introduction
Following up on the Magic V from early 2022, Honor has just announced an improved version of its large foldout marked with an “s”: the Magic Vs. Developments are being publicized in many areas, including builds, displays and, in a sense, the camera system.
With the phone slated for a December 30 market launch in China, however, there are still some things to iron out on the software side, and the unit we have here isn’t quite ready for review. The hardware is pretty much out of the box, we’ve been assured, so we’ll settle for that.
But let’s quickly go over the key changes first. A gearless hinge replaced the Magic V’s geared one – Samsung made a similar move from Fold3 to Fold4 – taking the component count from 92 to just 4 (although there has to be some semantics to explain the new component count). Switching from aluminum to magnesium and titanium, meanwhile, helped reduce the V’s weight by about 10 percent.
The displays are now brighter, with a claimed peak of 800 nits for the foldable panel and 1200 nits for the external one, although the internal screen remains limited to 90Hz, Samsung’s is 120Hz. We want run some brightness tests afterward, as we understand it falls into the hardware category. Additionally, comparisons are explicitly encouraged in the press materials we have received.
Sadly we won’t be looking at the camera swatches, but this is one of the areas where the V makes some changes from the V. There’s now a telephoto, albeit modest 8MP 3x, instead of the “ultra-spectrum” module 50MP on Magic V which we never got to try. The ultrawide remains the same, but the main camera is new to this foldable generation: apparently, the 54MP unit is shared with the Honor 70. A pair of 16MP selfie cameras, a punch-hole display, they increase the count to 5 cameras.
The Magic Vs also gets a chipset upgrade from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 to the plus version – perhaps it’s too early for Honor foldables to get Gen 2. A welcome bump in battery capacity sees the number jump from 4,750mAh to 5,000, while the The 66W charging should help keep the time you spend tied to the wall reasonable.
Honor Magic Vs specifications at a glance:
- Body: 160.3×141.5×6.1mm, 261g; Glass front, glass back or faux leather back, magnesium alloy frame, titanium alloy folding mechanism.
- Screen: 7.90″ Foldable OLED, 1B color, 90Hz, HDR10+, 800 nits, 1984x2272px resolution, 10.31:9 aspect ratio, 382ppi 431 ppi.
- chipsets: Qualcomm SM8475 Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 (4 nm): Octa-core (1×3.0 GHz Cortex-X2 & 3×2.5 GHz Cortex-A710 & 4×1.80 GHz Cortex-A510); Adreno 730.
- Memory: 256GB 8GB RAM, 256GB 12GB RAM, 512GB 12GB RAM.
- Operating system/software: Android 12, Magic UI 7.
- Rear camera: Broad (main): 54 MP, f/1.9, 27mm, 1/1.49″, 1.0µm, PDAF; Ultra wide angle: 50 MP, f/2.0, 13mm, 122˚, AF; Telephoto: 8 MP, f/2.4, PDAF, 3x optical zoom, OIS.
- Front camera: 16 MP, f/2.5, (wide).
- Video capture: Rear camera: 4K@30/60fps (10bit), 1080p@30/60fps, Gyro EIS, HDR10+; Front camera: 1080p@30fps, Gyro EIS.
- Battery: 5000mAh; 66W wired, 5W wired reverse.
- Various: Fingerprint reader (side-mounted); NFC; Infrared port; stereo speakers.
Honor Magic Vs unboxing
The Magic Vs ships in a large black cardboard box with a subtle stripe pattern and a matte finish. Inside, the laptop sits unfolded in a tray with the accessories in further boxes placed in dedicated compartments – a bit too much in a world where manufacturers are claiming environmentalism. Then again, Magic Vs isn’t going to sell in the tens of millions for that to be a serious concern.
Bundled peripherals include a 66W adapter to match the phone’s charging capabilities and a cable to match.
Also inside the box is protection for the back of the phone, the only surface that doesn’t feature a display of some sort. It’s a combined snap/adhesive design – it will go without the adhesive strip, but the adhesive provides an extra layer of hold, of course.
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