Honor’s narrow Magic V5 foldable is a laugh to make use of, minus the massive digital camera bump by way of NewsFlicks

There’s a spec conflict happening amongst corporations to assert the crown of thinnest foldable. Telephone producers are enjoying with fractions of millimeters to boast about their telephone’s thickness.


Honor is successful this race on a theoretical foundation with its 8.8mm (when folded) thick Magic V5 foldable. I’m announcing theoretical as a result of there’s a large, camera-bump-sized caveat to this.

The skinny body of the machine appears to be like and feels nice so long as you cling it in some way that your palms are wrapped across the backside part of the telephone. In case your palms are brushing towards the huge bump, chances are you’ll really feel uncomfortable conserving the telephone. This rigamrole took me a couple of days to regulate to.

Whilst you lay the telephone at the desk, it creates a slant (like within the picture above). That is tremendous when the telephone is folded, however whilst you spread the telephone, it creates a wobble, and it’s not delightful.

Within the opened up state, the body is solely 4.1mm thick, one millimeter not up to Oppo’s To find N5, however 0.5mm greater than Huawei’s triple-folding telephone.

Except for that, the telephone is a cast piece of {hardware}.

It’s powered by way of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite, which is a top-tier processor. The entrance show is a 6.43-inch display screen with 2376 x 1060 answer, and the principle (unfoled) show is a 7.95-inch display screen with 2172 x 2352 pixels. The corporate mentioned it’s the use of a carbon fiber strengthened internal panel for higher fall coverage. Plus, Honor has implemented an anti-scratch subject matter at the show. Up to now, I haven’t observed notable scratches on both of the monitors.

The display screen could be very vivid with a top brightness of five,000 nits. I loved studying articles, PDFs, and lengthy emails at the opened up display screen. Taking part in NYT Puzzles at the opened up display screen was once certainly one of my favourite issues to do at the machine.

Each presentations make stronger LTPO, because of this the refresh charge can dynamically transfer to any worth from 1Hz to 120Hz, and that makes navigation and scrolling a breeze. Maximum apps adjusted smartly to each the duvet and primary display screen. Regardless that I realized that the answer blew up when I used to be looking to play “Diablo Immortal” at the opened up display screen, so I needed to persist with the entrance display screen whilst enjoying the sport.

The construct of the machine is robust, and it has IP58 and IP59 rankings for mud and water resistance. The folding hinge, which makes use of the second-gen Honor Tremendous Metal mechanism, felt cast all over my week-long utilization of the V5 Magic.

The foldable has an enormous 5,820mAh silicone carbon battery. Due to that, you’ll be able to get thru all day of utilization with a little of gaming simply. The machine helps 66W stressed out charging and 50W wi-fi charging, however you wish to have to shop for Honor’s proprietary chargers to make stronger that. Honor does pack its 66W charger throughout the field. The corporate claims that you’ll be able to fee the machine from 0 to 50% in simply 16 mins with the stressed out charger and get to 100% charging in 43 mins. Even though the telephone doesn’t hit the ones theoretical limits, you’ll be able to temporarily get sufficient juice within the telephone to ultimate you a couple of hours.

Digicam and AI

The Honor Magic V5’s digital camera casing hosts 3 sensors. A 50-megapixel primary digital camera with f/1.6 aperture, a 50-megapixel ultra-wide digital camera, and a 64-megapixel telephoto digital camera with 3x optical zoom. The telephone additionally has a couple of 20-megapixel selfie cameras for each the interior and outer monitors.

The telephone takes just right footage in all prerequisites, shooting main points smartly with in large part just right colour accuracy. On the other hand, I felt that during some prerequisites, the telephone’s computational set of rules boosted reds. The Magic V5’s digital camera has a sexy just right tremendous macro mode that allows you to take close-up footage of positive gadgets, like plant life, whilst preserving main points.

Since all corporations have get right of entry to to AI picture fashions, a lot of them are introducing an excellent zoom mode to seize the bottom picture and use generative AI to refill the main points. Honor’s 100x zoom tech is just right sufficient to seize textual content at a distance and feature AI transparent it up. On the other hand, after I attempted to seize other gadgets, the model with AI processing regarded very a lot AI-generated. This wasn’t the case after I attempted the Pixel 10 Professional’s 100x Zoom.

Identical to maximum China-made telephones, this machine additionally has a ton of AI-powered “attractiveness” options that assist you to smoothen your pores and skin, modify your nostril dimension and face dimension, brighten the image, and extra. However you’ll be able to flip that off temporarily thru a toggle if you need.

There are a number of AI enhancing equipment that Honor has integrated with the telephone. There’s an AI eraser that allows you to draw on gadgets to take away them. The software additionally has choices, together with taking out passerbys and taking out mirrored image. The primary choice doesn’t at all times paintings smartly. Take a look at this picture I took after I attended Wimbledon. Whilst it got rid of some folks within the background, it got rid of the torso of probably the most tennis gamers.

The telephone has an AI cutout software, which lets you choose an object from a photograph and transfer it throughout the body. Whilst you transfer the article, the machine makes use of generative AI to fill within the hole.

This may be no longer absolute best and, every now and then, leaves artifacts like shadows across the unique place of the article, obviously indicating that you simply moved one thing on this picture. There are different equipment like AI upscaling and AI outpainting as smartly.

What’s extra, there’s an image-to-video serve as within the telephone’s picture app, which permits for 3 generations per month. It does the task of constructing the video the use of Google’s Veo2 type, however the output isn’t nice, and steadily feels uncanny in comparison to the unique picture.

Device and availability

Honor is the use of its MagicOS 9, according to Android 15, with this machine. It isn’t cluttered, however I believed pre-installing Honor apps for sensible house gadgets, and the myHonor app, which is a neighborhood app, was once pointless. There’s an Honor Well being app, which connects sensible well being gadgets from Honor (you probably have any), and likewise has some pre-loaded workout content material.

MagicOS handles media change with each Android and Apple gadgets smartly. The corporate has a Workstation app on macOS, which makes it simple to ship footage, movies, and paperwork on your Mac.

The corporate additionally launched a neat new on-device name translation characteristic, which helps you to obtain a translation type at the telephone and procedure the information in the neighborhood. These days, it helps six languages, together with Chinese language, English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian. I examined this option with a French-speaking buddy, and the consequences had been excellent. Not like Pixel’s translation characteristic, which additionally keeps your voice, you get to make a choice from a male and a feminine voice.

The corporate is freeing the Honor Magic V5 in Europe, APAC, and the Center East. In the United Kingdom/Europe, the Magic V5 could have a beginning value of £1,699.99/€1,999 for a 512GB model. This provides shoppers an choice to check out out a foldable at a £200/€1,999 less expensive value than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7. Whilst this may no longer problem Samsung’s height spot within the foldable marketplace, it will lend a hand Honor’s expansion numbers amid foldables.