Bezel-less, notch-less HONOR Magic 2 with pop-up camera teased at IFA 2018

Honor gave the smartphone world a surprise today at IFA 2018, with HONOR president George Zhao teasing the HONOR Magic 2 — a device with a FullView display offering another alternative approach to no-bezel, no-notch, all-screen smartphones.

Zhao announced the HONOR Magic 2 on stage at a press event at the IFA tech show, following on from the earlier HONOR Play launch and pricing announcement. Holding it in his hands, Zhao showed the HONOR Magic 2 with a full-screen display, and demonstrated a slide mechanism to reveal the front-facing camera and other sensors.

The smartphone looked similar to the OPPO Find X with the back slide out at the top, but it didn’t appear to be a mechanized slider, and extended manually by pushing upwards at the back.

That reminds us of harking back to the good old days of the Nokia 6288 era, where a slightly magnetized slider had a touch of resistance to sliding out the rest of the phone behind the screen.

The Magic 2 will feature the Kirin 980 processor, which is also to feature in the HUAWEI Mate 20, based on 7nm manufacturing process . While we didn’t get any further details about the device, HONOR will launch a second-generation of its 40W fast charging mode along with the Magic 2, which first debuted with the original Magic. HONOR said about the new fast charging, in a press release, “to further ensure safety, 15 layers of protection are also embedded in the smartphone. The phone can automatically identify the battery, cable and charger and only when all of the three parts are identified as safe, the Super Charger will start.”

No further details about the smartphone were provided, but Zhao also mentioned that the Magic brand name has a special focus on no-compromise, with hints that a number of firsts will appear with the new device.

The new phone was teased as following on from the HONOR Magic, released on December 16 on 2016, with hints that it will launch close to that date (although that’s only speculation at this point).

HONOR was quick to hide away the Magic 2 after the brief teaser, so we weren’t able to get any hands-on with the device. But stay tuned, as this thing looks like it’ll be close to flagship specifications given it’ll be packing the Kirin 980 SoC.