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Foldable phones are getting slimmer with every year that passes, and the Honor Magic V5 is the skinniest yet. This latest smartphone from one of the most prolific producers of foldables is ridiculously thin, at just 4.1mm when unfolded – surpassing the previous record-holder, Oppo’s Find N5, which measured 4.22mm unfolded.
The Magic V5 isn’t actually hitting shelves until later this year but Honor invited me along to its London offices for a sneak peak – strategically timed to overshadow the upcoming Samsung foldables launch event, of course – and I came away very impressed.
In addition to its slim build, the Magic V5 is strapped with the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, improved dust and water resistance, an upgraded camera suite, a massive battery and, best of all, a main display that shows barely any sign of a hinge crease. We’ll have to wait for the UK release to be sure, but this could well be the most refined and well-designed foldable phone yet.
Honor Magic V5: Specifications
| Processor | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite |
| RAM | 16GB |
| Storage | 512GB |
| Displays | 7.95in, 2,352 x 2,172, 120Hz LTPO OLED (internal); 6.43in, 2,376 x 1,060, 120Hz LTPO OLED (external) |
| Cameras | 50MP (f/1.6); 64MP (f/2.5) 3.5x periscope telephoto; 50MP (f/2.0) ultrawide; 20MP (f/2.2) internal selfie; 20MP (f/2.2) external selfie |
| Battery | 5,820mAh |
| Charging | 66W wired; 50W wireless |
| Dust and water resistance | IP58/IP59 |
| Thickness | 8.8mm folded; 4.1mm unfolded |
| Weight | 217g |
Design and key features
The main attraction here is very much the impressively slim build, so let’s start there. The Honor Magic V5 measures 8.8mm thick when folded and 4.12mm unfolded. That means it’s slimmer in both forms than its predecessor (9.2mm folded and 4.35mm unfolded), and it also weighs a little less – now 217g – compared to the Honor Magic V3’s 226g.
As I remarked last year, this weight is in the same ballpark as plenty of non-folding smartphones – the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, for instance, weighs 218g – and the thickness isn’t far off either, which is quite the achievement.
In fact, we’re quickly getting to the point where I don’t see how they can make these things much thinner; short of ditching USB-C ports altogether, there’s only so much more space that can be shaved off here.
So it’s impressively thin, and will likely hold the title of the skinniest foldable around for a good while yet, but there’s another key battleground in the folding phone arms race: durability. The Honor Magic V5 is rated IP58/IP59 for dust and water resistance, which means it’s a little more dustproof than the Magic V3 and can now survive high-pressure jets of water.
It’s not, however, fully dust-tight, which is the holy grail for folding phone designers at this point. If Samsung’s engineers can figure out that elusive IP6 rating for the Galaxy Z Fold 7, it may prove to be the safer choice for those worried about dust mucking up the hinge.
Speaking of hinges, Honor has redesigned the hinge to make the crease 30% smaller than the one on the Magic V3. And you can really tell – unfold the phone and you’ll be hard-pressed to find any hint of a crease down the middle of the display.
This main screen is once again a foldable AMOLED but it’s grown slightly from 7.92in to 7.95in across the diagonal. The 120Hz LTPO refresh rate carries over from the Magic V3, but the resolution is a little sharper, now 2,352 x 2,172, and Honor claims that the internal display gets much brighter, matching the 5,000 nits peak brightness of the cover screen, where the Magic V3 topped out at 1,600.
The external display is a dead ringer for the Magic V3’s; it’s once again a 6.43in OLED with that same peak brightness of 5,000 nits. Honor didn’t disclose the exact specifications at the hands-on event, which says to me that it’s likely the same as the Magic V3’s cover screen. That would mean an LTPO OLED with a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz and a resolution of 2,376 x 1,060.
Each display has a 20-megapixel selfie camera, and crucially, they both support the same 3D face unlocking we saw on the Honor Magic 7 Pro. This is a fantastic feature, it’s unique among Android phones – only Apple has the same level of security for its selfie camera – and it allows you to use your face for secure applications like payments and unlocking your banking app.
On the rear of the phone, we again have a three-lens setup organised in a chunky housing. The camera module is still vaguely hexagonal but the edges are much more rounded off here than on the Magic V3, making it look closer to Oppo’s fully circular camera housing. It’s still an attractive look though, with a polished metal border that matches the edges of the phone, black for the black model and rose gold for the reddish and white models.
The 50-megapixel main camera is the same as on the Magic V3, with an f/1.6 aperture and OIS (optical image stabilisation) support, but the ultrawide and telephoto cameras have been upgraded. The former is now a 50-megapixel sensor with an f/2.0 aperture and the latter is a 64-megapixel (f/2.5) periscope shooter that offers a 3.5x optical zoom and a hybrid zoom that goes all the way up to 100x.
In terms of performance, the Magic V5 runs on the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, clocked up to 4.32GHz and backed by 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. It’s disappointing to see another generation arrive with still no lower-capacity, cheaper variants for the Magic foldable here in the UK – or a higher capacity 1TB model, for that matter – but considering that the Magic V3 already cost a good couple of hundred pounds less than the entry-level Galaxy Z Fold 6, I don’t see Samsung undercutting Honor on price this year.
Also new for the internals is a massive 5,820mAh battery. Where Honor managed to squeeze this cell in while also reducing the size and weight of the phone is anyone’s guess, but it is by far the largest battery we’ve seen on a full-size foldable yet. Hopefully it will produce excellent stamina when I come to test the Magic V5’s battery life.
Unfortunately, Honor hasn’t paired this much larger battery (compared to the Magic V3’s 5,150mAh cell) with faster charging. The Magic V5 again supports 66W wired and 50W wireless charging, both of which are great for foldables but, with a larger battery to fill, that will probably also mean slower charging time.
As this was a very early look at the Magic V5, the hands-on was focused firmly on hardware. The model I checked out is the Chinese version, so I can’t report on the software side of things at this time. With that being said, I can make some educated guesses based on some of the flagship features we saw earlier this year on the Magic 7 Pro.
One of the most noteworthy announcements regarding the Magic 7 Pro’s software was that Honor would be matching Google and Samsung in pledging seven years of software support for its flagship phones. As everything else about the Magic V5 is very much on the flagship end of things, it seems a safe bet that it too will get this excellent software support.
And it wouldn’t be a 2025 smartphone without a healthy dose of AI, so we can expect features like deepfake video detection, image to video generation and AI super zoom to make their way over from the Magic 7 Pro, as well.
Honor Magic V5: Early verdict
I think a good foldable phone needs to excel in four key areas. It needs to be slim and light, have strong battery life, be robust and durable and have high-class cameras. Considering what you have to pay for the things, this doesn’t seem like an unreasonable list, and yet most foldables on UK shelves fall down in one area or another.
I won’t be sure on the battery life or quality of the cameras until the time comes for my full review but, based on the specs, I’d say Honor has a pretty decent balance on its hands. The camera hardware and bigger battery look promising, the slimness of the build is an affront to physics at this point and the dust and water resistance is the best we’ve seen from a foldable so far – though there’s room for Samsung to do better.
Even if it does, however, I think Samsung is going to need another ace up its sleeve to compete with the Magic V5. Between the class-leading slim build, powerful hardware, expansive camera suite and software support that now matches Samsung, Honor is going for broke with the Magic V5. Will it be enough to come out on top? We’ll find out very soon.
I’ll be getting my hands on a review sample of the Honor Magic V5 in the near future, so keep an eye out for my full review to find out if this will be the best foldable phone of 2025.
