Honor’s Slim Magic V5 Foldable Is Fun To Use, Minus The Huge Camera Bump

1 week ago

There is simply a spec warfare going connected among companies to declare nan crown of thinnest foldable. Phone manufacturers are playing pinch fractions of millimeters to boast astir their phone’s thickness.
 
Honor is winning this race on a theoretical basis with its 8.8mm (when folded) heavy Magic V5 foldable. I’m saying theoretical because location is simply a huge, camera-bump-sized caveat to this.

A photograph showing Honor Magic V5 half unfolded pinch TechCrunch's tract open.

The bladed framework of nan instrumentality looks and feels awesome arsenic agelong arsenic you clasp it successful a measurement that your fingers are wrapped astir nan bottommost half of nan phone. If your fingers are brushing against nan monolithic bump, you mightiness consciousness uncomfortable holding nan phone. This rigamrole took maine a fewer days to set to.

When you laic nan telephone connected nan table, it creates a slant (like successful nan photograph above). This is good erstwhile nan telephone is folded, but erstwhile you unfold nan phone, it creates a wobble, and it is not pleasant.

In nan unfolded state, nan framework is conscionable 4.1mm thick, 1 millimeter little than Oppo’s Find N5, but 0.5mm much than Huawei’s triple-folding phone.

Apart from that, nan telephone is simply a coagulated portion of hardware.

It is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite, which is simply a top-tier processor. The beforehand show is simply a 6.43-inch surface pinch 2376 x 1060 resolution, and nan main (unfoled) show is simply a 7.95-inch surface pinch 2172 x 2352 pixels. The institution said it’s utilizing a c fibre reinforced soul sheet for amended autumn protection. Plus, Honor has applied an anti-scratch worldly connected nan display. So far, I haven’t seen notable scratches connected either of nan screens.

The surface is very agleam pinch a highest brightness of 5,000 nits. I enjoyed reference articles, PDFs, and agelong emails connected nan unfolded screen. Playing NYT Puzzles connected nan unfolded surface was 1 of my favourite things to do connected nan device.

Both displays support LTPO, which intends nan refresh complaint tin dynamically move to immoderate worth from 1Hz to 120Hz, and that makes navigation and scrolling a breeze. Most apps adjusted good to some nan screen and main screen. Though I noticed that nan solution blew up erstwhile I was trying to play “Diablo Immortal” connected nan unfolded screen, truthful I had to instrumentality to nan beforehand surface while playing nan game.

The build of nan instrumentality is sturdy, and it has IP58 and IP59 ratings for particulate and h2o resistance. The folding hinge, which uses nan second-gen Honor Super Steel mechanism, felt coagulated during my week-long usage of nan V5 Magic.

The foldable has a monolithic 5,820mAh silicone c battery. Thanks to that, you tin get done each time of usage pinch a spot of gaming easily. The instrumentality supports 66W wired charging and 50W wireless charging, but you request to bargain Honor’s proprietary chargers to support that. Honor does battalion its 66W charger wrong nan box. The institution claims that you tin complaint nan instrumentality from 0 to 50% successful conscionable 16 minutes pinch nan wired charger and get to 100% charging successful 43 minutes. Even if nan telephone doesn’t deed those theoretical limits, you tin quickly get capable juice successful nan telephone to past you a fewer hours.

Camera and AI

The Honor Magic V5’s camera casing hosts 3 sensors. A 50-megapixel main camera pinch f/1.6 aperture, a 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera, and a 64-megapixel telephoto camera pinch 3x optical zoom. The telephone besides has a brace of 20-megapixel selfie cameras for some nan soul and outer screens.

The telephone takes bully photos successful each conditions, capturing specifications good pinch mostly bully colour accuracy. However, I felt that successful immoderate conditions, nan phone’s computational algorithm boosted reds. The Magic V5’s camera has a beautiful bully ace macro mode that lets you return close-up photos of definite objects, for illustration flowers, while retaining details.

Since each companies person entree to AI image models, a number of them are introducing a ace zoom mode to seizure nan guidelines photograph and usage generative AI to capable up nan details. Honor’s 100x zoom tech is bully capable to seizure matter astatine a region and person AI clear it up. However, erstwhile I tried to seizure different objects, nan type pinch AI processing looked very overmuch AI-generated. This wasn’t nan lawsuit erstwhile I tried nan Pixel 10 Pro’s 100x Zoom.

Just for illustration astir China-made phones, this instrumentality besides has a ton of AI-powered “beauty” features that fto you smoothen your skin, set your chemoreceptor size and look size, brighten nan picture, and more. But you tin move that disconnected quickly done a toggle if you want.

There are a bunch of AI editing devices that Honor has included pinch nan phone. There is an AI eraser that lets you tie connected objects to region them. The instrumentality besides has options, including removing passerbys and removing reflection. The first action doesn’t ever activity well. Check retired this photograph I took erstwhile I attended Wimbledon. While it removed immoderate group successful nan background, it removed nan torso of 1 of nan tennis players.

The telephone has an AI cutout tool, which allows you to prime an entity from a photograph and move it wrong nan frame. When you move nan object, nan instrumentality uses generative AI to capable successful nan gap.

This is besides not cleanable and, astatine times, leaves artifacts for illustration shadows astir nan original position of nan object, intelligibly indicating that you moved thing successful this photo. There are different devices for illustration AI upscaling and AI outpainting arsenic well.

What’s more, there’s an image-to-video usability successful nan phone’s photograph app, which allows for 3 generations per 30 days. It does nan occupation of making nan video utilizing Google’s Veo2 model, but nan output is not great, and often feels uncanny compared to nan original image.

Software and readiness

Honor is utilizing its MagicOS 9, based connected Android 15, pinch this device. It is not cluttered, but I thought pre-installing Honor apps for smart location devices, and nan myHonor app, which is simply a organization app, was unnecessary. There is an Honor Health app, which connects smart wellness devices from Honor (if you person any), and besides has immoderate pre-loaded workout content.

MagicOS handles media speech pinch some Android and Apple devices well. The institution has a Workstation app connected macOS, which makes it easy to nonstop photos, videos, and documents to your Mac.

The institution besides released a neat caller on-device telephone translator feature, which lets you download a translator exemplary connected nan telephone and process nan information locally. At nan moment, it supports six languages, including Chinese, English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian. I tested this characteristic pinch a French-speaking friend, and nan results were very good. Unlike Pixel’s translator feature, which besides retains your voice, you get to take betwixt a antheral and a female voice.

The institution is releasing nan Honor Magic V5 successful Europe, APAC, and nan Middle East. In nan UK/Europe, nan Magic V5 will person a starting value of £1,699.99/€1,999 for a 512GB version. This gives consumers an action to effort retired a foldable astatine a £200/€1,999 cheaper value than nan Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7. While this mightiness not situation Samsung’s apical spot successful nan foldable market, it mightiness thief Honor’s maturation numbers amid foldables.