Honor 200 Series to Come With Company's New Four-Layer AI; Launch Timeline Confirmed, Design Teased

Honor 200 series will be unveiled globally as well as in China soon. The lineup is likely to include the Honor 200 and the Honor 200 Pro. The company announced the upcoming launch at the VivaTech 2024 event in Paris on Wednesday, May 22, where it also introduced its new four-layer AI architecture. The Honor 200 series smartphones will be the first to get these AI features and are confirmed to get Honor's MagicOS 8.0, which will also roll out to a few older handsets.

Honor 200 series launch date

At the VivaTech 2024 event, the company announced that the Honor 200 series, confirmed to ship with MagicOS 8.0, will launch globally in Paris on June 12. It added that the MagicOS 8.0 update will also roll out to the Honor Magic V2 and Honor 90 lineup soon.

The Honor 200 phones will come with an AI-backed Portrait experience, where the AI has been trained on Studio Harcourt portrait datasets, according to the company. Studio Harcourt is a French photography studio known for its classic portrait photos of celebrities and iconic figures over the years. The upcoming smartphones are claimed to deliver studio-quality portrait photos, with similar "lighting and shadow effects" as the studio portraits.

Another major AI update from the company includes the four-layer AI architecture that is said to be integrated into MagicOS. The base layer consists of a cross-device and cross-OS AI platform which garners an open ecosystem where multiple devices can be interconnected. With this, users can do tasks like type on their smartphone from their laptop keyboard, or use their phone camera as a webcam paired with the laptop, similar to what we've seen with Samsung's Galaxy AI features.

On top of this foundational layer, Honor said there is a Platform-level AI layer which allows "intent-based human-computer interaction and personalised resource allocation." The third and fourth layers of the new AI system respectively include an App-level AI and the "Interface to Cloud-AI services" which will be backed by Google Cloud. This system is claimed to improve innovation for users and increase their privacy protection.

Meanwhile, Honor China has revealed that the Honor 200 series will launch in the country on May 27. It has simultaneously teased the design of the Honor 200 Pro, which is shown in a Tian Hai Qing (translated from Chinese) shade with a dual-tone glossy and marble-like patterned finish. The back panel is seen with an elliptical, pill-shaped camera module in the top left corner housing three cameras and an LED flash unit. The power button and volume rockers appear on the right edge of the handset.