BEIJING — Honor put its most expensive Magic phone on sale in China on Monday, a 6.8-inch slab built around two 200-megapixel cameras tuned with ARRI, a 2-nanometer Qualcomm chip and an 8,800-milliampere-hour battery.

The Magic 9 Pro Max starts at 6,499 yuan, about $970, for 12 gigabytes of memory and 256 gigabytes of storage. The 16-gigabyte, 1-terabyte version is 8,499 yuan, about $1,270. Sales opened at 4:08 p.m. Beijing time after a Magic Grand Ceremony that also introduced the Magic 9 and Magic 9 Super Edition. Honor has not named a U.S. or European ship date.

The pitch is "cinema in the hand." Honor worked with ARRI, the German cinema-camera maker, on color and video profiles for the main and telephoto lenses. The main camera uses a 200-megapixel sensor measuring 1/1.28 inch, an f/1.57 aperture and what Honor calls gimbal-level stabilization rated CIPA 8.0, with about 3 degrees of movement. The periscope telephoto is also 200 megapixels, on a 1/1.4-inch sensor, with an f/2.6 aperture and the same CIPA 8.0 claim. A 50-megapixel ultrawide sits beside them. Honor's own H1 imaging chip handles the processing.

Optional glass pushes the kit........

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