The HONOR 600 Pro has been out for two weeks, and The Star has been using it as a primary device to see if the hype is real. The short answer: the camera and battery are the stars, but there's more to the story.

Let's start with the camera. The HONOR 600 Pro packs a 50MP main sensor with a wide f/1.9 aperture, plus a 50MP ultrawide and a 12MP telephoto with 3x optical zoom. In good light, photos are sharp with vibrant colours that don't look over-processed. Low-light performance is impressive too — the night mode cleans up noise without washing out details. The AI scene recognition kicks in automatically, adjusting settings for food, sunsets, or pets.

It works most of the time, though sometimes it over-saturates greens in landscapes.

Video recording goes up to 4K at 60fps, and the stabilisation is solid for walking shots. The selfie camera is a 32MP shooter that handles skin tones naturally — there's no weird smoothing unless you turn on the beauty mode.

Now for battery life. The phone has a 5,100mAh battery, which is bigger than most flagships. In two weeks of heavy use — social media, YouTube, GPS, and lots of camera work — it easily lasted a full day. Moderate users can stretch it to a day and a half. Charging is fast: the included 100W charger takes it from 0 to 100% in about 35 minutes. There's also 50W wireless charging, which is handy if you have a compatible pad.

The display is a 6.7-inch OLED with 120Hz refresh rate and 1,200 nits peak brightness. It's bright enough for direct sunlight, and colours look punchy. The in-display fingerprint sensor is fast and rarely misses.

Performance-wise, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip handles everything smoothly — gaming, multitasking, editing photos. The phone runs MagicOS 8.0 based on Android 14. The software is clean with some useful AI tricks, like a smart sidebar for quick app switching and a document scanner that straightens crooked photos of documents.

What's not perfect? The phone is slippery without a case — the glass back is beautiful but a fingerprint magnet. The speaker setup is stereo, but the bottom speaker is louder than the earpiece, so audio feels slightly unbalanced. And the price — around R18,999 in South Africa — puts it in direct competition with the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and iPhone 15 Pro Max.

So who should buy the HONOR 600 Pro? If camera quality and all-day battery are your top priorities, this phone delivers. If you want the absolute best software update policy or the brightest display, the Samsung or Apple options might still edge ahead. But for the price, the HONOR 600 Pro is a strong contender that doesn't cut corners where it counts.