This week, a brand new sports car-themed phone made its debut. The PORSCHE DESIGN Honor Magic 7 RSR is the third-generation Porsche phone from Honor, debuting with souped-up specs and a fancy Porsche-inspired design. Like the two other PORSCHE DESIGN phones from the company, the Magic 7 RSR will set you back a few hundred more Euros than the next-best equivalent from Honor.
Android Central Labs is a weekly column devoted to deep dives, experiments, and a focused look into the tech you use. It covers phones, tablets, and everything in between.
But is that price really worth it? If you're a phone geek or someone who really loves Porsche, the answer really depends on what you want from your phone. It's a top-end phone with a top-end price tag, and it's not alone at that price.
It's got a stellar camera with the best motion capture I've ever seen thanks to the LiDAR autofocus system. The telephoto camera is impressive and offers optional AI-assisted image generation with the tap of a button. The built-in subwoofer delivers the best bass I've ever heard on a smartphone, and the trademark peakline design evokes the "speed" of a Porsche car. It's a great experience all around.
The Honor Magic 7 RSR is the best sportscar-themed phone ever released, and there have been quite a few of them. The price tag isn't so out of reach that it's an impossible ask. If we're directly comparing things, it's cheaper than the 1TB model of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and, quite frankly, is a much more attractive package than that phone.
More than just a pretty box
The phone is a lot of money, but you get lots of extras in the box and souped-up specs that make it feel more worthwhile if you're a phone spec geek.
The PORSCHE DESIGN Honor Magic 7 RSR retails for €1,799, roughly €500 more than the Honor Magic 7 Pro. For that premium price, Honor includes not one but two 100W chargers in the box along with a USB-C cable for each. Meanwhile, the Honor 7 Pro doesn't include even one charger.
Honor also packs a sleek color-matching case in the box so you not only get protection from the minute you unbox it, but you also get a limited edition case that's not available anywhere else. A PORSCHE DESIGN logo is stamped onto the special edition SIM tray eject tool. All this comes in a unique box that would look nice on a shelf.
Of course, the most you could expect to pay for all of these things separately is maybe €150 Euros, so where does the rest of your money go? Enhanced specs.
Spec | Honor Magic 7 Pro | PORSCHE DESIGN Honor Magic 7 RSR |
|---|---|---|
RAM | 12GB | 24GB |
Storage | 512GB | 1TB |
Telephoto camera | 200MP f/2.6 | 200MP f/1.88 |
Autofocus | SMA | SMA + LiDAR |
Battery | 5270mAh (EU model) | 5850mAh |
Colors | Lunar Shadow Grey, Breeze Blue, Black | Provence, Agate Gray |
You've never heard sound quality like this from a phone's speakers.
As you can see, you'll find at least half a dozen major changes including unique colorways and a custom home screen theme that's enabled out of the box. It's a much better deal than last year's PORSCHE DESIGN Honor Magic 6 RSR, which mainly just offered a unique design and more RAM over the Pro model.
The body's unique design doesn't drop what makes the regular Magic 7 Pro great, either. It includes the truly stellar "Ultra-large Sound Cavity and Spatial Audio" from that phone, meaning this is the best sound you'll ever hear come from a phone. Seriously, I don't know how Honor does it but this phone not only gets LOUD, but it retains clarity throughout and somehow produces a noticeable amount of bass.
It's the first phone I can recall ever listening to music on and mistaking it for a dedicated Bluetooth speaker. Watching YouTube or Instagram videos on made me appreciate them in a way I didn't think I could when the audio was coming from the phone's speakers. Honor previously blew me away with the speakers in its tablets and laptops and that pedigree has perfectly transitioned to its phones. It's seriously impressive!
The same excellent display from the Magic 7 Pro is here, as well, delivering stunningly beautiful picture quality without eye-harming PWM dimming like a Galaxy or Pixel phone has.
I've been supremely impressed with Honor's camera quality since the company rewrote the book on camera AI last year. This year, the company has taken things even further as evidenced by our Honor Magic 7 Pro camera review. It's got the best motion capture in the industry and some impressive telephoto performance thanks to the 200MP sensor behind the lens.
The Magic 7 RSR ramps things up by upgrading the telephoto lens to an industry-first f/1.88 aperture, ensuring low-light photos look great even when you've got to zoom way in. Honor also has an optional AI-generative telephoto option, but I've had mixed results with that feature. While it can help enhance photos when zooming in beyond 50x, AI can only "invent" so much detail. The results, in my experience, largely aren't worth the time.
The Magic 7 RSR includes enough stuff in the box and improves enough over the Magic 7 Pro that I think it's worth the cost for enthusiasts, but that's not always the case for special edition phones.
Another notable special edition lately is the POCO X7 Pro Iron Man Edition. This one isn't a "luxury" phone based on the price but it is nearly twice the cost of the regular POCO X7 Pro, making it a bit of a luxury item compared to the original model.
Unlike the Honor Magic 7 RSR, this special edition phone doesn't feature top-of-the-line specs but does feature a unique design that Iron Man fans will love. Also unlike the Honor Magic 7 RSR, the POCO X7 Pro Iron Man Edition isn't easy to come by. It's a true limited-edition phone whereas Honor's device is available in the same countries Honor normally sells its phones in and isn't limited in quantity.
This brings me back to the original question: do luxury phones make sense? Before the PORSCHE DESIGN Honor Magic 7 RSR, I probably would have said no. Most of them only offered a cool box and phone design along with maybe one spec improvement — usually a RAM upgrade — but the Magic 7 RSR includes enough stuff in the box and improves enough over the Magic 7 Pro that I think it's worth the cost for enthusiasts.
I also think it's important that Honor didn't make this a limited edition item. It'll be available to buy six months from now if you really want it, meaning folks who are pining for the phone can save up the money and feel good about buying it a few months down the road. Otherwise, a limited edition model is typically only available at launch and then only later at an exorbitant collector's price on eBay.
It makes so much more sense to have a luxury phone like this instead of those silly old $6,000 Lamborghini phones that might get one Android update, or the $1,800 TAG Heuer Wear OS watch that still runs Wear OS 3 in a year when we're already looking forward to Wear OS 6.
For the first time ever, a luxury smartphone actually feels like it makes sense to have, and that's pretty fantastic.
Get everything that's great about the Honor Magic 7 Pro plus a unique design, packed in case and 100W chargers, elegant new colorways, double the RAM and storage, an even better telephoto camera lens, bigger battery, and a custom PORSCHE DESIGN theme built-in.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
