Ex Huawei sub-brand Honor has just announced its first foldable smartphone, the Honor Magic V. Like most latest phones that fold, it has the Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold design. It features a large internal folding display with a smaller external display that can be used while the device is folded. Today is the foldable’s Chinese launch, where its price starts at around $1,569 for its 256GB storage model. It will go on open sale on January 18th.
Honor joins an increasingly long list of companies that have either announced or have started to sell foldable smartphones. Most recently, we saw Oppo announce its Find N late last year, and Xiaomi and Huawei also have foldable devices of their own. We’ve followed up with Honor to find out if, or when, the Magic V might see a global release.
The Magic V’s flagship feature, its internal folding screen, measures 7.9 inches from corner to corner, has a resolution of 2272 x 1984 with a refresh rate of 90Hz, and an aspect ratio of 10:9. That’s slightly bigger than Samsung’s Z Fold 3, whose internal screen is 7.6 inches with a resolution of 2208 x 1768. Honor says the Magic V’s internal screen is like using two 21:9 screens side by side
On the outside, the Magic V’s external screen is also slightly larger than the Z Fold 3 at 6.45 inches (compared to 6.2 for Samsung), with a resolution of 2560 x 1080, a 120Hz refresh rate, and a 21:9 aspect ratio. When closed it’s close to a normal 2022 smartphone when compared to Samsung’s thin TV remote-shaped device.
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Internally, the Magic V is running Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, which is paired with 12GB of RAM and 256GB or 512GB of storage. It’s got a 4,750mAh battery that can be charged at up to 66W, which gives you a 50 percent charge in 15 minutes. It’s 5G compatible and is running Honor’s Magic UI 6.0 software on top of Android 12, which supports the display of multiple app windows at the same time, Honor says.
In terms of cameras, Honor has included three 50-megapixel sensors on the rear of the foldable, which include the main sensor, an ultrawide camera, and something Honor is calling a “spectrum enhanced camera.” There is no dedicated zoom camera. The Magic V has a pair of 42-megapixel selfie cameras, one embedded in the outer display, and one embedded in the inner folding screen.
