There is a spec struggle occurring amongst corporations to say the crown of thinnest foldable. Phone producers are taking part in with fractions of millimeters to boast about their cellphone’s thickness. Honor is successful this race on a theoretical foundation with its 8.8 mm (when folded) thick Magic V5 foldable. I’m saying theoretical as a result of there’s a large, camera-bump-sized caveat to this.
Image Credits:Ivan Mehta
The system’s skinny body appears and feels nice so long as you maintain it along with your fingers wrapped across the backside half of the cellphone. If your fingers brush towards the large bump, you would possibly really feel uncomfortable holding the cellphone. This adjustment took me a number of days to get used to.
Image Credits:Ivan Mehta
When you lay the cellphone on a desk, it creates a slant (like within the photograph above). This is ok when the cellphone is folded, however if you unfold the cellphone, it creates a wobble, and it isn’t nice.
Image Credits:Ivan Mehta
In the unfolded state, the body is simply 4.1 mm thick, 1 mm lower than the Oppo’s Find N5, however 0.5 mm greater than Huawei’s triple-folding cellphone.
The Phone’s thickness in comparison with the Pixel 10 Pro. Image Credits:Ivan Mehta
Apart from that, the cellphone is a stable piece of {hardware}.
It is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite, which is a top-tier processor. The entrance show is a 6.43-inch display screen with 2376 x 1060 decision, and the primary (unfolded) show is a 7.95-inch display screen with 2172 x 2352 pixels. The firm mentioned it’s utilizing a carbon fiber strengthened internal panel for higher fall safety. Plus, Honor has utilized an antiscratch materials to the show. So far, I haven’t seen notable scratches on both display screen.
Image Credits:Ivan Mehta
The display screen could be very shiny with a peak brightness of 5,000 nits. I loved studying articles, PDFs, and lengthy emails on the unfolded display screen. Playing The New York Times’ puzzles on the unfolded display screen was one among my favourite issues to do on the system.
Both shows help LTPO, which suggests the refresh charge can dynamically change to any worth from 1Hz to 120Hz, and that makes navigation and scrolling a breeze. Most apps adjusted properly to each the quilt and important display screen, although I seen that the decision turned distorted once I tried taking part in “Diablo Immortal” on the unfolded display screen, so I needed to follow the entrance display screen for gaming.
The construct of the system is sturdy, and it has IP58 and IP59 rankings for mud and water resistance. The folding hinge, which makes use of the second-gen Honor Super Steel mechanism, felt stable throughout my weeklong use of the Magic V5.
The foldable has an enormous 5,820 mAh silicone carbon battery. With this capability, you will get via a full day of utilization with a little bit of gaming simply. The system helps 66W wired charging and 50W wi-fi charging, however you might want to purchase Honor’s proprietary chargers to help that. Honor does embrace its 66W charger within the field. The firm claims you could cost the system from 0% to 50% in simply 16 minutes with the wired charger and attain 100% cost in 43 minutes. Even if the cellphone doesn’t hit these theoretical limits, you may rapidly add sufficient energy to final you a number of hours.
Camera and AI
The Honor Magic V5’s digicam casing hosts three sensors: a 50-megapixel important digicam with f/1.6 aperture, a 50-megapixel ultrawide digicam, and a 64-megapixel telephoto digicam with 3x optical zoom. The cellphone additionally has two 20-megapixel selfie cameras — one for every of the internal and outer screens.
The cellphone takes good pictures in all circumstances, capturing particulars properly with typically good shade accuracy. However, I felt that in some circumstances, the cellphone’s computational algorithm boosted reds. The Magic V5’s digicam has a fairly good tremendous macro mode that permits you to take close-up pictures of sure objects, like flowers, whereas retaining particulars.
Image Credits:Ivan Mehta
Since all corporations have entry to AI picture fashions, many are introducing super-zoom modes to seize a base photograph and utilizing generative AI to boost the small print. Honor’s 100x zoom tech is nice sufficient to seize textual content at a distance and use AI to clear it up. However, once I tried to seize totally different objects, the AI-processed model regarded very a lot AI generated. This wasn’t the case with the Pixel 10 Pro’s 100x Zoom.
Honor 100x ZoomImage Credits:Ivan Mehta
Pixel 100x ZoomImage Credits:Ivan Mehta
Like most China-made telephones, this system additionally has a ton of AI-powered “beauty” options that allow you to easy your pores and skin, regulate your nostril dimension and face dimension, brighten the image, and extra. You can simply flip these options off with a toggle.
Honor has included a bunch of AI modifying instruments with the cellphone. There is an AI eraser that permits you to draw on objects to take away them. The device additionally has further choices, together with eradicating passersby and eradicating reflections. The first choice doesn’t at all times work properly. Check out this photograph I took at Wimbledon. While it eliminated some individuals within the background, it additionally eliminated the torso of one of many tennis gamers.
Image Credits: Ivan MehtaImage Credits:Ivan Mehta
Image Credits: Ivan Mehta (edited by AI)Image Credits:Ivan Mehta
The cellphone has an AI cutout device, which lets you choose an object from a photograph and transfer it inside the body. When you progress the thing, the system makes use of generative AI to fill within the hole.
This function can be not good and at instances leaves artifacts like shadows across the authentic place of the thing, clearly indicating that you just moved one thing within the photograph. There are different instruments like AI upscaling and AI outpainting as properly.
Image Credits:Ivan Mehta (Edited by Honor AI)
The cellphone additionally consists of an image-to-video operate within the system’s photograph app, which permits for 3 generations per 30 days. It creates movies utilizing Google’s Veo 2 mannequin, however the output will not be nice and sometimes feels uncanny in comparison with the unique picture.
Software and availability
Honor makes use of its MagicOS 9, primarily based on Android 15 on this system. It will not be cluttered, however I discovered pre-installing Honor apps for sensible residence gadgets, and the myHonor app (which is a group app), to be pointless. There can be an Honor Health app, which connects to sensible well being gadgets from Honor (in case you have any), and consists of has some pre-loaded train content material.
MagicOS handles media change with each Android and Apple gadgets properly. The firm provides a Workstation app for macOS, which makes it straightforward to ship pictures, movies, and paperwork to your Mac.
The firm additionally launched a neat new on-device name translation function, which helps you to obtain a translation mannequin on to the cellphone and course of the information regionally. At the second, it helps six languages, together with Chinese, English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian. I examined this function with a French-speaking pal, and the outcomes had been superb. Unlike the Pixel’s translation function, which retains your voice, you get to decide on between a male and a feminine voice.
Honor is releasing the Magic V5 in Europe, APAC, and the Middle East. In the U.Ok./Europe, the Magic V5 will begin at £1,699.99/€1,999 for the 512GB model. This provides shoppers an choice to attempt a foldable at a value £200/€1,999 cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7. While this won’t problem Samsung’s prime spot within the foldable market, it would assist Honor’s market share amid rising curiosity in foldables.