The Magic V5 is one of the thinnest foldable Android phones around. This our hands-on experience with Honor’s newest phone.
The Honor Magic V5 builds on the success of the V3, and the line between slab-style phones and foldables is getting blurred even further with a new silicon-carbon battery, Qualcomm’s latest 3nm processor, and a profile that might make you open your wallet – if you live outside of the US.
Here in the US, the Honor Magic V3 didn’t get much love, for obvious reasons, including general availability. But that phone proved that thinner foldables can be produced in a way that doesn’t mean hardware constraints. The 9.3mm thick body, while folded, ended up a game changer for the industry, and devices a mere two years old look ancient – looking at you, OnePlus Open.
The Magic V5 is no secret. The phone was announced last month with a record-breaking thickness of just 8.8mm. Of course, that measurement warrants some clarification. According to Honor, the Magic V5 measures that thin in the Ivory White variant, and only that variant. Every other colorway comes in at a thicker measurement, landing at 9mm.
Usually, that wouldn’t matter. The difference is, quite literally, a hair. However, with that technicality in mind, the Honor Magic V5, in every colorway except Ivory White, measures slightly thicker than the Galaxy Z Fold 7 folded, which launched just a few weeks ago.
With that being said, this is where the thickness of foldables begins to become less relevant than overall build quality, software, and performance. Having held the Galaxy Z Fold 7 next to Magic V5, the difference is irrelevant, and if Honor had sent the Ivory White variant, I couldn’t pick the thinner one out in a blind test.
