The Honor Magic Vs debuted last year in China, promising to be one of the most impressive takes on the foldable phone yet. Well, looks like Honor is confident enough in their magic to take their act worldwide — the Honor Magic Vs is getting a global release alongside the flagship Honor Magic5 Pro, both of which are being shown off at MWC 2023 this week.
Honor Magic Vs
The Honor Magic Vs looks the same as the device we saw released in China last year — it’s still running on last year’s flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset, rather than the Gen 2 chipset we’re seeing on this year’s flagship smartphones. It’s still one of the lightest and thinnest devices of its kind, though, at 12.9 mm thick when folded and 267g.
Like most other foldable smartphones, the Honor Magic Vs folds along the vertical axis, opening up into a tablet-sized device. When folded, the smartphone’s display is large in its own right at 6.54 inches, with a 21:9 aspect ratio. The device then folds out into a 7.9-in tablet, with a display that Honor says lays more flat than most other foldables on the market. Both displays are OLED with HDR 10+ — the larger foldable screen has to be in order to be foldable, but it’s nice to see the additional smartphone display is also OLED, even if that probably adds a hefty chunk onto the price tag.
One of the big selling points is the hinge. Honor developed a gearless hinge for the Honor Magic Vs, which cuts down components to just four — the fewer components at work, the less that can wear out and go wrong. Honor says their hinge should be good for 400,000 folds, which is quite a bit past what we’ve seen quoted for other foldables.
The Honor Magic Vs also has a solid camera array, with a 16 MP front camera and a triple camera setup on the back, comprising a 54 MP main camera, 50 MP ultra-wide and macro camera, and an 8 MP 3X optical zoom camera. The cameras are capable of capturing up to 4K 60 fps video.
The foldable has a pretty large 5,000 mAh battery, although depending on how much you use that larger OLED screen, and what you watch or play on it, you might not get as much life out of that battery than with other devices with the same capacity.
It’ll also be a solid travel companion, as it has both eSIM and dual SIM support. It also supports 5G connectivity.
The Honor Magic Vs will be available in cyan and black. We know the phone will come to the UK first in June, and will come to other markets later in the year. The asking price is €1,799, which comes out to around $1,800.
Honor Magic5 Pro
At their MWC 2023 presentation, Honor also announced their flagship traditional smartphone for this year, the Honor Magic5 Pro. It’s a 6.81-in device that runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, marking it as one of the best of the best for 2023. But, like most others these days, Honor is banking on the phone’s camera array to set it apart from other smartphones in 2023.
The Honor Magic5 Pro has a triple camera setup on the back with similar specifications to those of the Honor Magic Vs. The smartphone has a 50 MP wide camera, a 50 MP ultra-wide camera, and a 50 MP telephoto camera, with a 12 MP front camera.
This year, Honor included a larger sensor size in the camera to improve the quality of photos. The Honor Magic5 Pro also has an ultra-fusion computational optics feature that improves image clarity at 3.5x-100x zoom.
The smartphone also features the Honor Image Engine, which powers a Millisecond Falcon Capture algorithm that allows users to shoot at high speed with greater clarity. Like most others, Honor has also added an AI processing feature, which in Honor’s phone excels at motion sensing.
They demonstrated that AI processing by working with Guinness World Records to capture the World’s Highest Between The Legs Slam Dunk attempt by Piotr “Grabo” Grabowski. The cameras on the Honor Magic5 Pro were used to take photos of the dunk attempt, and were able to sense when he was reaching the apex of his jump, making that exact frame more clear and detailed.
So, lots of beautiful videos and photos on the way! You’ll be checking them out on a 120 Hz 6.81-inch curved-screen LTPO display that supports up to 1800 nits brightness to ensure clear visuals under bright sunlight, HDR10+ certification, and IMAX Enhanced. Honor also tried to make the phone easier on the eyes — the device has received low blue light emission certification from TÜV Rheinland and it features 2160 Hz pulse with modulation dimming technology, which minimizes screen flickering.
Gaming on the Honor Magic5 Pro should be smooth thanks to a discrete display chipset in the smartphone, which will improve video and gaming quality efficiently, keeping temperatures down and frame rates up.
The Honor Magic5 Pro supports 66W Honor SuperCharge and has a 5100 mAh battery, which should make it back to full pretty quickly if you’re making full use of the SuperCharge feature.
The Honor Magic5 Pro will be available in a 12 GB RAM/512 GB storage configuration from Q2 2023 in black and meadow green. It’ll retail for €1,199, or a little over $1,250.