Honor Magic V2 hands-on: The new thinnest foldable changes the game
Chinese phone brands are notoriously competitive and very quick to one-up each other. And that's led to some exciting races (for phone nerds like me, anyway), such as the 2017 battle to have the thinnest bezels, or the 2018 race to hide the selfie camera in creative ways. Now, we have the race to have the thinnest and lightest book-like foldable.
Xiaomi got the ball rolling last summer with the Mix Fold 2, which was jaw-droppingly thin compared to everything else on the market at the time at 11.2mm (the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4, by comparison, has a thickness between 14-15mm). The Huawei Mate X3 topped it earlier this year, matching the Mix Fold 2's thinness while shaving weight down to 239g. Now we have a new champion: the Honor Magic V2, which measures 9.9mm when folded and weighs 231g.
I held the Magic V2 in my hand, and it felt just like holding a normal slab phone. When folded, the Magic V2 has essentially the same footprint as the iPhone 14 Pro Max, except it's even lighter. And once again, when compared side by side against the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4, the difference in thickness is jarring.
The Magic V2 is only selling in China for now, but I have a very strong hunch (not officially confirmed by Honor) that this phone will go on sale in Asia and Europe later this fall.
Honor Magic V2 The Honor Magic V2 is the thinnest and lightest foldable phone with a thickness of just 9.9mm when folded and weighing 231g. It also packs a triple camera array and runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Brand Honor SoC Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Display 6.4-inch 120Hz OLED (outside); 7.9-inch 120Hz OLED (inside) RAM 16GB Storage 256GB, 512GB, 1TB Battery 5000 mAh Ports USB-C Operating System MagicOS based on Android 13 Front camera 16MB cameras (one on each screen) Rear cameras 50MP main, 50MP ultra-wide, 20MP telephoto Dimensions 156.7 x 145.4 x 4.7mm (unfolded); 156.7 x 74.1mm x 9.9mm (folded) Colors Black, Silk Black, Silk Purple, Gold Weight 231g Charging 66W wired
Design and hardware
Feels just like a slab phone when folded
The fundamentals of the Honor Magic V2 should be nothing an XDA reader hasn't already seen: It's a 7.9-inch small tablet with a mostly square aspect ratio that folds up like a book. Once closed, you have a slab with a 6.4-inch outside screen and an overall design language that's similar to the Honor Magic Vs that launched at the beginning of this year.
There are two major differences that set it apart from other foldables. The first is the aforementioned downsizing. The Magic V2 measures only 4.7mm when unfolded and 9.9mm closed, and it weighs only 231g. This essentially fixes one of the most common complaints of foldable phones: that they're too bulky and heavy. I've been using the Google Pixel Fold as my daily driver for the past couple of weeks without many issues, but after handling the Magic V2 for an hour, the Pixel Fold felt like a brick.
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Honor engineers told me in order to get the phone this thin, it had to design new components, including an ultra-thin titanium hinge and a silicon-carbon battery that has a 12.8% higher energy density, allowing more juice to be crammed into a smaller cell. Just look at the photo below to see how thin the hinge and batteries are.
The Honor Magic V2's titanium hinge and silicon-carbon battery are both extremely thin.
The battery is particularly mind-blowing. The Magic V2 uses two cells to combine for 5,000mAh of power, and the batteries could fit into the credit card sleeves of my wallet.
Honor Magic V2, its titanium hinge, and battery cells
The hinge, despite its sleekness, felt sturdy. Not quite as stiff as Samsung's, but it can stay in place at various angles, and Honor says it's been tested to withstand 400,000 folds. There is no official IP water resistance rating, but Hnor engineers did say the phone has been tested to be resistant to water splashes.
The second thing that sets the Magic V2 apart from other foldables is that it has stylus support for both screens. The stylus is included with the China retail package.
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Both displays are LTPO OLED panels with refresh rates up to 120Hz, and resolutions north of 1080p but below WQHD+. The outside screen has a maximum brightness of 2,600 nits, which makes it the new brightest screen of any smartphone (including slabs). I also like its 20:9 aspect ratio, which is more in line with conventional phones. The inside panel's maximum brightness is lower, at 1,600 nits.
Unsurprisingly, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip is the silicon of choice for this flagship, paired with 16GB of RAM. For optics, the phone is looking quite good too. The main system consists of a 50MP main camera with f/1.9 aperture, 50MP ultra-wide, and 20MP telephoto zoom lens that can do 2.5X telephoto zoom. There are two 16MP selfie cameras embedded into each screen.
I only had limited time with the phone and was told the software was not final, so I was unable to pull photo samples from the device, but from what I saw, the cameras seem to be an upgrade from the already-good Honor Magic Vs cameras. Zoom shots looked clean up to 10X, and the main camera, despite the small 1/1.7-inch sensor, produces pleasing software-assisted bokeh around subjects.
Software
Too early to tell
The Magic Vs runs Honor's MagicOS based on Android 13. The software I tested was far from final, so I couldn't do too much, but it's worth noting the devices had Google Mobile Services running (as I said, I have a strong inkling a global launch is coming). I haven't been the biggest fan of Honor's MagicOS, as I don't like the gigantic app icons, the lack of an app tray, and the need to reach all the way to the top of the screen to access the notification panel. All of these issues are still here, but I do think Honor's multitasking system, particularly for foldables, is among the best in the business.
I'm happy to report the camera app will actually take advantage of the phone's foldable nature and move the viewfinder to the top half of the screen when it's folded mid-way in an L shape. The Honor Magic Vs' camera app still does not do that the last time I checked two weeks ago.
Honor Magic V2 early impressions
I am very, very impressed with the Honor Magic V2's hardware, and I think it has reached a weight/thickness level that is already great, meaning any further slimming down will merely be the cherry on top. Functionally, the Magic V2 already has fixed all the compromises of using a foldable phone over the past few years. This thing, when folded, feels just like a normal flagship phone in my hand.
Of course, this phone does not matter to most Americans because even when Honor launches this "globally," it will still exclude the North American market. This has made covering the smartphone scene for an American-centric website a bit of an odd exercise. We either have to pretend Chinese brands do not exist — hence why we have some tech sites calling the Pixel Fold the "thinnest foldable" when that isn't true — or cover bleeding-edge Chinese phones and recommend something else down the line.
In two weeks, we're going to see the unveiling of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5. While I think Samsung's software is going to be more polished, it will almost certainly be noticeably heavier and thicker than the Magic V2. And after holding the Magic V2, I don't know if I can go back to something thicker.
Source: XDA Developers
