Even after 12 months of unprecedented innovation, one might think that smartphone AI is still a superfluous gimmick. The industry's biggest players seem intent on spending their entire marketing budget showcasing their silliest software – how many ads for Google's Best Take feature or Apple's Genmoji tool did you see last year? – but the broader toolsets that include these features are (I promise you!) becoming more and more useful.
For its part, Honor has always maintained that AI should provide human-centered solutions to human-centered problems (read: make our everyday lives easier), and with MagicOS 8.0, the brand launched its Intent-Based User Interface (IUI). The goal was to reduce the number of steps required to switch between apps by predicting (and responding to) your intentions.
A key feature of this interface was Magic Portal – a shortcut tool that lets you switch between apps and services with a single swipe – and in MagicOS 9.0 for the upcoming Honor Magic 7 Pro, Magic Portal gets a serious facelift.
Let's start with the big feature upgrade. In its current state, Magic Portal lets you select and drag blocks of text, images, and files into a contextual sidebar to interact with relevant apps. That alone was enough to set the best Honor phones apart from the Android competition – in fact, we described Magic Portal as an “outstanding feature” in our Honor Magic V3 review – but in MagicOS 9.0 the tool is updated with a nice new feature called Portal to Anywhere.
Portal to Anywhere lets you use your knuckle (yes, your knuckle) to draw anything interesting on the screen – be it an address, an image or a product – and Honor's AI brain provides apps (in the Magic Portal sidebar ). ) that it deems most relevant to that content. For example, if you circle the cover of a book with your knuckle, Magic Portal 2.0 allows you to drag that book directly into relevant e-commerce apps to purchase it. Or if your friend mentions the name of a cafe you should visit in a text message, you can circle that cafe's name and drag it into Google Maps or another compatible navigation app.
Especially with images, highlighting content with your knuckle is a much more effective method than the push, hold, and drag required in Magic Portal 1.0. But I know what you're thinking: “Isn't Portal to Anywhere just Circle to Search by a different name?”
Well, not really. First of all, Circle to Search is already available on select Honor phones. Crucially, this feature is a shortcut to Google Search and not a shortcut to multiple apps. You can of course still use Portal to Anywhere to access Google Search, but you can also drag your selected content into any number of different apps. It's Honor's intent-based UI in action.
Honor says Magic Portal 2.0 also has improved semantic understanding of landmarks and movie IPs, so in theory it should have no trouble fully identifying everything from the Sagrada Familia to Timothée Chalamet dune gear.
The apps are coming
The second big news for Magic Portal 2.0 concerns the extent of app support. Since its launch early last year, Honor has steadily increased the number of Magic Portal-compatible apps available outside of China – the software now supports WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and Google Maps – but Magic Portal remains a much more useful tool for users on the other side of the world, not least because the pool of compatible ride-hailing apps for Westerners is still disappointingly small.
Fortunately, that's changing with Magic Portal 2.0, which introduces – in Honor's own words – support for “a broader range of applications spanning entertainment, transportation, productivity and shopping needs.”
This isn’t just marketing speak either. Uber, YouTube, TikTok, Outlook, Google Translate, well, everywhere else.
When Honor announced Magic Portal, I wrote that Honor's new “intent-based interface” would let you order food and taxis with just one swipe. Now, a year later, this utopian vision is becoming a reality for many more people.
Magic Portal 2.0 will launch with MagicOS 9.0 on the Honor Magic 7 Pro, which is expected to arrive in European markets soon.