HONOR and Qualcomm Deepen AI Collaboration at 2025 Snapdragon Summit · China to Usher in the Dual-Engine Era of Smartphones

Manal Saleh

Breakthroughs in AI agent and performance to debut first on HONOR Magic8 Series and HONOR MagicPad3 Pro

At 2025 Snapdragon Summit · China, global AI device ecosystem company HONOR unveiled groundbreaking on-device AI innovations developed in collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., including Low-bit Quantization Technology for On-device AI Models and Next-Generation Hybrid Retrieval Technology. These advances will debut first on the upcoming HONOR Magic8 Series and HONOR MagicPad3 Pro, both powered by the new Snapdragon^® 8 Elite Gen 5 Mobile Platform. By combining HONOR’s agentic AI capabilities with Qualcomm Technologies’ industry-leading mobile platforms, the two companies are ushering in a new era of smartphones where efficiency and computing power converge to transform the user experience.

“HONOR is all in on AI. Everything we do is guided by the HONOR ALPHA PLAN, our blueprint for transforming into a global leader in the AI device ecosystem,” said Fang Fei, President of Products, HONOR Device Co., Ltd. “By collaborating with leading partners such as Qualcomm Technologies to continually redefine what’s possible with on-device AI, we move closer to creating an open, co-created, value-sharing world where everyone can benefit from AI.”

“The strength of our relationship with HONOR is measured not only in years, but in scope,” said Chris Patrick, SVP and GM of Mobile Handset, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “Our work has delivered countless breakthroughs, the latest of which – as showcased today at the 2025 Snapdragon Summit China – will be deployed on HONOR devices. These advancements highlight our on-device agentic AI innovations, as well as the power of our heterogeneous computing architecture.”

Redefining Efficiency: Breakthroughs in High-Efficiency On-Device AI Modeling

At 2025 Snapdragon Summit · China, HONOR and Qualcomm Technologies announced a new phase of collaboration to pioneer the Dual-Engine Era of AI agent and performance.

Addressing the three biggest challenges of on-device AI - computing power, memory, and energy consumption, HONOR introduced Android’s first Low-Bit Quantization Technology for on-device models, thanks to the new Qualcomm® Hexagon™ NPU, delivering up to a 15% increase in modeling computing, 20% lower model consumption, and 30% less storage space compared to the previous generation HONOR device. This breakthrough sets a new benchmark for efficient on-device deployment of intelligent agents.

Complementing Low-Bit Quantization, HONOR also introduced Next-Generation Hybrid Retrieval Technology, designed to dramatically improve the way devices process and surface information. By combining keyword indexing with vector indexing, the system enables millisecond-level fusion matching across text, images, and video, delivering up to a 50% improvement in overall retrieval performance. This advancement not only accelerates semantic search but also strengthens the foundation for intelligent agents, enabling faster, more accurate responses across a wide variety of real-world scenarios.

Creativity Unleashed: Industry-First Agent-Powered Magic Color

Building on this foundation, HONOR also unveiled the industry’s first agent-powered Magic Color. This innovation allows users to transform and restyle images or videos with unprecedented simplicity, completing tasks such as locating an image, extracting key color tones, and applying those tones to a new target, all through intuitive, one-sentence commands. By combining efficient on-device AI models with advanced semantic understanding, Magic Color lowers the barriers to complex image editing, enabling both everyday users and creators to achieve professional-grade results with ease. Looking ahead, HONOR plans to extend agent-driven capabilities across more than 200 vertical scenarios and 3,000 general scenarios, covering the Top 100 applications.

Performance Reinvented: GPU-NPU Heterogeneous AI Super Sampling for Gaming

Performance represents the second engine in this new era. HONOR, in collaboration with Qualcomm, introduced its industry-leading Hyper-Fusion Core Architecture, which deeply integrates HONOR Turbo X’s multiple core performance engines with Qualcomm® Oryon™ CPU architecture. By dynamically scheduling resources across cores, this architecture maximizes energy efficiency and performance, ensuring smoother, more responsive user experiences.

HONOR introduced the industry’s first GPU-NPU Heterogeneous AI Super Sampling Technology based on Snapdragon platforms, designed to transform low-resolution, low-frame-rate gameplay into high-resolution, high-frame-rate experiences. Similar to DLSS technology on PC, it leverages AI to reconstruct details, motion features, and lighting effects in real time. In practice, this enables demanding open-world titles to achieve 120fps at 1080p from an original 60fps, delivering both super-resolution and ultra-high frame rates. Compared with traditional GPU-based upscaling, this heterogeneous GPU-NPU computing architecture reduces latency and jitter, ensuring smoother, more immersive, and more fluid gaming.

Together, these advances highlight HONOR’s vision for the Dual-Engine Era, where AI agent and performance optimizations converge to redefine the user experience and accelerate the arrival of the general-purpose intelligent agent era. Powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Mobile Platform, the HONOR Magic8 Series and HONOR MagicPad3 Pro Series will launch next month in China.

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Snapdragon and Qualcomm branded products are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. Qualcomm, Snapdragon and Hexagon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Qualcomm Incorporated.

About HONOR 

HONOR is a global leading AI device ecosystem company. It is committed to revolutionizing human-to-device interactions to bridge the AI ecosystem with all consumers in the agentic AI era and beyond. The company endeavors to open industrial boundaries through open, seamless collaboration to co-create a value-sharing ecosystem with industry partners. With an innovative product portfolio spanning AI phones, PCs, tablets, wearables and more, HONOR aims to empower every human, enabling everyone to embrace the new intelligent world.

For more information, please visit HONOR online at www.honor.com or email newsroom@honor.com  

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