This week, at VivaTech in Europe, Chinese phone maker Honor announced the release date of the new 200 series phones and its own 4-layer AI architecture to be used in the latest devices. 

Going worldwide on 6/12, Honor 200 and 200Pro will be Honor's first devices with a new 4-layer generation AI. 

This is not Honor's first foray into AI. At MWC2024 earlier this year, Honor showed off Apple's continuity feature and a similar MagicRing system. MagicRing allows the user to use the phone as an additional window or tablet. Honor also showed off a tool called Magic Portal that tries to guess which apps users want to share content with. 

Honor of 4-layer AI architecture presented such works. The first layer allows the sharing of computing power and services between devices and operating systems Cross-device and cross-operating system

Level 2 is a platform AI that features intent-based human-computer interaction, and a personalized operating system. It enables the allocation of systems and resources. It sounds like an upgraded version of MagicRing and Magic Portal. 

The 3rd tier of this architecture focuses on apps and is intended to encourage generative AI applications. 

The final and 4th layers are cloud AI services that leverage the cloud to perform specific AI experiences. This is similar to how Google and OpenAI use the cloud to run the Gemini and ChatGPT functions. 

A key part of this announcement is to focus on AI on devices. Most prominent companies running AI are zooming in on cloud services. AI services on devices tend to be separate, small language models that perform specific tasks. How robust will this 4-tier architecture be if there is no more cloud access? 

"At HONOR, we are confident that by combining the power of on-device AI's personalization, intuition, and privacy protection, everyone can safely and securely harness the full potential of AI," George Zhao, CEO of Honor, said in a press release. We are also excited to leverage Google Cloud to unlock the potential of this hybrid approach and provide users with an even more seamless AI experience.

As part of the AI push, Honor also revealed a collaboration with Harcourt Studio. Photo studios in Paris are known for their black-and-white portraits. Honor claims that this partnership has distilled the Harcourt Studio style into an algorithm that the 200 series phones can replicate.

Honor claims to have divided the process of portrait photography into 9 different steps. This breakdown allows the 200 series phones to faithfully reproduce the Harcourt method and promise studio-quality portraits.

Not so much in terms of specifications, despite the fact that Honor 6 and 200Pro debuted on May 200. There is nothing even on the pre-order page of Honor's Chinese website. We know that the phone will be powered by Magic OS8.0, but 1 leak suggests that the phone will be powered by a 50MP primary camera, but that's about it.