Honor’s Magic V5 is the thinnest foldable yet, but that’s not why it matters

Honor’s Magic V5 is the thinnest book-style foldable in the world, but you probably couldn’t tell.

It’s just 0.1mm thinner — that’s four-thousandths of an inch — than the Oppo Find N5 or Samsung’s recent Galaxy Z Fold 7. If that’s a difference you claim to perceive, then I’m afraid I simply don’t believe you. I’ve put the V5 side by side with the Find N5 and I can barely feel the difference, let alone see it.

Fortunately, the Magic V5 has one extra trick up its sleeve: better battery life than either of those phones, and quite substantially so when compared to the Samsung, solving one of the last concerns people have about switching to folding phones.

The Magic V5 was announced in China early last month, but today it was released in Europe too, where it costs £1,699.99 / €1,999 (around $2,300). That already gives it a leg up over the Oppo Find N5, which isn’t available outside Asia. Don’t expect it to officially release in the US, though.

I said when I reviewed that Oppo phone in February that it would mark the start of diminishing returns for thinner foldables, a point where things simply can’t get thinner, and here we are. The returns, they are diminished.

This may be the thinnest foldable in the world, but it’s by such a fractional amount that it simply doesn’t matter. It measures 4.1mm thick when open or 8.8mm when shut, compared to 4.2mm and 8.9mm on the Samsung and Oppo phones. That doesn’t even apply to every version of the Honor phone — while my white model is the thinnest around, the different materials used on the black, gold, and brown models make them the same size as those two rivals.

There’s another big caveat to the record thinness: you have to ignore the camera bump. Now, that’s par for the course when talking about phone dimensions, but it’s particularly noteworthy here: the Magic V5’s chunky, circular camera bump is thicker than either Samsung’s or Oppo’s, bringing the closed phone to 16mm or so if you measure at the thickest point, compared to 14mm for Samsung and 13mm for Oppo. Again: diminishing returns.

Otherwise, the phone looks and feels great. It’s about the same size and shape as the Z Fold 7, and when closed it really does feel remarkably like a normal phone. Like that phone, you sort of forget it’s a foldable at all until it’s time to open it up. My white model has a simple, smooth texture to the finish, and generously rounded corners that keep it comfortable to hold in either mode.

What makes its size most impressive is the battery inside, though. There’s a total capacity of 5,820mAh in the international model — almost a third more than the latest Samsung foldable — with 6,100mAh in the Chinese version. That’s thanks to Honor’s adoption of silicon-carbon batteries, a fast-improving technology that replaces some of the graphite in traditional lithium-ion batteries with more energy-dense silicon — about 15 percent of the graphite, in this case.

The result is greater battery capacity in a smaller space, and battery life here really is impressive. I haven’t really tried to run the V5 into the ground, but through typical use, with a mix of both inner and outer screens and plenty of photos, the lowest I’ve seen my battery go before bed is about 47 percent. Right now I’ve had the phone running for 32 hours or so, and I still have 39 percent left to go. It charges fast, too, with up to 66W wired charging and up to 50W wireless, though only on a proprietary charger. There’s no Qi2 support, but it will charge (much more slowly) on standard Qi wireless chargers.

The downside to silicon-carbon is that the batteries are likely to degrade faster. That may be less of a problem in foldables, which, seven generations in, still feel like the domain of early adopters and frequent upgraders. But it does mean that my battery life during a week of reviewing might not reflect what it’ll be like three or four years in. Honor promises seven years of software support for the phone (both OS updates and security patches), but whether the battery will last that long is another matter entirely.

Then again, it’s a foldable, so whether the whole phone will last that long is up for debate. Honor touts the V5’s carbon-fiber-reinforced display and “super steel hinge,” but foldables are inherently fragile. As for dust and water, the IP58 / 59 rating here is technically better than the Pixel 10 Pro Fold’s IP68 on water resistance, but is slightly less secure against sand and dust, giving Google’s phone the edge overall. The V5 beats the Z Fold 7’s IP48 rating on both counts, though.

The rest of the phone is simply good, in the boring way that most flagships are these days. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset is as powerful as they come, and with up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, you won’t struggle with performance. Both inner and outer displays are bright, attractive LTPO OLEDs with up to 120Hz refresh rates that look about as good as any others around.

The cameras are good for a foldable, enough so that they wouldn’t even disappoint too much on a regular phone, and I’ve been especially impressed with the consistency in color and range across all three rear lenses. The 50-megapixel main camera is excellent in good daylight, and remains decent when it gets darker. The ultrawide is fine, while the 3x telephoto is variable: get things just right and results are beautiful, but it struggles more than the other lenses with moving subjects or tricky lighting. You can go up to 100x zoom, but you shouldn’t — results are good up to 6x, and deteriorate from there.

Honor has done a good job with the foldable side of the software too. MagicOS 9, based on Android 15, includes two types of multitasking: you can run up to three apps at a time in split-screen, or have one app open in full-screen and one or two more in floating windows. Otherwise it’s a fairly clean, easy-to-use OS. It does come packed with proprietary apps, which is typical for Honor phones, though most can be uninstalled. There are a few custom AI features, including on-device live translation in six languages driven by OpenAI’s Whisper model, with Gemini integration to handle the rest.

If you live in Europe, or anywhere else where the Magic V5 is an option, it’s pretty obviously compelling. It’s as thin as Samsung’s latest, with similar software performance and software support, but a much larger battery. The only area Samsung has a serious advantage is customer support, with an extensive repair network that Honor just can’t match. The Pixel 10 Pro Fold offers IP68 and Qi2 charging, but in a bulkier, heavier form factor that already feels a little outdated, and it’s not even out yet.

So no, it doesn’t actually matter that this is the world’s thinnest foldable (if you don’t count the camera bump). What matters is that it’s really a rather good one, and a compelling reason to look beyond the big two players.

Photography by Dominic Preston / The Verge