TL;DR (But Really, Don’t TL;DR This One): Foldables are not new. They’ve been dangling in front of us for years, hovering between “cool party trick” and “genuine future of smartphones.” The HONOR Magic V5, though, feels like one of those rare moments when a gimmick finally graduates to a category-defining product. I’ve been through every stage of foldable denial — the skepticism, the endless debates over whether anyone needs dual screens, and the collective eye-roll at how clunky, heavy, and impractical they used to be. And yet here I am, writing this review while genuinely missing the Magic V5’s big-screen productivity every single time I return to my regular slab phone. That should already tell you a lot about how far HONOR has taken things.

But please don’t skip. This isn’t just another review of another device. This phone deserves the long-form geek treatment. And oh boy, do I have thoughts.

Design & Build: When Thin Stops Being a Number and Becomes a Feeling

The numbers are simple enough: 4.1mm when unfolded, 8.8mm when folded. But numbers don’t tell you what happens when you actually pick this thing up. Unfolded, it feels almost unreal. I kept staring at it, convinced that something this thin couldn’t possibly be durable, let alone house one of the most powerful chipsets in the world and a massive battery. At 4.1mm, it’s the sort of slimness that makes your brain hesitate. My first instinct was that it felt like I’d accidentally picked up a dummy unit from a showroom — you know, those hollow shells they leave in stores for display. Except it’s not. It’s a fully functioning, flagship-level device that just happens to be thinner than the charging cable lying next to it on my desk.

The real surprise, though, is that it doesn’t creak, doesn’t bend inappropriately, and doesn’t make you think twice about using it normally. HONOR clearly pulled off some wild engineering magic here, because this doesn’t feel like a fragile prototype. It feels like a finished product — a premium one. Fold it up, however, and reality does reintroduce itself. On paper, the folded thickness of 8.8mm puts it in line with a lot of regular phones, but the way it sits in your hand makes it feel chunkier. The weight, at 217 grams, is relatively light for a foldable but still very noticeable in your pocket. And then there’s the camera bump, which really deserves to be called a camera plateau. The circular housing is gorgeous in design, but functionally it makes the folded phone feel more like a wallet with a rock glued on one side than a sleek smartphone.

That said, the design is undeniably striking. My Dawn Gold unit had this champagne gradient that shifted from a deeper bronze at the top to a lighter, shimmering gold at the bottom. The brushed finish along the back gave it the kind of textural sophistication you’d expect from something much more expensive than a phone. The hinge itself was fascinating to stare at: geometric patterns cut into the metal caught the light in a way that made it feel more like a piece of jewelry than a hinge. HONOR clearly wanted this to feel premium in every sense. And honestly, they nailed that part.

Durability is where the Magic V5 surprised me most. I expected thinness to come at the cost of resilience, but HONOR doubled down here. The phone is IP58 and IP59 rated, meaning it’s both dust- and water-resistant in ways very few foldables even attempt. The hinge is rated for half a million folds, which is more than enough to last years of abuse, and the internal coatings on the display add impact resistance. This isn’t one of those foldables that you baby every time you take it out of your pocket. It feels like it could take a few knocks — though I’ll admit, I wasn’t brave enough to test that theory too aggressively. Still, holding it, you can tell HONOR didn’t just want to win the “thinness” war. They wanted to prove that thin and strong don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Displays: Two Screens, No Compromise

You don’t buy a foldable unless you care about screens. And this is where HONOR flexed, pun absolutely intended. On the outside, you’re greeted with a 6.43-inch OLED display. It packs a resolution of 2376×1060, refreshes at 120Hz, and can peak at a staggering 5000 nits of brightness. In real terms, that means standing under the unforgiving Dubai sun with sunglasses on, I could still check my WhatsApp notifications without squinting. It’s as good as any flagship candy-bar phone screen I’ve used.

Then you open it up, and the real show begins. The 7.95-inch internal display is basically an iPad Mini that went through yoga training. It matches the same 120Hz refresh rate and the same 5000 nits brightness peak, with a higher resolution of 2352×2172. Watching movies on it is a joy. Browsing the web, editing documents, scrolling through Twitter (or X, as I begrudgingly call it now), all feel completely different when you have this much screen real estate.

The crease is handled better than on most foldables I’ve tested. Stare at the screen head-on and it practically disappears. You only notice it if you tilt the display at extreme angles or run your finger across it deliberately. During regular use — scrolling, typing, gaming — it’s invisible, both visually and in terms of interaction. This was a huge step forward. On older foldables, the crease was a constant reminder of compromise. On the Magic V5, it’s more like a subtle quirk you quickly forget about.

Both displays support stylus input, though the stylus itself is sold separately. I tried it briefly, and while it won’t dethrone Samsung’s S Pen in terms of precision or responsiveness, it’s perfectly usable for jotting notes, doodling ideas, or signing documents like you’re sealing a billion-dirham business deal at Starbucks. Colors on both screens are vivid without veering into the over-saturated territory, blacks are as deep as you’d expect from OLED, and HONOR’s eye comfort modes actually made late-night doomscrolling less punishing. Under direct sunlight, the displays held their ground better than almost any other device I’ve tested, to the point that I once maxed out the brightness, left it on a café table, and joked that the phone could double as a heat lamp for my latte.

Cameras: The Golden Plateau of Lenses

The camera module is impossible to ignore, both visually and in daily use. It’s huge, it’s circular, and it dominates the back of the phone like a golden emblem. Inside that giant ring sit three very capable sensors: a 50-megapixel main shooter with OIS, a 64-megapixel periscope telephoto with 3x optical zoom and up to 100x digital zoom, and a 50-megapixel ultrawide. Around the front, a 20-megapixel selfie camera does its best to keep up.

In daylight, the results are genuinely impressive. The main sensor produces crisp, detailed shots with excellent color reproduction. HONOR offers three distinct profiles — Natural, Vibrant, and Authentic. I stuck with Authentic because I wanted to see what the sensor itself could do without heavy-handed processing, and the results were balanced and realistic.

Portrait shots came out with a ton of detail, though the AI-enhanced bokeh effect sometimes struggled to look natural. In some photos, it worked beautifully, blurring the background just enough to isolate the subject. In others, it seemed a little confused, cutting into edges it shouldn’t or blurring details that deserved to stay sharp. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it reminded me that AI in photography still has room to grow.

The zoom system was fascinating. At 3x optical, the results are excellent — sharp, detailed, and usable. Push it further, though, and you’re essentially relying on AI sorcery. I tested the 100x zoom, and to my amazement, the AI cleaned up the shot enough to reveal details I couldn’t even see with the naked eye. It’s creepy how effective it was. Of course, this isn’t going to work every time. AI hallucinations still creep in, and the processing takes a good 20 to 30 seconds, requiring an active internet connection. But when it works, it’s the kind of thing you show off to friends just to watch their jaws drop.

Night photography was solid, though not flawless. The camera managed to capture scenes with good exposure balance, avoiding blown-out highlights or overly dark shadows. Noise was minimal, though fine detail was sometimes smoothed out a bit too aggressively. In social media terms, though, the photos are more than good enough. They’re clean, colorful, and absolutely postable without edits. Selfies, on the other hand, were a bit more mixed. Outdoors, they were sharp and pleasant, but indoors, under artificial lighting, they lost some of their punch.

Photo Gallery

Performance: The Snapdragon Gymnastics

Inside, the Magic V5 runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite, paired with either 12GB or 16GB of RAM depending on the configuration. On paper, it’s a powerhouse. In practice, the thermal limitations of such a slim foldable do keep it from reaching the insane benchmark numbers we’ve seen on bar-shaped flagships. In Geekbench tests, the Magic V5 scored around 4990 in multi-core performance, while the Xiaomi 15 with the same chip scored over 9000. The GPU numbers also trailed slightly behind.

But here’s the thing: in daily use, you’d never notice. The phone handled multitasking flawlessly. Switching between apps, opening documents, streaming video, editing photos, and even gaming all worked without a hitch. Unless you’re deliberately stress-testing this thing with workloads that don’t even make sense for a smartphone, the performance feels every bit as premium as you’d expect from an Elite-class Snapdragon device.

Software: MagicOS 9.0 — The Secret Sauce

I’ll admit something: HONOR’s MagicOS skin on Android never really impressed me before. It always felt like one of those heavy-handed custom jobs trying too hard to be different. But on the Magic V5, with MagicOS 9.0 built on Android 15, it finally clicked. The large foldable display makes the features make sense.

Multitasking feels natural here. You can drag and drop apps into split-screen mode without any weird jank, and suddenly you’re browsing the web while taking notes or replying to emails while referencing a document. It feels like a tablet, except it folds up and fits in your pocket.

Magic Portal, a feature I had previously ignored on regular HONOR devices, became my favorite trick. It lets you grab text, images, or even content from one app and drag it directly into another. Reading an article and want to drop a quote into notes? Done. Copying an address from a chat straight into maps? Easy. Sharing images from X to WhatsApp without the annoying “download first” workaround? Instant. It’s such a simple feature, but it completely changes how you move content around on a phone.

The AI features are there as well, ranging from deepfake detection on video calls to live translation and text rewriting. They work as advertised, though nothing here blew my mind. They’re less about flashy demos and more about adding quiet little utilities that make the phone feel smarter. HONOR also promises four years of OS updates and five years of security patches, which is decent, if not class-leading.

Of course, the elephant in the room is app optimization. This isn’t HONOR’s fault as much as it is Android’s. Gmail works fine, but only in landscape. YouTube sometimes takes advantage of the big screen, and sometimes pretends it’s running on a 6-inch slab. WhatsApp, surprisingly, is one of the better apps here, offering a desktop-like interface that makes messaging on the foldable downright enjoyable. It’s a reminder of what this category could become if Android developers took foldables more seriously.

Battery Life: Big Cell, Big Screens, Big Demands

With a 5820mAh silicon-carbon battery inside, the Magic V5 is no slouch in endurance. The chemistry is important — silicon-carbon batteries degrade slower than traditional lithium-ion, meaning this phone should hold its charge capacity longer over time.

In practice, the phone easily lasted me a full day of heavy use, even when I spent most of that time unfolded, which is naturally more demanding. By the end of the day, I usually had around 25 percent left, which is comparable to many non-foldable flagships under similar usage. For context, The Samsung S25 usually ends the day around 38 percent, but of course, it has only one smaller screen to power.

Charging is quick enough to erase any anxiety. With the included 66W charger, the phone goes from empty to full in under an hour, while 50W wireless charging is there for convenience. It’s not the absolute fastest charging in the industry, but it’s fast enough to make you forget about it. And with the silicon-carbon setup, there’s an extra sense of confidence that this battery won’t feel old and tired after a year and a half.

Verdict: The Foldable I Didn’t Know I Needed

I’ve tested foldables before. They were fun, flashy, and filled with promise, but always came with compromises that made me think, “Cool tech, but I’ll wait.” The HONOR Magic V5 is the first foldable that made me think the opposite. This is the first foldable I could actually see myself using as a daily driver, without caveats.

It’s unbelievably thin, surprisingly durable, and consistently powerful. More importantly, it’s actually useful. The big screen changes how you interact with your phone, and HONOR’s software finally makes the experience coherent instead of clunky. Magic Portal alone is enough to make me wish other brands copied it.

Yes, it has flaws. The folded form factor still feels bulky despite the measurements. The giant camera bump is a design tax you’ll just have to pay. And at AED 6499, this is one of the most expensive smartphones you can buy.

But for the first time, I put down a foldable and thought: I miss it. That’s the best compliment I can give. The HONOR Magic V5 makes a strong case for foldables not just as luxury toys, but as mainstream tools. It’s not for everyone — the size, the weight, and the price will keep it from being a universal recommendation. But if you’ve been curious about foldables and can justify the cost, the Magic V5 is a spectacular place to start.