Andrew Heinzman
I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but 2022 may be the year of foldable phones. Oppo launched the Find N last month, Google should debut a Pixel Fold soon, and Honor just announced the Magic V, its first foldable.
The Honor Magic V is a flagship device with flagship specs—there’s the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip, 12GB of RAM, and a large 4,750mAh battery that charges at 66 watts. There’s also a ton of high-res cameras, with three 50MP external lenses (main, ultra-wide, and a “spectrum enhanced camera” that we’re asking Honor about), plus a pair of 42MP selfie cameras, one on the inside display and another on the outer display.
But the most impressive thing about the Magic V isn’t its specs. It’s the small improvements that Honor made on the Galaxy Z Fold 3 design.
One of our biggest complaints about the Galaxy Z Fold 3 is its narrow, cramped cover display. It measures 6.2 inches (very nice) but has an awkward 22.5:18 aspect ratio (terrible). Honor found a simple solution to this problem; it stuck a normal-sized, 6.4-inch 21:9 panel on the outside of the Magic V. (Like the Galaxy Z Fold 3’s outer display, the Magic V’s external screen supports a 120Hz refresh rate).
There are some other exciting improvements here, like a 7.9-inch 10:9 internal folding display that should feel a bit taller than other foldable screens (unfortunately, this inner display is only 90Hz). And while the Galaxy Z Fold 3 is 0.62 inches thick, the Magic V is a thin 0.26 inches.
Honor says it will launch the Magic V foldable in China on January 18th at a starting price of ¥9,999 (that’s about $1,570). Unfortunately, the company hasn’t announced plans for a global release, so its up to Samsung (or another company) to build a phone like this for the market outside of China.
Source: Honor
