Honor Magic V Revealed As First Foldable Flagship

Shortly before the end of 2021, Huawei spin-off brand Honor started teasing the foldable Honor Magic V smartphone. Fast forward mere weeks later, and not only has that device been revealed, but we've got a full set of specs to boot. Of course, the most significant point of interest for many of us is likely that folding display, so it's little wonder that Honor described it in very specific detail today.

The Honor Magic V comes with two displays, like many phones where the fold is vertical rather than horizontal. On the exterior, we have a 6.45-inch OLED display that's capable of reaching up to 120Hz and has a resolution of 2560 x 1080. This display is actually a little more adept than the interior display, at least in terms of refresh rate, as the interior display maxes out at 90Hz.

That doesn't mean the interior display is a slouch, though. All opened up, the folding OLED interior screen clocks in at a whopping 7.9 inches, giving it more the feel of a tablet than a phone. Like Xiaomi's Mi Mix Fold or Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 3, we're guessing that the Honor Magic V is quite the looker when that interior display is fully opened.

Honor says that it uses "an advanced waterdrop hinge technology" to make the Magic V slimmer than its competitors when folded. Honor actually shared specifics on total device thickness too, saying that the device is 6.7mm thick when unfolded and 14.3mm when folded. Both displays also cover 100% of the DCI-P3 color space and support HDR10+.

Moving beyond the display, the Honor Magic V has some internals worth talking about too. The Magic V uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 5G SoC, and while Honor didn't give us any benchmarks for computing performance, it did say that the phone offers 30% better GPU performance than the previous generation thanks to its Adreno 730.

Then we have the cameras, with a triple camera array on the back and a single front-facing camera. That front-facing camera uses a 42MP lens that can record video in 4K and snap pictures in 7,552 x 5,664. While the front-facing camera doesn't seem to be a slouch, the rear camera array is definitely the star here, as it has three 50MP shooters in all between the main wide-camera, ultra-wide camera, and a "spectrum enhanced camera." Like the front-facing camera, these cameras can shoot video in up to 4K, while max image resolution gets a bump up to 8,192 x 6,155.

Honor actually spent a fair amount of time talking about the software on the Magic V, which will be running Magic UI 6.0 and Honor's AI engine dubbed "Magic Live." While Honor says that Magic Live will be something of a personal assistant that gets smarter as time goes on, there is one area where the phone's AI will be immediately noticeable, and that's in multi-window use. Honor says that users will be able to split the phone's larger folding screen into multiple windows, with the phone's AI detecting and recommending content that would be good for such a layout.

Finally, Honor says that the Magic V uses a 4,750mAh battery that can charge to 100% in 40 minutes via its 66W Honor SuperCharge. Add to that HTEE + QTEE security, dual speakers with DTS: X Ultra, and support for WiFi 6, and it sounds like we do indeed have a foldable flagship on our hands.

The Honor Magic V will come in two different configuration options, one with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage and the other with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. In addition, the phone will be available in Black, Space Silver, and Burnt Orange, and it seems that all three colors will be available regardless of configuration.

Honor is wasting little time in getting this phone out the door, as it'll launch in China on January 18th – a little over one week from today. The 12+256GB model will run RMB 9,999 (around $1,568), while the 12+512GB version will run RMB 10,999 (around $1,725). It's an expensive phone, no doubt, but it might have the spec sheet to go head-to-head with the foldables from Xiaomi and Samsung.