The new Honor Magic V2 is incredibly thin, but is that enough to give it an edge over the Galaxy Z Fold 5? We took a look at both phones side by side to decide.
This week IFA kicked off with a keynote from Honor at which the phone maker launched a new foldable phone, the Honor Magic V2, and SlashGear was there to cover the phone’s official debut. This is a sequel to the Honor Magic Vs from earlier this year and its most obvious competitor is the highly refined and polished Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5. Both are book-style foldables with similar proportions, but there are also a number of key differences between the two.
Since we have both phones in our labs for testing, we wanted to take a look at them side-by-side and see where each one stood as compared to the other. The software on the Honor V2 has a few caveats, so we won’t look at the software between the two here. But the hardware is remarkable, more on one side than the other. One phone also has a distinct advantage in terms of availability, so without further ado, let’s dive in.What is the Honor Magic V2?
The Honor Magic V2 is the latest book-style foldable from Honor. Honor used to be a subbrand of Huawei before being spun off as its own entity back in November 2020. Since then, Honor has made phones focused on being affordable and appealing to a younger audience. We reviewed the Honor Vs back in March of this year, and even since then, a lot has changed with this device.
The Honor Magic V2 phone that we have been testing is still using pre-production software and besides that, it’s software that was never meant for U.S. shores, so we won’t talk about that aspect too much here. Still, the phone will be coming to the rest of the world in the not-too-distant future. It will never be sold in the U.S. but what it brings to the table is significant enough that it might (and should) affect brands that are marketing devices in North America.What is the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5?
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 is the latest flagship, book-style foldable from Samsung. It is currently on its fifth generation of foldable, and unlike Honor foldables, this phone has been available in the U.S. since day one. In fact, you’ve been able to buy every Samsung Galaxy foldable phone in the United States. As a result, Samsung owns the market here, which is in a good position to be in.
Also because of that, we have seen little in the way of innovation in Samsung’s foldables over the last three generations. All of them had similar specifications that were updated for the current year in terms of processor, RAM speed, and the like.
Another way to look at that is that Samsung has been refining its design over the past five years and it has yielded a remarkable foldable.
