2
Honor’s second clamshell foldable, the Magic V Flip 2 had it all – a pretty design, outstanding screens, a big 5,500mAh battery with fast charging, and great cameras with solid image quality.
But the phone remained a China-exclusive and had a then older chipset. This combined to hold the Magic V Flip 2’s potential back in the face of competent rivals such as the readily available GalaxyZ Flip 7 and Motorola Razr 60 Ultra.
Winner: Honor Magic8 Lite
The Honor Magic8 Lite is going to become a popular midrange phone in early 2026 for several reasons. It improved on just about every aspect of its already great predecessor, the Magic7 Lite, with a bigger battery, newer SoC, and all-encompassing durability to the high standard of IP68/IP69K. Winner.
Winner: Honor Magic8 Pro
The Honor Magic8 Pro arrived in October on Honor’s home floor of China, but will make a global appearance in early 2026. Still, it slots into our winners for 2025.
We have the phone at the office and have had the chance to play around with it. It’s a solid flagship with impressive camera specs, a huge battery, and the latest chipset. But even more important, it’s probably the sleekest flagship cameraphone we’ve had in the office this year. It’s lighter and narrower than popular rivals, and it has a noticeably smaller camera island, despite packing the all-important 200MP telephoto camera.
