Honor Magic V2 Review: Impossibly thin, yet bulging with features

The incredibly thin foldable Magic V2 from Honor goes under the spotlight as it gets its UK debut at last.

It has been quite a wait since Honor announced the sub-10mm thick Honor Magic V2 foldable smartphone was coming to Europe (last September in fact), but wait we did – and now this marvel of technology is finally here.

But, like foldables in general, is it worth the extra investment over a regular smartphone?

Will it give you the confidence to use without kid gloves? Can it make your day-to-day life workflow easier? Is it better for media consumption or gaming?

Let’s take a look and find out…

Design & Build

When you look at the construction of the Honor Magic V2, you will get to appreciate just how thin and light it is, and see how far the technology and engineering has advanced since Huawei showed off the Mate X in February 2019 – one of the first foldable products to hit the market.

'Will folding phones become standard in the future?'

Walter Ji believes that in five years, it's likely to become the norm.

— Jonathan Morris (@jmcomms) February 24, 2019

Getting thinner might well conjure up fears of fragility, and it certainly did when I first took it out of the box.

Believe me when I say that every time I hold a foldable (especially one that is being given back) I feel like I am holding a newborn baby.

However, it is very rigid and strong, with a satisfying folding action from the Titanium hinge that Honor claims is rated for over 400,000 folds (that’s 100 folds per day for ten years).

Quite quickly I realised that it wasn’t going to break just by looking at it – and I could begin to use it in a more relaxed fashion.

When folded the Magic V2 is just 4.7mm thick (bar the camera protrusion) and when folded it totals just 9.9mm. That’s thinner than many standard smartphones, and here’s a device with two screens, as well as a large capacity battery that had to be divided up to fit the two separate parts on each side of the very clever hinge.

The outer display is 6.43-inch and maintains a standard smartphone display aspect ratio, to ensure all apps function as normal used as a ‘regular’ phone. When opened up, you are presented with a 7.92-inch display that isn’t quite square – but not far off. This offers a resolution of 2156 x 2344 pixels, and both displays come with 10-bit colour and 120Hz refresh rates (adjustable from 1Hz upwards). Likewise, both screens have the same 402 pixels-per-inch – with added support for a stylus (not included, and currently not sold separately as far as I can see).

Both displays also include a 16-megapixel selfie camera (cut-outs, not hidden), and the rear of the device has three cameras – comprising a 50-megapixel primary camera, 20-megapixel telephoto, and a 50-megapixel ultra-wide. On the top of the device there’s also an Infrared port for controlling various devices, such as televisions or air conditioning units.

While you can use either selfie camera for things like video calling, you can also just open up the phone and use the rear cameras, with the outer display facing you as your viewfinder.

When opened, the Magic V2 has a volume key that now moves to the left-hand side, and a power button that also doubles up as the fingerprint sensor. This works by rubbing your finger or thumb over it, and is extremely quick and responsive to unlock. You can also opt for face unlocking, or a combination of both.

When folded, the volume keys are now on the same side as the power button, but staggered. It won’t take long to get used to, although if you rotate the device sideways (some apps, like Google Mail, will adopt a different layout if turned to be in the 2344 x 2156 orientation) then it can all get a little confusing!

The model reviewed here is the black vegan leather model, which also comes with a protective cover that also magnetically clips on to the hinge. It protects the rear of the device and the camera lenses, but does leave the outer (front) display exposed. There is a factory fitted screen protector, and as long as you aren’t silly about where you store the phone (like a pocket with your keys, or other abrasive materials) it will be just fine.

If the outer screen protector does get damaged in any way, it’s easy to buy another one from Amazon and fit it yourself.

With such a large investment, nobody wants to suffer problems with the displays or the hinge and clearly in a two-week review period, I am unable to give an opinion on how it will stand up to rigorous usage day in, day out – but at the time of publishing, it still looks as clean as it did when I first set it up. If I am lucky enough to keep the Magic V2 a little longer, I will update the review accordingly.

The set-up process is also extremely easy, and having logged in to an existing Honor account, it detected that I also had a Honor Magic 5 Pro – and before I knew it, it was copying over all my apps, settings, wallpapers and even keeping me logged in to a number of apps that I use on the other device.

Google also has an excellent backup/restore process for changing phones, but this was the easiest yet.

Camera

So, having already stated the resolution of the three cameras above, what about their quality?

Being a premium device in the Magic range, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to learn that many features from the Magic 5 Pro are featured here – including the motion sensing capture mode that will automatically take photos of people running, jumping, smiling – including pets like cats or dogs.

You can use the camera in multiple modes and orientations, from using the outer screen as any other smartphone, to opening it up and having a larger viewfinder window – with the choice to divide the screen and see your camera roll on the side.

Alternatively, you can sit the phone down and tip up the screen to see the viewfinder image on the top half, and gain a larger ‘control panel’. By doing this, you can perform longer exposure shots to get even more detail.

In terms of zoom, the telephoto camera is fixed at 2.5x and you can extend this to a hybrid zoom of 10x. It tops out at 40x, but even at 10x you’ll start to lose detail given the limitations of a 20-megapixel image sensor. AI makes a fair attempt to enhance images, so your mileage may vary depending on what you’re zooming in on – and the lighting conditions.

Video tops out at 4K 60fps from the main cameras, and 40K 30fps on the selfie cameras. The Magic V2 also includes a Movie mode, which differs from the normal video mode and allows more control of the colour – including LOG mode. From here you can let AI generate short clips, or use the slow-motion feature to create cinematic effects and smooth pans.

The camera isn’t quite as versatile as the Magic 5 Pro (and the Magic 6 Pro is likely only a month or two away from release globally) but the Magic V2 will still meet, and possibly exceed, most expectations. Image processing is an important part of mobile photography, and Honor has done well to include the same software as its other flagships here.

Take a look at the photos below to make up your own mind.

Photo Gallery

Performance & Software

Having been released in the second half of 2023, the Magic V2 was cutting-edge when it was announced with its Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC back in China on July 12th 2023.

But now in 2024, Qualcomm has launched the 8 Gen 3 chipset in a number of devices.

8 Gen 2 is still an excellent performing chipset with extremely good power management, but some people may feel disappointed they’re not getting the absolute best with this product.

The Magic 6 Pro will of course take the leap to the latest chipset, but as you can see from the AnTuTu benchmark result below, this is no slouch – and a score of 1,463,051 ranks it pretty high up for this particular SoC.

When it comes to connectivity, I was pleasantly impressed with both Wi-Fi and 5G speeds – the latter getting me over 1,300Mbps on a speed test with Three’s network. Reception is good, audio quality on a call is good via both the earpiece or on speaker.

In fact, the stereo speakers work exceptionally well given the thinness of the device. Even if you rotate the inner display to tilt it, putting the speakers top and bottom, you still get a good spatial effect.

Split-screen and windowed access

But all of this doesn’t take into account the purpose of having a foldable device, with a large inner display to use for productivity or entertainment purposes.

You could just use the Magic V2 like a normal phone, and for a lot of the time you probably will, but when opened you can begin to enjoy a range of modes to make the best use of the squarer aspect ratio.

Clearly, video watching might be better suited for the outer display (so much so, that Honor integrated a fold out stand so you can prop the phone up that way) as otherwise you’ll be met with borders – or a zoomed in display reminiscent of the days of 4:3 TV.

If you’re a fan of early pre-widescreen episodes of The Simpsons, it’s perfect!

For apps like YouTube, you might wish to have a regular display at the top, and the ability to read comments or look at other videos to queue up at the same time on the bottom.

For checking your socials, you can split the screen horizontally (and drag one window up or down to alter the size of each). By default, you’ll split apps vertically – but you can also have a full-screen app with a draggable windowed app sitting on top.

If you want to resize this you can, or drag it off to the side so it can be reloaded with a simple tap on its app icon.

Some apps don’t size perfectly, but you can set them to a fixed aspect ratio to lessen any impact of apps you may have that aren’t ready for the age of foldables.

Hands-On with the OnePlus Open (AKA Oppo Find N3); available to buy from today

Overall, there are still some aspects of the Magic OS UI that feel like there’s room for improvement – and it would be especially nice to see something similar to that of the OnePlus Open/Oppo Find N3 ‘Open Canvas’ feature, which lets apps scale beyond the confines of the display – and the ability to quickly swap between them.

What’s more, on those devices you can save presets on your home screen to allow a series of apps to launch in your preferred layout with a single click.

Hopefully Magic OS 8.x is not too far away and will bring new features.

The Magic V2 also works with a stylus, bundled with the Porsche Design variant, but I was unable to test this for my review.

Battery

A large 5,000mAh battery is one of the many fantastic qualities of the Magic V2 because with a larger display comes higher power consumption. This is bigger than in the OnePlus Open or Oppo Find N3 (both 4,805mAh), the Pixel Fold (4,821mAh), and loads more than the 4,400mAh battery in the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5.

Even with latest-gen screen technology and variable refresh rates, if you want a nice, bright, vivid display to be productive on (or to enjoy some AAA gaming titles) then the battery is going to be under pressure.

While I did have a couple of times where I felt the battery wasn’t going to last a whole day, the 66W wired fast-charging soon got me back in the game, and using the SuperCharge protocol (like other Honor and Huawei devices before this) means a lot of people may already have a collection of chargers. It charged just fine with my Huawei 40W power bank.

I shouldn’t have worried though, as despite the battery draining faster than of the equivalent Honor Magic 5 Pro (with a 5,100mAh battery) I never actually got below 20% and I was like a kid in a candy store for a lot of the time – testing out loads of different apps, and also trying my hand at some games in unfolded mode.

You won’t necessarily be able to play every game well, depending on the controls, but I did have fun trying out the beta of EA’s Plants Vs Zombies 3 – which scaled perfectly to the screen inside and out.

Should you use the phone in its folding state most of the time, the battery performs even more impressively. What’s more, I never felt the need to turn on the power saving features – of which there are many – but if you’re likely to be away from a power source, turning this on will give the ultimate peace of mind.

It would have been nice to see wireless charging included, but for now it’s wired charging only. Perhaps Honor will manage to incorporate this in the next model?

Final Thoughts

I don’t think Honor made the best decision to keep European users waiting over four months to release the Magic V2 following its global launch at IFA (which is six months on from when it was first announced in China), as in that time we’ve had a new flagship chipset released, and – given the speed the industry is moving – there’s a strong possibility of this phone having its successor announced within the next few months.

But, a device like this isn’t for someone who changes phone every six months – unless money isn’t a concern, in which case you’ll probably be buying one straight away – if you didn’t already import one from China!

If, as is more likely, you’re still a bit hesitant when it comes to investing in something that’s more fragile than a regular smartphone (there’s no IP-rating either), my experience can at least give you some confidence that it is an exceptionally well put together product – utilising the expertise that was first gained from when Honor was part of Huawei. It had five years to hone its skills, even if the two companies are now independent of each other.

Is it a phone to take to the beach, chuck on the sofa when you finish a call or keep in your back pocket? No, and you will need to make some rather common sense allowances for the form factor to ensure it stays in good condition for your time of ownership – which, given the specs, could easily be a number of years.

One aspect that divides opinion is the user interface in general. For years everyone wanted a native Android experience, but many manufacturers continued down the route of heavy customisation. Even Google now takes Android and transforms it for its own Pixel phones. Samsung has OneUI, and then there’s all the other variations from Oppo, OnePlus and Realme, Vivo and IQOO, and Xiaomi and Redmi.

Here there’s Magic OS, which remains pretty close to native Android and to some will feel dull. You can change themes, icons and fonts, so it is very easy to make it your own still.

As a result of not going crazy with customisation, I have forgotten the last time any Honor phone has crashed or caused me issues. They just work. For me, that’s essential for when I’m trying to be productive, whether writing, photo editing or publishing content.

If you are planning to do work on the Magic V2, I can absolutely recommend it – especially if you can buy it when Honor is doing one of its promotional discounts/bundles.

Key Specifications

	Honor Magic V2 (Global Version)
Size/Weight	Folded: 156.7 x 74.1 x 9.9mm Unfolded: 156.7 x 145.4 x 4.7mm 231g
Screen (Outer/Cover)	6.43-inch AMOLED LTPO (1-120Hz) 10-Bit colour (1.07bn colours) with 2500 nits peak brightness 1060 x 2376 pixels Circadian Night Display Technology with 3840Hz PWM Dimming
Screen (Internal)	7.92-inch AMOLED LTPO (1-120Hz) 10-Bit colour (1.07bn colours) with 1600 nits peak brightness 2156 x 2344 pixels Circadian Night Display Technology with 3840Hz PWM Dimming
Audio	Stereo Sound IMAX Enhanced
Chipset	Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 gen 2 Octa-core, Max freq 3.36GHz Adreno 750 GPU
RAM	16GB + 7GB virtual RAM (Honor RAM Turbo)
Storage	256GB, 512GB or 1TB [512GB model sold in UK]
Camera (selfie)	Outer/Cover: 16MP (4K, 30fps) Internal: 16MP (4K, 30fps)
Camera (rear)	Primary: 50MP (f/1.9) PDAF, Laser AF, OIS Telephoto 2.5x: 20MP (f/2.4) PDAF, OIS Ultra-wide & Macro: 50MP (f/2.0) 4K Video recording max 60fps
Connectivity	Dual band Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) Bluetooth 5.3 5G NR (SA & NSA) Sub 6 4G+ with VoLTE, ViLTE and VoWiFi NFC USB-C
Battery	5,000mAh 66W fast-charging (SuperCharge protocol) wired [Not included with the device as standard, but may be included as part of a bundle offer]
Other	MagicOS 7.2 (Android 13) Side-mounted fingerprint/power button & facial unlock Factory fitted screen protector Dual SIM (Dual Standby) Case included in box Discrete Security Chip S1 + RF Enhanced Chip Honor C1
Price	£1699.99 (before offers)

Pricing & Availability

The Honor Magic V2, with 16GB+512GB, is available in two colours; black vegan leather and purple, with pricing starting at £1699.99 – but early birds can get a £200 discount (via voucher code ‘AV2PR200’) and an impressive bundle that includes a 66W SuperCharge power adapter, six months of screen protection cover, and a pair of Bang & Olufsen headphones worth £459.

You will be able to purchase the Magic V2 on Three from February 2nd, with further discounts if you trade-in an old device – as well as a £120 discount on 30GB and 300GB tariffs – plus the same Bang & Olufsen headphones as when buying SIM-free.

Other retailers include Amazon, Very, Argos, and Currys – all with the Magic V2 available to order from today, with a redemption offer for the Bang & Olufsen headphones.

The even more luxurious Porsche Design Honor Magic V2 RSR will be made available later, with pricing information available nearer the time. This model will come with additional accessories, as well as stylus, in the box – along with 1TB of internal storage.

UPDATE: Get a further £100 off if you’ve previously purchased a device from Honor’s store, of if you’re a student. You can also get another £200 off if you trade in a device. So, that’s a total of £500 off – plus the free headphones etc.

More information

• Honor

Disclaimer: This device was loaned to me by Honor for the purpose of writing a review. The company had no input in the content of this review, nor did Honor get to see the review before it was published. I have not compared this device with every other foldable smartphone out there, so did not set out to make any direct comparisons – but merely review the Honor Magic V2 in its own right.