Honor Magic 7 Pro vs Pixel 9 Pro XL: which Android flagship wins in real life?

One of the best smartphones I ever owned was a Huawei Mate 20 Pro. I upgraded that to a Huawei P30 Pro, and then I was all excited about upgrading to the P40 Pro, but some political stuff happened we won't dwell on and the handset was barred from using any of Google's Play services.

Not wanting to live with a phone that couldn't access Maps, or YouTube, or even the native Gmail app, I admitted defeat and chose to switch to a Google Pixel.

Moving away from years of using Chinese smartphones was a bit of a shock to the system at first. In hardware terms, the Pixel series was not a patch on the Huaweis. The battery life was dire in comparison, charging times were slow, the processor was weaker and the camera was only better because of its clever software - the hardware was still not a patch on the Huawei.

Quite a few years have passed since I last lived with a flagship Chinese smartphone, and I've since upgraded to the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL as my daily device, which I'm quite happy with. But then the nice people at Honor offered to send me their new Magic 7 Pro, which is a close competitor to my Pixel, and I saw it as a great opportunity to catch up with the innovations that have been bubbling over quietly from the big Chinese brands.

Importantly, Honor used to be part of Huawei. It split off in 2020, not long after the political "incident" occurred, and started to built itself up as a big player. It's had a decent time to gestate, then, but can its new hero product compete with my flagship Pixel? On paper, at least, it's pretty close.

For a kick off, they're a spookily similar size. We're talking millimetres of difference across the main dimensions. They even weigh basically the same.

But then you dig a little bit deeper into the spec sheets and you notice some disparity. The Honor has a more powerful camera suite, but only just.

The Honor has larger on-board storage as standard, and a faster processor, and a brighter display, better built-in speakers, and it's better protected from the elements.

And then there's the battery setup. The Honor has a bigger battery straight out of the box, but it can also charge at up to 100 watts. The Pixel 9 Pro XL falls behind a lot of its competitors here with only 37 watt fast charging. Its wireless charging is also a sore point, with a 23 watt capacity in the Pixel to the Honor's 80 watts.

In hardware terms, then, it seems like the Honor has the Pixel 9 Pro XL beaten into a cocked hat. But we all know there's more to a smartphone's attributes than that, so I swapped my sims, and started living with the Honor Magic 7 Pro full time.

There are a few things that strike you early on about a Chinese phone. I promise I won't keep going on about this, but battery life is a world apart. My Pixel often struggled to last a day, but it's rare the Magic 7 Pro gets to my bedside table at night with less than 50% left. And if I have given it a particularly tough time, it can be topped up in 10 minutes thanks to that ridiculously quick charging.

However, there are some shortcomings, and the chief issue I have with the Magic 7 Pro is rather all-encompassing. It relies on an operating system called Magic OS 9.0, and it's really very good. But it is not a patch on Google's bare and brilliant pure Android interface.

While Honor's Magic OS does bring some funky customisation options, and perhaps a few other benefits I haven't bothered with, you just can't beat a bone-stock Android OS for simplicity and functionality. No bloatware, no messy gesture controls, no duplicate apps, no performance compromises, and plenty of Pixel-only features that I have genuinely missed.

Android on a Pixel is an absolute delight to use, and it feels so much more polished and professional than the Honor, but that doesn't mean the Honor is a fiddly mess.

While I'll always miss Pixel features like the auto music ID and call-screening, the Honor has similar versions of a lot of these features (not the Now Playing feature though, sadly) and they all do a reasonable job.

But there are other annoyances in the Magic OS user experience, such as the clumsy folder layout, some of the home-screen customisation options just aren’t as good, and the fact you'll have to wait much longer for updates.

I'd admit, I'm being a bit picky now. Both phones are a joy to use, and there's no noticeable compromises on performance, either. The handsets use different chips, but they both do a cracking job of ploughing through a beefy game, or editing a pile of pictures.

Ah, yes, the cameras. This is the big one. You see, on paper, the Honor Magic 7 Pro does have a better camera array than the Pixel 9 Pro XL. There's a 200mp periscope telephoto lens over the Pixel's 48mp, and the main module on the Honor has a wider aperture and a slightly better ultrawide sensor.

Video performance is pretty close, at least in hardware terms, and the Honor has a better selfie camera.

But it all changes when you come to use them. Then the numbers matter a bit less.

Truth be told, they're both absolutely brilliant at taking pictures. Market leading, even. But what the Pixel lacks in hardware it makes up for in software.

In most cases, you'd have to be seriously picky to call a winner between them, but there are shortcomings the Honor can't make up. The AI zoom, for example, is weaker on the Honor. Like the Pixel, it zooms in incredibly far on a digital level, and then AI tidies the grainy result up. While the Honor does this more quickly, the Pixel's AI engine is that little bit more intelligent. It wins by a nose.

The Pixel's magic erase system is better, as are the other AI tools, but not by all that much. And it does take an age to process. The Honor is always quicker.

I've already said the physical differences between the two handsets aren't really worthy of a mention, but Google manages to pack all this camera tech into a much smaller protrusion than the Magic 7 Pro. Its bulbous camera lump really is quite awkward and unbalanced. That said, I'd fancy its chances in a scratchathon over the Pixel. The Honor has always felt more robust.

This all leaves me with a rather woolly conclusion to come to. I'm thrilled to have had the opportunity to go back to a Chinese flagship smartphone again. It made me realise how much I missed those halcyon Huawei days, and how much better the hardware is.

But the Pixel series will always take the edge in overall useability, even if it's only by the smallest of margins. However, to be honest, these extremely mild irritations haven't been enough to make me want to switch back to the Pixel.

The time will come soon to give the Magic 7 Pro back to the nice people at Honor and, normally with that sad day looming, I'd switch back to my trusty Pixel to get reacquainted. But I've yet to get the sim tool out.

I'm sticking with the Magic 7 Pro for now. And when the man comes to collect it, he'll have to take my right arm with it. It's fabulous.