Honor Magic V5

This year is the fiercest year for foldables yet, with Oppo, Samsung and Google all serving up incredibly strong entries in their respective book-style folding phone lineups. But now it's Honor's turn, and the long-anticipated Magic V5 clearly has its sights set on foldable supremacy.

- Alex Walker-Todd

With so much going on in the foldable space this season, Honor has been keen to hold attention; actively promoting the Magic V5 in the months leading up to its launch, touting key features, revealing specs and even granting press and influencers impressively early access to hardware.

On the surface, the Magic V5 looks like the most uncompromising foldable of the year, but having lived with the V5 for the last few weeks, can it actually deliver on various lofty promises?

DESIGN

One of the most contentious battles among this year's crop of book-style foldables has been with regards to thickness. The Oppo Find N5 (pictured below, in black) touched down back in February, laying claim to the title of “world’s thinnest book-style foldable” with a profile of 4.21mm when open.

Honor wasn’t going to let that slide, however, with the Magic V5 and its promised record-breaking wafer-thin profile arriving a few months later.

Honor serves up the Magic V5 in four colours: Dawn Gold, Reddish Brown, Ivory White (as seen above) and black, and having handled them all, Dawn Gold gets my vote as the most audacious, head-turning foldable finish currently on the market (closely followed by the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 in Blue Shadow). That beauty is more than skin deep, too, with the finish also affecting thickness.

If you're after the entry Honor's put forward as the world record-breaker, you'll want the Ivory White model; cited as measuring 8.88mm when closed and an insanely thin 4.1mm when open. However, the other finishes are still outlandishly svelte too, at 9mm when closed and 4.2mm when open.