Club Benefits
I’ve been using iPhones ever since the 3GS, and an Apple ecosystem has grown around me — from the M5 MacBook Pro to my Apple Watch Ultra 2. But as my iPhone 15 Pro is on its last legs (as a content creator, I’ve really put it through its paces), it’s time to upgrade and I’m stumped.
Normally, my inner voice would be saying “just get an iPhone” to silence the blue bubble FOMO, but the Honor 600 stands as one of the few Android devices that actually plays nice with the ecosystem instead of fighting it.
And this isn’t just in software, the aesthetics are seriously premium, you’re getting a giant battery, mesmerizing OLED display, AI smarts in (mostly) all the right places and a banger camera system.
I do have some gripes (more on them later), but for £549 — £50 less than the iPhone 17e — you’d be hard pressed to find a better direct foe to Apple’s lineage.
The anti-Android aesthetic
It all starts with the Honor 600 being a serious looker and real premium feel in the hand — slim and lightweight at 6.7 ounces with unibody cold-carving process creating that sleek aluminum frame around the body.
But the real attention to detail comes in two ways. First, that super skinny bezel at 0.98mm (actually the thinnest in the industry right now) really does make the front basically look like its all display, while giving your thumb plenty of real estate to navigate while one-handed.
Then there’s the translucent composite fiber back. Touching it, you’d think it’s glass. But I promise you it’s not, and it actually makes the phone much more durable too. Throw in IP68, IP69 and IP69K water and dust resistance, alongside being SGS 5-star rated for drop and crush resistance, and this is ideal for clumsy hands like mine.
Living in both worlds
So here’s the secret weapon. I know Android Quick Share has managed to crack the AirDrop formula for Apple devices, but Honor’s been doing this for a while and with the upgraded OneHop technology, you’re getting much broader interconnectivity with other gadgets too!
It all starts with the Honor Workstation app for one-tap file sharing with iPhones and Macs, which in my time testing transferred data at a much higher speed too. One word of warning, though, both the Honor 600 and the MacBook need to be on the same WiFi network to make this happen.
But it goes further with a shared/synced notes system similar to the iCloud alternative. Open up a Workstation note and it’ll appear on your phone in real-time. Then comes the Apple Watch integration where the 600’s messages can sync to my Ultra 2.
It’s not the completely perfect “it just works” levels of Apple integration you get with an iPhone, Apple Watch and MacBook working together, but it’s close enough for what I need to do.
The day-to-day
Of course, one of the ways that Android phones stand up to iPhones is by offering better hardware for less, and that’s exactly what the Honor 600 does. Beyond the design aspects we’ve already talked about, there’s a giant 6.6-inch AMOLED screen running at 120Hz with a crispy 458 pixels-per inch.
Colors melt off the screen — especially when you flick on Vivid Display that uses AI to enhance clarity and color — with anything you watch, play or work on moving buttery smooth. But the real superpower here is brightness that hurts (but in a good way), as sunlight mode can tweak that peak brightness all the way up to 8,000 nits…yes you read that right.
That meant even in the most direct sunlight (even when its reflecting off the cover glass), I had no problem seeing content. And for late night use, this is contrasted by the 3,840Hz PWM dimming and AI defocus features that has legitimately made this display feel easier on the eyes when doomscrolling.
Then there’s the software that brings it all together: the MagicOS 10 skin on top of Android 16. There’s plenty of customizability to the UI, but out-the-box it felt familiar to an iOS-style app pages formula, which then slowly reveals other familiarities like the Dynamic Island-like Magic Capsule on top too for quick reference to real-time notifications.
But it’s 2026, so of course the phone has AI, which for the 600 extends far beyond your standard writing tools and translations. I’ve already talked about the AI display tweaks you can make, as well as the fun image-to-video stuff you can do too. But a lot more comes into play with that dedicated AI button.
With either a short, long or double press, you can jump into various features like a circle to search, and get suggestions based on on-screen content through the image model. There’s also AI battery scheduling too for identifying your usage patterns and optimizing power allocation, and a deepfake/voice clone detection system, though on that latter one it wasn’t entirely accurate with a 75% success rate in my testing.
Plus, with that giant 6800mAh battery inside, I’m able to comfortably make it through an entire day of regular use (Apple Music, checking socials, messaging, TikTok doomscrolling, a couple quick games) with around 35% left in the tank — a far cry from the fumes I’m left with on my iPhone at its peak.
Getting snap happy
Of course, one of the biggest selling points for a phone is its camera, and in my time testing, the 600 mostly nails it. That 200MP main snapper definitely delivers some flagship-level pictures with some additional flair to boot.
You can turn on pro mode to get the full res, but I highly doubt anyone will, because with 16-in-1 pixel binning, you’re getting a lot more light to the lens and incredible clarity in every shot. Throw in CIPA 6.0 pro-grade optical image stabilization and low light shots are not a problem for this either.
But most impressive is that color temperature sensor doing some great work in understanding the vividness of what you’re shooting, while the AI color engine gives you a chance to mimic your favorite camera styles from the likes of Fujifilm.
And while the AI image-to-video is definitely more gimmick than a serious feature, I can’t deny it’s a lot of fun to use for bringing inanimate objects to life. Round the front you’ve got a 50MP shooter also produces bright, crispy, color accurate shots too.
There’s just one issue though — that 12MP ultra wide and macro camera is a bit of a letdown compared to the monster 200MP main. There’s a fair bit of edge blur and reduced sharpness that can create a slightly mushier quality to the 0.5x shots.
For those wanting versatile creativity, better balance would’ve been nicer here.
The frustrations
That being said, there were a couple of things that I missed while daily driving the Honor 600. First, that mid-range Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chip is speedy enough for the day-to-day basics and some multitasking, but it can start to get under pressure for anything more intensive.
Phone | Geekbench 6 single-core | Geekbench 6 multicore |
|---|---|---|
Honor 600 (Snapdragon 7 Gen 4) | 1307 | 4077 |
iPhone 17e (A19 Bionic) | 3606 | 9229 |
OnePlus Nord 5 (Snapdragon 8s Gen 3) | 2025 | 5221 |
Thanks to the vapor chamber, it won’t overheat under that sustained load, but it will just take a while to do things like render advanced photo edits, and gaming is on the slower side until you tone the graphics settings down a bit. And given the focus on the design here, you can find similarly-priced phones like the OnePlus Nord 5 or the iPhone 17e with more bang for your buck in this area.
And second is the lack of wireless charging. This has been common for the standard number series of Honor phones for a while now, and if you are more keen to do wired charging, this can absolutely keep up with 80W charging speeds and even 27W reverse wired to keep your earbuds topped up. But as someone who dived right into the MagSafe ecosystem, this is a tough pill to swallow.
Bottom line
However, all that being said, I’m stumped. My inner voice saying “just get the iPhone” has been silenced and it’s not just about specs — it's the fact that switching no longer means losing the Mac/Apple Watch features I love. Instead of fighting it, the Honor 600 embraces that seamlessness, and it’s one of the best phones I’ve tested in a long while.
It feels like the “Pro” phone the midrange has been waiting for and maybe, just maybe, it’s the one that will make some folks consider switching. I’m definitely getting that feeling.
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