Honor Magic V5 – Unboxing the world’s skinniest foldable.

Foldable phones are lit at the moment and are getting a lot of attention and IMHO rightly so. We have got to the point where we can now make the choice between having a skinny slab with a 6ish-inch display or a skinny phone with two displays, one hiding away until it is needed. All the big players have one (except Apple, but trust me, it’s coming). However, in this spicy but growing sector of the smartphone market, there is a lot of competition to have the best in categories.

Honor have stuck to what they do best, as they proved last year with the Honor Magic V3; they have gone thin. They have (for the moment at least) the thinnest* folding phone in the world, the Honor Magic V5, at a preposterous 8.8mm folded and 4.1 mm unfolded. Sounds good, let’s have a closer look then.

However, before we dive in, I do have some admin I want to cover.

This is the Global version of the Honor Magic V5, and as such, I have not been given the full details of the specifications. I do have some limited information, and I will, of course, share what I am allowed to, but bear this in mind as you read the below article.

Here are the Specs that we know for now.

So with the specs out of the way lets go around the device and have a look at it in more detail.

Starting from right hand side with the phone unfolded we have got the power/sleep/wake and fingerprint reader above that is the volume rocker button. I have found the positioning of both of these buttons to be fine and they all have good responsive click to them which gives you reassurance that you have actually pressed the button. the fingerprint reader on the power key is very fast to identify finger prints as well i find it to be a tad quicker than on my Pixel 9 Pro Fold which is nice to see.

Moving around to the base of the phone is where we will find a speaker grill on the right and side along with the USB Type C port and a Dual Sim Slot  there are also 2 noise cancelling mics on the left and side of the base. In terms of the capabilities of the USB port I have yet to have had it confirmed what the charging speed is but I know it will work with Honor’s Supercharge so it is going to be at least above 30W. I have also not been advised wether this will work as a display out port to allow the use of a larger display and desktop mode. The speaker down here is crisp and clear and I like that it has been offset from the other one which is on the top edge of the phone as it lessens the chance of them both being covered when using for gaming or watching a video.

Next up is the left hand edge of the phone which is totally barren except for some antenna break lines. This is a good move as on the Honer Magic V3 and V2 I was not a fan of the staggered button placement when it was unfolded. It worked when folded but unfolded it was just annoying especially if you wanted to take a screen shot for example.

Moving around to the top edge we have got the second speaker which also pulls double dute as the earpiece speaker when on calls, on the left and then o  the right we have a single noise cancelling microphone. No infra red blaster which is something that was normally to be found on Honor devices, they must have realised that not enough people actually used it.

If we head a round the back the crown glory is right at the top in the form of the large protruding camera bump that has grown considerably in size over the Magic V3. tis now means that the Cameras used have been significantly upgraded as well. So in the camera bump we have 3 cameras as follows:-

50MP Wide Camera (f/1.6), OIS

64MP Periscope Telephoto Lens Camera (f/2.5), OIS

50MP Ultra Wide Camera (f/2.0)

These cameras are accompanied buy a triple LED light in between the Wide and Ultrawide camera’s. the cameras specs do look impressive but I have yet to decide if having the massive bump that facilitates them is a pro or a con.

In comparison I have also taken some side by sides with my pixel 9 pro Fold to show you the camera bumps against each other. I think it may grow on me over time but we will have to wait and see.

Obviously with he phone unfolded we have got the large front screen visible as well but we will come back to that shortly.

Next up is the internal folding display This is an OLED panel which in turn is covered with a protective layer Honor call Super Armour which should increase the durability of the display slightly. the screen is 7.95 ” diagonal and has a resolution comprised of 2352 x 2172 pixels to give a fairly square aspect ratio to the panel. it is also an incredibly bright display capable of hitting a maximum of 5000nits in the right conditions. This will of course be a specific are of the panel but from my initial impression’s the screen is sufficiently bright fro viewing outdoors in all but the brightest of conditions which we have been having lately in the UK which has been nice!

We also have the first of two front facing cameras tucked up on the centre of the upper right hand side of the display. It is a 2oMP unit and it will record video at an undefined quality and FPS it does not seem to have OIS

Lastly we are now closing/folding the phone to see that onto the left had side there is the hinge cover which has some nice patterned detailing on it but not much else to say apart from that. I will say that i have heard no creaks clicks or grinding noise from the hinge it is very smooth and defiantly smoother than my Pixel 9 Pro Fold which sounds like me when i get out of bed in the morning.

Folding the phone bring the outer display to the forefront and this display is roughly 6 and bit inches and that is all the details I can share as I have not got the actual specs. I can tell you that it is agin very bright and that it also looks to be a high resolution panel again. i am also goign to make an assumption and say that it is an OLED panel as well. We do also have the seconf front facing 20MP camera up the top here as well just below a superskinny earpiece cut out.

As for the internals I can tell you that the magic v5 is powered by a Snapdragon® 8 Elite Mobile Platform so will have all the other bells and whistles that come along with that. As for storage and RAM I have the 512GB Storage version here which has 16GB of RAM. This is all kept ticking along by a massive 5820mAh battery which should keep you going for a decent amount of time!

So that is the tour of the Honor Magic V5 complete. I am seriously impressed by the design of this phone I like the changes that have been made to the button placement. The colour of my review unit which is Dawn Gold is stunning especially as it has been roughened up slightly the only thing I am bit unsure about is the camera bump but that will be something I either get used too or come to be annoyed by and only time will tell. If it means I get better camera performance I thin I can live with it.

As is alway the case I will be using this phone as my daily for the next couple of weeks including when i go away on holiday at the end of this month. I am looking forward to getting stuck in to this and seeing how much of an improvement it is over my Pixel 9 Pro Fold in daily use and also in the cameras. 

Please do come back to see how I have been getting on.

You can register your interest for the Honor Magic V5 Global  on the Honor Website now and it would be worth doig that as they will no doubt have some tasty launch offers available for this beauty when it does launch!