Honor is reportedly testing a screen privacy feature similar to the one Samsung has built into the Galaxy S26 Ultra, and the first candidate could be the Honor Magic 9 Pro. If that happens, it would turn a once-niche anti-peeping trick into a new flagship arms race: keep the display readable for you, and annoying for everyone else standing nearby.
The claim comes from leaker Digital Chat Station, who says Honor is working on hardware-level privacy screens while also watching how image quality holds up in mass testing. That last part matters, because privacy filters have a habit of doing the obvious thing too well – protecting your messages while also dulling brightness and ruining color accuracy if the tuning is off.
What Privacy Display does
Privacy Display narrows viewing angles so people beside you cannot easily read what is on the screen. Samsung has made it one of the standout features of the Galaxy S26 Ultra, which is exactly why other premium phone makers are now circling the idea. In markets where flagship phones are increasingly judged by tiny quality-of-life upgrades, this is the kind of feature that sells the story as much as the hardware.
- Limits side viewing angles
- Makes content harder to read for nearby onlookers
- Could appear first on Honor’s top-end models
Honor Magic 9 Pro could get the privacy screen first
Digital Chat Station also says Samsung may begin supplying privacy-display panels to outside manufacturers by the end of 2028, which suggests the technology could stay relatively exclusive for a while. That kind of delay is familiar in the smartphone business: the biggest brands often debut a feature, then spend a cycle or two enjoying the marketing advantage before the wider supply chain catches up.
For Honor, the upside is obvious. A premium privacy screen fits neatly into the company’s flagship pitch, especially if it can avoid the washed-out look that has killed similar ideas in the past. The open question is whether the first version will be good enough to impress buyers – or just good enough to sound impressive in a launch presentation.