Last week, I reviewed the Honor 90 Pro and called that mid-range phone “ultra sleek.” Little did I know that was a taste of what’s to come from Honor. Yesterday in Beijing, the tech brand introduced a new foldable phone that is jaw-droppingly thin and light. In fact, it immediately made my Google Pixel Fold feel like a brick.
For those unfamiliar with book-like foldable phones: these are essentially small tablets that fold in half to take on a smaller form factor. When folded, there’a second screen on the outside so the device can be used like a phone. Due to the nature of the hardware — a tablet that folds in half like a book, with two display panels—foldables have been mostly thick and heavy affairs.
Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 4, for example, is the fourth generation foldable, but it still looks and feels clunky, with a thickness that measures well over 14mm. I like using the phone a lot, but it just does not look or feel like a normal smartphone. When I have it in my pocket, I can feel it.
Chinese brands like Xiaomi and Huawei have done a good job slimming down the device, but no one has done it quite like Honor’s latest, named the Magic V2.
The Magic V2 measures 9.9mm when folded, and 4.7mm when unfolded. This is the first book-like foldable to have a folded thickness under 10mm (or 1cm). By comparison, even Xiaomi and Huawei’s ultra-thin foldables measure 11mm when closed, and Google’s Pixel Fold measures over 12mm.
It’s not just the thinness, however. The Magic V2 also weighs only 231g. This is 52g lighter than the Google Pixel Fold, and over 30g lighter than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4. Just look at the photos of the foldables side by side.
With a device this unbelievably thin, you may think Honor has cut some corners in components. That’s not the case. The Magic V2 actually has a larger battery (5,000 mAh) than Samsung or Google’s foldables. It also packs more RAM (16GB), larger and brighter displays, and the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip.
The battery part is particularly impressive. In order to get the phone so thin, Honor had to design its own silicon-carbon battery technology that has a higher energy density. This means the battery cell can hold more juice in a smaller body. And the batteries inside the Magic V2 are, just like the phone, jaw-droppingly thin. Look at the photo below.
Honor also built its own custom hinge made out of titanium alloy so it’s lighter, and it, too, is ultra-thin.
Elsewhere, the phone packs five cameras: a triple lens system with a 50+50+20 configuration, and two 16GB selfie cameras. The screens look great of course, with the main folding panel measuring 7.9-inches and the outer screen being 6.4-inches with 20:9 aspect ratio. Refresh rate for both are up to 120Hz, and the outside screen has a maximum brightness of 2600 nits, the brightest in the industry right now.
The Honor Magic V2 is an absolutely breakthrough in mobile hardware. And it’s not even that expensive. In China, the device is selling starting at 8999 yuan, or about $1,240. This is quite a bit lower than the $1,800 Samsung and Google are asking for.
And good news for readers who are interested: Honor has confirmed this phone will launch for the European and Asia markets in September during the IFA trade show. I can’t wait to get my hands on the global version and use it as my main phone.
Read the full article here
