Honor's latest flagship could be the best video-making phone ever made

• Honor has released its latest flagship, the Magic 9 Pro Max, in China
• The phone comes as part of a partnership with professional film camera maker Arri and has a dual 200MP rear camera system
• It's powered by a proprietary imaging chip, the Honor Imaging Chip H1, and the newly launched Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6

iPhones may be a popular choice in Hollywood, used to film blockbuster movies like 28 Years Later , but there's another brand coming for the movie-making crown.

Chinese smartphone maker Honor just released its newest flagship, the Honor Magic 9 Pro Max, and is positioning it not only as a phone, but also as a full-on "handheld cinema system."

Currently available in China, the phone comes as part of the brand's partnership with Arri, a major manufacturer of professional film cameras. It features a dual 200MP rear camera system powered by the proprietary Honor Imaging Chip H1 .

Thanks to the Arri collaboration, the phone's main sensors are calibrated with Arri Image Science and Arri LogC3 Curve in the Arri Wide Gamut 3 color space. All of this should, on paper, help replicate the end look and experience of using a cinema camera as closely as possible when recording on the phone.

Honor CEO James Li introduces the new device. (Image credit: Honor)

Users will also be able to choose between 14 pre-set looks or 87 looks from the Arri look library, plus make use of the Arri Cinema Mode that originally debuted with the Honor Robot Phone .

Imaging chops aside, the Honor Magic 9 Pro Max looks like a very capable Android flagship. It runs on the brand's MagicOS 11 skin, which boasts its own translucent liquid glass look.

It's one of the first phones to be released with the brand-new Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chipset , which is billed as the world's fastest mobile CPU. This is paired with up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage.

The screen is a 6.8-inch 120Hz OLED 1320 x 2868 panel coated with Honor's own NanoCrystal Shield anti-scratch tech. It can apparently reach up to 10,000 nits of brightness, which seems almost absurdly bright.

Durability shouldn't be a concern either, as the phone is rated with IP68, IP69, and IP69K water and dust resistance, and SGS 5-Star Scratch Resistance Certification.

The overall design is certainly a little iPhone-inspired (with plenty of apparent similarities to the latest iPhone 18 Pro Max ), though Honor claims that the Magic 9 Pro Max's unique camera array was actually inspired by the look of old cinema cameras.

It's available in three colors: Moss Green, Shadow Black, and Glacier Silver. Prices start at RMB 6,499 or roughly $970 / £730 / AU$1,380.

Honor says that this model will begin rolling out to other regions, so we'll be watching closely for updates. That said, based on the release patterns of previous models like the Honor Magic 8 Pro or Honor Magic V6 , we don't expect this one to be available in the USA.