Honor Magic2 review: Taking a step further on the road to artificial intelligence

IT168 Review From mobile phones half a century ago, to feature phones more than ten years ago, to smartphones used by almost everyone today, mobile phones have only been able to make calls and text messages from the beginning. From simple multimedia terminals to smartphones that connect the world today, with the advancement of technology and the improvement of computing power, smartphones have been integrated into almost every aspect of our lives. From mobile phones to feature phones, from feature phones to smartphones, the word "smartphone" has been called by the public for so many years. However, there is no clear answer as to how a mobile phone should be truly "smart".

Two years ago, with the release of Rong Magic, the exploration of artificial intelligence on mobile devices began, knocking on the door of AI in the mobile phone industry. Although the hardware had not yet reached today's height at that time, Honor still experimented with artificial intelligence functions by modifying the mobile phone system at that time. Times have changed, and today's mobile processors have made a qualitative leap in deep neural network learning compared to two years ago. After 684 days and 16,416 hours of waiting, let’s see what changes Honor Magic 2 will bring to us.

Butterfly five-track sliding screen structure + in-screen optical fingerprint

In the past two years, with the development of mobile phones, a topic that has always been unavoidable is the evolution of the screen. People first started by reducing the width of the borders around the screen, then moved to curved screens, and then to various full-screen screens with special shapes such as "notch screen" and "pearl screen", sacrificing part of the appearance design in exchange for screen-to-body ratio. It even adds a mechanical structure to the fuselage to solve the problem of placement of the front camera and various sensors, thus opening up the "last mile" in the current full-screen evolution.

As a future-oriented product of Honor, Honor Magic2 also makes Honor’s attempt to pursue a 100% non-porous and borderless full screen: a butterfly five-track sliding screen structure.

In order to achieve the highest possible screen-to-body ratio, Honor Magic 2 adopts a mechanical sliding cover design to hide the front camera and earpiece in the back half of the sliding screen structure, leaving the front half The entire screen has no holes on the front and effectively increases the screen-to-body ratio.

The sliding screen structure of Honor Magic 2 adopts an original butterfly-type five-rail sliding screen structure, which integrates a tight 5-segment slide structure into a compact internal space, with four sections of slide rails divided into upper and lower sections. The two groups are nested in each other to form a dual-drive power structure, which not only ensures the high strength of the whole machine, but also makes the coupling of the whole machine structure closer; at the same time, a micro-auxiliary slide rail is set in the head device area, which is in conjunction with the dual-drive power structure. They complement each other to further ensure the tight fit and smooth sliding experience of the whole machine.

In terms of sliding experience, the pure mechanical structure of Honor Magic2 is somewhat similar to the feeling of constantly flipping the cover of a ZIPPO lighter. With the exclusive mechanical sound of the sliding cover, every time you slide the screen to unlock the phone or call out the front camera There is always a sense of "ritual" in the operation.

Based on this slider, Honor Magic2 also has a special setting: sliding down the screen will bring up the Magic Live smart engine.

After sliding the screen open, you can clearly see from the side that the entire structure of Honor Magic2 has a "dislocated" design. The upper part of the screen is very thin, while the lower part becomes thicker. The body is thinned to make room for the screen. Because optical fingerprints require the fingerprint module and the OLED stacking layer to be packaged together, the gaps between the OLED pixels are used to scan the fingerprint, and some key points of the fingerprint information are collected for unlocking. Therefore, the "dislocated" design of Honor Magic 2 is not only more complex in structure, but also makes room for the in-screen optical fingerprint.

Honor Magic2 places a 32.48mm2 ultra-large light-sensitive screen fingerprint sensor under the screen. The larger light-sensitive area increases the fingerprint touchable area of ??Honor Magic2, and the algorithm of software and hardware collaboration improves unlocking. Speed, the official claims that the fastest unlocking speed is 0.5S. In actual experience, the success rate and speed of Honor Magic2’s fingerprint recognition are indeed good.

And Honor Magic2 also has AI perception. The AOD animation that usually prompts the fingerprint recognition area is hidden. When the finger is suspended on the screen surface, the AI ????perception gesture gesture will be displayed, and the unlocking animation will be displayed.

It can be seen that through the butterfly five-rail sliding screen structure and the design of the in-screen optical fingerprint, the Honor Magic2 has a screen-to-body ratio of up to 91.5%, and the entire body There are no unnecessary openings on the surface, making the design more pure.

The front of Honor Magic2 uses a 6.39-inch 19.5:9 AMOLED screen with 2340*1080 resolution. The left and right borders are 1.8mm, the top border is 2.9mm, and the bottom border is 3.95mm. It is a relatively good AMOLED phone this year. data.

Users who are familiar with Honor Magic must still remember the eight-curved design of the Honor Magic generation. The entire phone was very round, which challenged extremely high process difficulties at the time.

On the Honor Magic2, the design ideas of the previous generation are still continued. The back shell adopts a 3D curve, the transition with the frame is more natural, and the R-angle arc around the body is also more rounded.

The back shell of Honor Magic2 uses a gradient nano-level vacuum coating process, which is evaporated in the form of atomic groups or ions. And it settles on the surface of the substrate to form a thin film through the film forming process. And the propagation path of light on each layer of coating is precisely controlled, so that the light path changes when the light passes through the layers of nano-scale wavy texture diaphragms to reflect the texture of the mobile phone.

An intelligent life form that has evolved over two years: YOYO

Two years ago, Honor Magic took the lead in experimenting with mobile phone artificial intelligence and completely revised the EMUI at the time, bringing Magic Live smart engine. Two years later, with the addition of NPU in mobile SoC and the evolution of the system, Honor brought a new Magic UI 2.0 on Magic2. Different from the past, YOYO is a brand new intelligent life form. Unlike voice assistants such as Siri, YOYO has the ability to recognize, learn, think, and evolve. It integrates computer vision, natural semantic understanding, deep learning, decision-making systems, and recommendations. system and other AI capabilities in one. At the press conference of Honor Magic2, it was shown that its IQ is as high as 4556 points, making it the highest IQ mobile artificial intelligence currently.

For YOYO, fingerprints, voiceprints, and 3D structured light facial information are the first step for users to get to know YOYO. Honor Maigc2 (3D Bionic Edition) is equipped with Huawei's self-developed 3D structured light technology, equipped with a dot matrix projector, two 2-megapixel infrared lenses, and a 16-megapixel main camera. First of all, the dot-matrix projector pairs The face is projected into a dot matrix, and then two parallel infrared lenses deeply identify nearly 10,000 feature points on the face, thereby achieving all-weather unlocking, secure payment and other functions.

Users can also wake up YOYO through voice. By recording the user's own unique voiceprint, YOYO can recognize your voiceprint and execute your request. Thanks to the noise reduction technology of Honor Magic2, even in a disruptive voice environment, the MIC's noise reduction technology can still separate ambient sounds and accurately identify the user's voice. Moreover, when awakened during games, videos, etc., YOYO will not interrupt these tasks and can continue to follow orders.

That’s it. When you are driving, YOYO can automatically turn on the driving mode (enter through voice or connected to the car’s Bluetooth smart), and will listen to the user’s voice at any time throughout the process, eliminating the need for the driver to manually operate the mobile phone. process to avoid potential safety hazards. At present, YOYO has built-in 20 wake-up-free words in three fields: navigation, music, and communication. Users can directly say it and the mobile phone can do it directly, without any unnecessary actions. It is worth mentioning that in the future, YOYO will also automatically help you read WeChat.

In addition, YOYO is also your health nutritionist, which can identify most commonly used foods and tell you how many calories they contain. It is very helpful for girls who are fitness enthusiasts or who are losing weight.

And YOYO not only recognizes people, but also recognizes objects. Whether it is sports shoes or instant noodles, they can basically be identified relatively accurately, and a purchase link is also given below.

Not only that, YOYO is also your portable translator. Whether you encounter a foreign language menu or a more complex foreign language newspaper, YOYO can help you translate.

Companionship is the longest confession of love. You can also train YOYO to increase the tacit understanding with your mobile phone. Tell YOYO on the voice interface: I want to teach you XXX, and then train it to execute your instructions. Currently YOYO supports more than 700 applications.

In addition, YOYO can also transform into a business butler. When the mobile phone receives various information about travel, meetings, etc., it can automatically provide users with various thoughtful little cards to provide users with complete domestic and business information. Overseas travel reminders, there will also be notifications before the flight takes off. It will also push the local weather forecast based on the destination address and plan the route to the airport.

YOYO can even determine what you want to say, and then give you the latest information at any time based on search engines. For example, when chatting with friends on WeChat, YOYO can understand the conversation between you and your friends, intelligently analyze the context of the conversation, and provide quick reply options. When a friend asks you what to eat tonight, YOYO will recommend some good restaurants to you. When a friend asks you if you want to watch a movie together, YOYO will tell you which popular movies have been released recently.

Of course, as an intelligent life form, YOYO can do much more than that. In the future, YOYO can achieve simultaneous interpretation. When you talk to a foreigner, you can enter call translation in Honor Magic2. The system automatically selects the native language of the native speaker and the user selects the other party’s language, regardless of whether the other party is an iPhone, landline or anything else. On mobile phones, YOYO can translate conversations. In addition, for female users, YOYO can also help you take care of your skin on the go. Test your skin quality through the eight most representative dimensions such as fine lines, subcutaneous red areas, spots, and pores, and provide customized skin care recommendations. This function has also been certified by national professional organizations to help female users understand themselves anytime and anywhere.

Unfortunately, what we currently have is an engineering machine, and these functions will only be experienced after the Honor Magic 2 is launched.

The strength of Kirin 980

The main reason why Honor Magic2 has such powerful performance is the Kirin 980 SoC. It is said that the Honor Magic 2 has been basically finalized half a year ago, and the fact that it has waited half a year for the Kirin 980 shows its importance.

The biggest highlight of the Kirin 980 in terms of specifications is that it uses a 7nm process and integrates 6.9 billion transistors. According to TSMC’s official statistics, compared with the previous generation flagship, the Kirin 970, which is manufactured on a 10nm process, the performance of the 980 is improved by about 20%, the energy efficiency is improved by about 40%, and the logic circuit density is increased by 60%, which is 1.6 times the original. As we all know, traditional chips follow Moore's Law to increase the number of transistors per unit area to improve chip performance. We already know that the core factors that determine the performance of a processor are mainly process, architecture and other aspects. The more advanced the process, the higher the precision of the processor and the more transistors it can integrate. More importantly, more sophisticated manufacturing processes can also reduce the distance between components as much as possible and reduce power consumption. Especially for the current smartphone architecture, the increasingly "violent" architecture relies more on craftsmanship. The current chip manufacturing process generally stays at 10nm, and the 7nm process was once called "the closest to the physical limit of the silicon-based semiconductor process." Therefore, the 7nm process launched by Kirin 980 this time reflects Kirin's progress in technology.

In terms of performance, the Cortex A76 can run at 3GHz under the latest 7nm process. Compared with the A73 used in the previous generation Kirin 970, the integer performance has been improved by 90% and the floating point performance has been improved by 150%. %, and the overall performance is improved by 80%. Although this comparison is not based on the same process and frequency, it cannot fully reflect the performance of the new architecture. Therefore we also need to look at the actual data applied to the chip. At the Kirin 980 launch conference, Huawei officially gave data that compared to the previous generation Kirin 970, it increased by 75%, while energy consumption increased by 58%. This is also considering the balance between power consumption and heat generated by the highest main frequency of Kirin 980 is 2.6GHz.

This newly designed A76 CPU architecture is composed of a three-level energy efficiency architecture of 2 ultra-large cores, 2 large cores and 4 small cores, and uses DynamIQ scheduling technology. Compared with Big.little, DynamIQ redefines the multi-core microarchitecture, and the biggest feature of DynamIQ is that the number of Cortex-A CPUs in a DynamIQ cluster can range from a single core to 8 cores, and it also supports heterogeneous CPUs. Mix and match between. Therefore, in terms of scheduling, this time Kirin 980 can flexibly schedule different cores for different usage scenarios, resulting in higher execution efficiency.

In terms of graphics processing, Kirin 980 uses Mali-G76 MP10 with a main frequency of 720MHz. Compared with the previous generation, Mali-G76 has improved unit power consumption performance and unit area performance, and the performance density is compared with the previous generation. The Mali-G72 generation has improved by 30%, the architectural efficiency has increased by 30%, and the machine learning processing capability has increased by 2.7 times. Mali G76 adopts the latest Bifrost-based architecture. Compared with the previous midgrad architecture, the biggest innovation of Bifrost is the use of instruction group shader (ClausedShader). In addition, the Bifrost architecture also uses Quad based vectorization technology. Compared with the previous SIMD vectorization technology, only one Able to execute a single thread, Quad vectorization technology supports up to four threads of execution, sharing control logic, and the utilization rate is close to 100%. Compared with G72, G76 has a 30% increase in performance density and a 20% increase in energy efficiency.

Not only these basic performances, Kirin 980 is also the world's first dual-core NPU to enable face recognition, object recognition, object detection, image segmentation, intelligent translation and other AI scenarios, using higher precision Deep web. And according to Huawei officials, Kirin 980 can recognize 4,500 images per minute, the recognition speed is 120% higher than the previous generation, the real-time frame rate of multi-person pose estimation is as high as 30fps, and it can achieve real-time object tracking for photo preview. Compared with the first artificial intelligence mobile phone chip Kirin 970, Kirin 980 has achieved a leap from image recognition to object detection.

Theoretically, the Kirin 980 has good performance this time. If the most powerful generation of Kirin chips is still suspected of being a bit "nonsense", we can say that this is the most undisputed time that Kirin 980 has established itself as a flagship SoC.

We still remember that in the middle of this year, Huawei released the very scary technology "GPU Turbo", and in Honor Magic2, Huawei brought an upgraded version of GPU Turbo 2.0. By optimizing the high network backbone network, single-ended multipath and aggregation acceleration are achieved. In the WIFI environment, the system will intelligently select a path with shorter delay for users to play games, achieving network delay optimization.

In addition, thanks to the dual-core NPU of Kirin 980, Honor Magic2 achieves more accurate AI dynamic recognition. Conduct intelligent learning on power consumption, load and other behaviors in game scenarios, establish a more accurate SoC energy efficiency model, optimize resource allocation, and make more accurate load predictions.

In the actual test, we conducted tests on "QQ Speed" and "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds: Stimulating Battlefield" respectively.

It can be seen that for games like "QQ Speed" with constantly changing scenes, real-time rendering by the GPU is required, which puts a certain test on the graphics performance of the mobile phone. After the entire game experience, the result was 60Fps (full frame) during the game. In addition, the AI ??touch smart scheduling based on Kirin 980 has been significantly applied. It is more active in left and right drift and various key combination operations. The overall gaming experience is very good.

For games that test performance like Battle Royale, Honor Magic 2 can still run very stably at almost full frame without any fluctuations. The overall gaming experience is good. Of course, we have become accustomed to such performance. After all, Honor already had such performance when it launched GPU Turbo 1.0.

AI dual-frequency GPS + 40W fast charge

As the annual flagship, Honor Magic2 also comes standard with AI dual-frequency GPS and 40W fast charge. It is worth mentioning that Honor’s AI dual-frequency GPS is still a self-developed Hi1103 chip, rather than directly integrating the supplier’s existing resources. This also shows that Honor’s attitude towards technology is rigorous and innovative.

GPS is the most commonly used function on our mobile phones. Taking a taxi, navigating, and sending a location via WeChat are all achieved through mobile phone GPS. GPS positioning relies on the time it takes for the signal to be transmitted from the satellite to the ground receiver to determine the specific location of the mobile phone. Prior to this, mobile phones only supported the (1575.42MHz) L1 single-frequency band. For single-band GPS, there are two main factors that affect positioning accuracy:

1. The ionosphere in the atmosphere is exposed to sunlight The ionosphere is filled with ions and electrons, so when the GPS signal passes through the ionosphere, it is refracted, affecting the transmission time and causing positioning deviation. 2. Between dense buildings, the GPS signal directly emitted by the mobile phone will be reflected. When multiple signals are superimposed and then received by the mobile phone, it will reduce the accuracy of distance calculation between the satellite and the mobile phone.

The GPS we used before was the conventional L1 frequency band, but the dual-frequency GPS here adds the 1176.75MHz L5 frequency band to help positioning at the same time. Since the ionosphere has different effects on the signals in the L1 and L5 frequency bands, dual-frequency GPS equipment can use algorithms to eliminate the errors caused by the ionosphere to GPS by comparing the delays of the two signals; and between high-rise buildings, due to the GPS in the L5 frequency band The signal bandwidth is 10 times that of L1. The signal waveform in the L5 frequency band is narrower. Direct and reflected signals are not prone to superposition effects. Mobile phones can more accurately identify direct signals. To give an inappropriate example, the dual-band routing that we are already familiar with supports 2.4GHz and 5GHz. When the 2.4GHz frequency band becomes unstable enough, it switches to the 5GHz frequency band to ensure the stability of the network.

In addition, Honor Magic2 comes standard with 40W super fast charging. The power of fast charging has become higher and higher in the past two years. Most smartphones currently have a power of 20W+. As early as two years ago, Honor Magic 1 launched 5V8A fast charging with a maximum of 40W. This time, Honor Magic2 has changed to 10V/4A fast charging specifications. Compared with the previous high voltage and low current, the high current and low voltage solution of Honor Magic 2 has less current loss for charging and the charging efficiency is also higher. And during the charging process, since there is no need to do one more voltage conversion, the temperature of the mobile phone will be lower during charging.

After our testing, the actual test power of Honor Magic2 can reach up to 35W. This conversion rate is already very good. The entire charging is completed in about an hour, which is a very good result.

Ultra-wide-angle AI three-camera AI upgrades

Honor Magic2 is Honor’s first rear-mounted three-lens mobile phone. This set of three-camera modules is also called the “ultra-wide-angle AI three-camera module” by Honor. "Photography", including: 24-megapixel black-and-white camera, f/1.8; 16-megapixel color camera, f/1.8; 16-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera, f/2.2, which is equivalent to adding a new addition to the dual-camera solution of Honor 10 color + black and white A super wide-angle lens.

The three cameras each have their own division of labor: the 24-megapixel main camera is mainly responsible for imaging, the black-and-white camera captures levels and details to improve the image quality of the main camera in night scenes and zoom scenes, and the ultra-wide-angle lens is suitable for shooting vast and grand scenes. landscape scenes to accommodate more scenery.

It needs to be emphasized that the new ultra-wide-angle lens of Honor Magic2 has an equivalent focal length of 17mm and has a 117° ultra-wide-angle viewing effect, which is equivalent to nearly double the field of view of an ordinary mobile phone wide-angle lens. At the same time, the wide-angle lens The unique sense of stretching makes the picture more expressive.

For example, in this set of proofs, taken at the same location, Honor Magic 2 has a wider field of view after turning on the ultra-wide-angle lens. More information is accommodated in the limited frame, and the buildings on both sides have obviously shrunk inward. sense, creating a unique visual effect. This was difficult to experience with the wide-angle lens of mobile phones in the past, making Magic2 more comfortable when shooting large scenes such as landscapes and buildings.

Based on the stronger AI computing power brought by the coordination of software and hardware, Honor Magic2’s automatic recognition ability of shooting scenes has been further improved, and it can identify 60 types of tags and more than 1,500 scenes.

What’s interesting is that unlike other mobile phones’ single smart scene recognition, Honor Magic2 supports dual scene recognition, which means that more information can be recognized in the same scene, such as green plants and flowers, blue sky and flowers, etc. . This more accurate recognition allows Magic2 to accurately segment the image content, and then perform parameter tuning respectively to improve the imaging effect.

Let’s take a look at more sample photos below:

Overall, the imaging of Honor Magic2 has certain characteristics. AI imaging is extremely friendly for ordinary users’ daily shooting, and the colors of the finished films are eye-catching. , which is more conducive to social communication. The newly added ultra-wide-angle lens also enriches the coverage of mobile phone imaging and shoots more stylish blockbusters.

Summary:

Back to the question raised at the beginning of the review: The word "smartphone" has been called by the public for so many years, but how should a mobile phone be truly "smart". Perhaps it’s not about how fast the computing speed is, nor how complicated the functions are, but that it can continuously learn and improve itself. This is the difference between the so-called "intelligent" and "automatic" of artificial intelligence. "Automatic" is just a characteristic of a machine, while "thinking" is the real so-called artificial intelligence. Therefore, in Honor Magic 2, YOYO is the absolute core. It is not about how many functions it can give you now, but about being able to know and understand you like a partner, and having the ability to think and learn. This is true intelligence. As the most widely used smart terminal and the most closely connected with our lives, smartphones undoubtedly bear the carrier of our expectations for future smart life. Just like Honor Magic opened the door to mobile phone AI two years ago, Honor Magic 2 two years later can only succeed by not forgetting its original intention.