Our Verdict
Honor's latest flagship foldable delivers an ultra-premium experience in an impossibly slim chassis. If you want a folding phone with impressive displays, excellent cameras, and zippy performance but without the usual bulk, this is the one to get.
- Extremely slim and lightweight
- Powerful performance
- Excellent cameras
- Very subtle crease
- Speedy charging
- Battery life could be better
- Gets hot under load
- Expensive
The Honor Magic V2 was already the slimmest foldable on the market, now the brand has one-upped itself with the Honor Magic V3, a wildly slim large-format foldable with a serious specification sheet. I’m not normally one to obsess over the dimensions of a phone. Very few candybar-style phones are thick enough to make a real difference, but it becomes much more noticeable with a foldable. Early models were thick and heavy enough to put a real bulge in your pocket. The Magic V3, on the other hand, is so slim and light that you could easily forget that it folds.
It’s not all about the svelte chassis, either. The Magic V3 packs a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, one of the most well-specced camera systems of any foldable, and two big, bright, and speedy displays. I wanted to know how this handset compares to the best foldable phones on the market, such as the OnePlus Open and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6. After living with it for the past week, here’s what I think.
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Price and availability
The Honor Magic V3 originally arrived in China on July 12, 2024. It then made its global debut at IFA on September 5. It’s now available to pre-order in most regions via the official Honor site, with prices starting at £1,699 in the UK. Unfortunately for our US readers, it’s not available stateside, as per usual.
The Magic V3 is in either Reddish Brown, Green, or Black. There’s also a White version with a unique textured rear panel, but it’s exclusive to China.
Specs
Features and software
The Magic V3 runs Honor’s MagicOS 8.0 software, a heavily skinned version of Android 14. Just as we’ve seen with Honor’s other recent phones, this system takes a lot of inspiration from Apple and it’s sure to be divisive. Still, I have grown quite fond of Honor’s software. There’s some very useful stuff the brand has built in that you won’t find from competing operating systems. Magic Portal is a highlight, and this is the first foldable to debut with it enabled.
Magic Portal lets you drag images or text from one app and share it with another, and the system uses context-based AI to figure out which apps you’re likely to need and what you’ll want to do with them. I mainly just drag addresses into Google Maps, but I miss it when it’s not there.
Honor’s Dynamic Island clone, Magic Capsule, is present on this model, too. It’s not quite as seamless, with a circular camera cutout instead of a bean shape, but it’s just as useful. I love being able to quickly get back to a podcast or a video just by tapping at the top of my display.
Those coming from stock Android will need some time to adapt, as it seems Honor has tweaked almost every area of the UI has been tweaked. There’s a separation between notifications and quick settings; Honor has disabled the app drawer by default, and things aren’t always where you expect them to be. Once you adjust to it, though, there’s a lot of cool stuff here, and I found it very smooth and responsive.
The multitasking is serviceable, but it’s not a significant improvement on stock Android, and I think Honor could do more here. For instance, the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro has this great feature where you quickly flick the hinge to open split screen mode, and I missed that when using this phone. Using the split screen mode or floating windows isn’t difficult, but there is room for improvement.
The Magic V3 supports stylus input on both displays, giving it an advantage over its main competitors. The Z Fold 6 still only supports stylus input on the foldable display; meanwhile, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold doesn’t support styluses at all. Honor’s Magic-Pen is available separately, and the brand is also releasing a foldable keyboard for ultimate on-the-go productivity.
With this release, Honor has introduced some AI-powered features, including two-way noise reduction for voice calls and real-time text and voice translation powered by Google Cloud AI. There’s also an AI deepfake detector on the way that will help users avoid video chat scammers. Honor is adding that in a future update, though we don’t know the exact date yet.
Another new feature is AI Defocus Display. This is an eye-care feature that simulates a defocus lens to reduce myopia. I’m not an optician, so I can’t fully wrap my head around what this means, but rest assured that Honor is leading the pack when it comes to eye care.
The one new feature that I actually use frequently is the AI Eraser tool. We’ve seen similar features from competing brands, like Google and Samsung, but it allows you to remove people or objects from the background of your images, and generative AI will fill in the gaps. It’s very handy and can easily turn an unusable photo into a great snap.
Design
As I touched on earlier, the most notable feature of the Magic V3’s design is its slimness. I can’t overstate how slim this phone is. It’s actually at the point where it couldn’t be much slimmer, as it’s already about the width of a USB-C port. The result is a foldable that feels exactly like a traditional phone when folded. While the competition is trying its best to slim its foldable devices down, nothing has come close to matching Honor’s efforts so far.
The cover display has a fairly typical aspect ratio, just as we saw with the Magic V2, and that’s another thing that makes this phone feel natural in the hand. There’s none of the unusual narrowness you’ll find with Samsung Z Fold phones, and it’s not short like the original Pixel Fold, either.
The phone comes in four color options, and the finish of the rear panel varies depending on which color you choose. I have the Green model in for testing, which has a velvety-feeling matte frosted glass rear, and the Black model has a similar finish. However, if you opt for the Reddish Brown model, you’ll get a vegan-leather finish on the back, and the Snow option has a unique textured pattern on the rear glass.
I think all the colors look pretty slick, but the green and red designs stand out as particularly classy options. The red colorway is the most eye-catching, with golden accents on the frame and encircling the camera, while the other models opt for a more subtle gray aluminum finish.
The camera bump is quite sizable and features a central circular array. It reminds me of the Honor Magic 6 Pro, with its triangular formation and large periscope sensor at the top. I’m a fan of its positioning, as it gives me a convenient shelf for my forefinger to rest on, and it’s wide enough that the phone doesn’t rock about too much when it’s sitting on my desk.
The volume rocker and power button/fingerprint reader are on opposite sides of the phone when you unfold it. So, when you fold the phone again, there’s a slight staggering between the buttons. As with everything, it doesn’t take long to get used to, but I found it quite a jarring change, as most other foldables place these buttons next to each other. If you’ve used the Magic V2 before, though, there’s no change in the positioning.
The Honor Magic V3 comes with an extremely premium-feeling case in the box, with a vegan leather finish that matches the color of your device. Unlike most foldable cases, this one includes protection for the hinge and an adhesive bumper that protects the edges of the cover display.
The case has a metallic ring surrounding the rear cameras and serves two purposes. Firstly, the raised lip helps to keep your lenses free from scratches, but you can fold it out and use it as a convenient kickstand. The whole case is extremely well designed and feels like it’d cost a pretty penny if sold separately. It’s really nice to have it in the box at no extra charge.
Displays and speakers
If you’re buying a foldable phone, displays are likely to be high on your list of priorities, and this is another area where the Magic V3 aims to impress.
Starting with the cover screen, you get a 6.43-inch OLED panel with a 1060 x 2376 resolution and an adaptive refresh rate that can shift from 1-120Hz. It has an extremely bright output, peaking at up to 5,000 nits, and utilizes Honor’s highly scratch-resistant NanoCrystal 2.0 glass tech. According to Honor’s marketing, this glass is 40 times more impact-resistant than the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, but that’s not something I fancied testing myself.
The outer display has subtle symmetrical curves on three sides, and only the hinge side has a flatter edge. I like the shape; it means that gesture controls feel smooth and natural, but it’s flat enough to not introduce extra reflections or color shifting at the edges.
Of course, the real star of the show is the massive 7.92-inch foldable display. This panel has a 2156 x 2344 resolution, the same 1-120Hz adaptive refresh rate, and uses a proprietary protective material that’s 20 times more impact-resistant and five times more scratch-resistant than its predecessor. It’s not as bright as the cover screen, maxing out at a more modest 1,800 nits. Still, it was more than bright enough for my needs, and it remained easy to read on the sunniest of days.
All foldables have a crease, but the Honor Magic V3 is in hot contention for the shallowest and most subtle crease on the market. It makes the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 look very dated by comparison, with its comparatively huge valley and super shiny screen protector. To Samsung’s credit, my fingers glide more smoothly on its foldable display, and smudges are less noticeable. However, the viewing experience the Honor Magic V3’s less glossy and almost creaseless panel provides is a very worthy tradeoff.
Both panels look superb, with fluid motion and vibrant, accurate colors. Watching HDR content shows off what these panels are capable of, and Dolby Vision support means that apps like Netflix look superb.
The speakers sound decent and can kick out a good level of volume, but they lack some of the low-end weight. Don’t get me wrong, they’re very impressive, but not the best I’ve ever heard. They’re more than good enough for watching YouTube and Netflix around the house, and some nice stereo separation adds to the gaming experience.
Cameras
The Honor Magic V3 has three cameras on the rear: a 50MP main camera with a sizable 1/1.56-inch sensor and a wide f/1.6 aperture, a 50MP 3.5x periscope telephoto, and a 40MP ultrawide with autofocus and macro capabilities. Each display has a matching punch-hole selfie camera with a 20MP resolution and an f/2.2 aperture.
It’s a pretty stacked roster, and the results do not disappoint. The Magic V3 focused quickly and excelled at capturing fast-moving subjects. The colors are a little exaggerated by default; green grass comes out looking unnaturally vibrant, as do blue skies, but if you switch to the “Natural” preset, you can get much more realistic colors.
The camera system allows you to digitally zoom to 100x. However, I wouldn’t recommend doing so, as images at such an extreme focal length come out looking like an AI-generated oil painting. That said, stick to 15x and below, and you stand to be very impressed by the zoom capabilities.
The 3.5x telephoto was my favorite of the rear trio; you can capture some amazing shots, and at times, it’s hard to believe they came from a smartphone. The combination of a large sensor and long focal length results in some pleasing natural bokeh, and the phone’s ability to lock in focus was impressive.
I was pleased to see that the ultrawide has autofocus, as that was a frustrating omission on the Z Fold 6. It means that this lens is just as useful for wide architectural and landscape shots as it is for group selfies.
Speaking of selfies, the two punch-hole cameras are decent, but they’re not going to wow you too much. Using these cameras made me look much more pale than the rear cameras, but the level of detail is solid, and there are plenty of beautifying effects if that’s your kind of thing. They’re more than capable enough for quick snaps and video calls, and needless to say, the proper interior camera blows Samsung’s 4MP under-display unit out of the water.
Honor’s new Studio Harcourt portrait mode, created in collaboration with the famous Parisian portrait studio, impressed us when it debuted with the Honor 200 Pro. Now, it’s available on a foldable for the first time, and it’s even more useful here. I loved using these effects when I tested the Honor 200 Pro, but I hated that they didn’t work on the selfie camera. That’s still the case here, but this is a foldable phone, so it’s just as convenient to snap a selfie using the rear cameras.
For video shooting, the rear cameras all support capture up to 4K 60 fps, while the selfie snappers max out at 4K 30 fps. Stabilization is reliable, even in low light, and audio capture is decent. Videos have a bit too much contrast for my taste by default, but you can change that using one of the built-in filters or even apply a LUT if you switch to Pro Video mode.
Performance
The Honor Magic V3 has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 at its core, which is currently the top dog for mobile gaming, and comes with a healthy 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. The phone feels speedy and responsive, even while multitasking heavily, and apps open in a flash. When you boot up a game, you’re in for a good time, too. I spent a few hours playing Zenless Zone Zero on the large interior display, and it happily ran at 60fps without any noticeable slowdowns.
Unfortunately, the downside of this super-slim chassis is that the phone gets pretty hot when you’re running a demanding title. It can get a touch uncomfortable during long sessions, but it never became concerningly warm, and the performance didn’t suffer much. There’s a built-in game overlay, which you can access by swiping from the left side of the display while a game is running. It’s not the most comprehensive that I’ve come across, but it houses all the essentials.
Using the Game Manager, you can switch into high-performance mode, lock your screen brightness, quickly access messaging apps, block notifications, start a screen recording, and more. It may not have some of the party tricks other brands offer, but it should be enough for even the most serious gamer.
Battery
The Honor Magic V3 has a 5150 mAh silicon-carbon battery pack, which is a very high capacity considering the device’s diminutive frame. The fact that it manages to outdo the comparatively chunky Z Fold 6 is an impressive feat. Despite this relatively large battery pack, the Magic V3’s real-world battery life isn’t the most impressive. It never failed to see me to the end of the day, but it often cut it close, especially when I was watching a lot of content on the large foldable display or playing games.
On the plus side, it charges very quickly. It comes supplied with a 66W fast charger, enough to get you from flat to full in just over 40 minutes. If you have Honor’s Wireless SuperCharger, you can charge at up to 50W wirelessly, which is pretty wild for a foldable. For context, that’s twice the speed that the Z Fold 6 charges with a cable.
Should you buy the Honor Magic V3?
If you like the idea of a large-format foldable phone but aren’t so keen on the size and weight that usually come along with it, the Honor Magic V3 is the solution you’ve been waiting for. It’s incredibly slim and lightweight, without sacrificing much performance or skimping on the cameras.
Specs-wise, the Magic V3 easily outclasses mainstream competition like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Pixel 9 Pro Fold, and it bests them on price, too. However, its AI abilities are a lot less comprehensive. There are some features present, but they’re much simpler. Whether that matters to you is another case entirely, though, I certainly didn’t miss the AI too much during my testing.
It’s the software that’s going to make or break this phone for a lot of people. I quite like MagicOS, but I appreciate that it’s an acquired taste. I’d love to see some improvements to the multitasking, as it’s a little on the basic side, and a longer term of software support would provide some reassurance to customers, too.
If you decide to pick up the Honor Magic V3, it won’t disappoint you. This is one of the most premium-feeling foldable phones I’ve tried to date, and it left me with very few complaints. If svelte dimensions are a high priority, this is undoubtedly the foldable to buy.
Alternatives
If you’re not sure that the Honor Magic V3 is right for you, here are a couple of other excellent foldables to check out.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6
The Magic V3 might have a much more impressive spec sheet than the Z Fold 6, but Samsung’s offering shines in the software department. It easily has the most robust and comprehensive suite of AI features, and it’s the snappiest phone I’ve tested recently. For more on this one, see our Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 review.
Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold
The Pixel 9 Pro Fold is another impressive foldable contender. It may not be as slim and light as the Honor, but it’s an impressive photographic performer, with a huge display and a clean Android experience with plenty of AI features to boot.