Hands-on with Porsche Design HONOR Magic7 RSR camera at a Porsche experience

This week, I was invited by HONOR to the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, along with several other journalists from tech websites; an all-expenses paid trip, sign me up!

HONOR is a brand vying to win the hearts and minds of Europeans, who mainly stick with big-name brands like Apple and Samsung. It doesn't have to be this way, of course, but the sad reality in cases such as these is that the bigger brands have cornered the market when it comes to phone contracts. It's far easier to stay in the ecosystem and upgrade rather than look around and decide on a phone that possibly isn't supported or even available with your new two-year contract and partially subsidized phone upgrade.

One of those phones competing with the likes of Samsung is the HONOR Magic7 Pro, which I was given to review last month, which scored high marks with us. HONOR also has the Porsche Design "HONOR Magic7 RSR," which I was given by my UK representative to review (which will come later). It is basically a souped-up Magic7 Pro, details of which will be made more apparent with my hands-on later.

Yes, HONOR has partnered with Porsche to create devices that are recognizable to the Porsche brand. Part of that was also being able to mingle with Porsche representatives, which happened on the third day of my visit to Barcelona at Club de Golf Terramar in Sitge, which is a golf club situated on the coast.

Gallery: Porsche classics

The idea was to take photos of classic Porsches to show off the prowess of the cameras in the HONOR Magic series phones, you can see we got to have a close-up with the Porsche Super 90 and Carrera 3.0 but also to do this while being driven in some classic Porsches!

After having a look around the two above classics, we were escorted around to the front, where another five classic Porsches were waiting for us. They were:

1964 Porsche 356 Super 90
1972 Porsche 911 2.4 S Targa
1986 Porsche 911 3.2 Carrera
1974 Porsche 911 2.2 E
1992 Porsche 968 Club Sport

During the hour, we were driven around, which, incredibly, also included a few laps around the 130-year-old Autódromo de Sitges-Terramar race track located in the small village of Rocamar, in Sant Pere de Ribes near Sitges in Barcelona. Let me just say it was hard to remember that I was also there to take photos of my experience and test the phone's camera, but I was too busy simply enjoying the ride.

Gallery: Porsche experience

Above, I have only included the photos I took that were not motioned blurred (there were quite a few). I got to ride in the 1964 Porsche 356 Super 90, the 1972 Porsche 911 2.4 S Targa, and the 1992 Porsche 968 Club Sport, as along the way, we stopped a few times to rotate our positions.

After the ride experience, we went back to the golf club for refreshments and to catch up with our representatives. One of the things that stuck with me this week is how the HONOR UK team drilled into how customer feedback is acted upon. This, along with the HONOR ALPHA PLAN and their Magic Ring interconnectivity of all devices, both Android and iOS, which I saw first-hand at their booth, is very much a first step to winning the hearts and minds of a difficult-to-crack European market share, but if you ask me, this week marked a giant step forward in that goal.