Honor Magic V3 review: The foldable phone you'll want in your pocket
After impressing us with the Magic V2, Honor is back with another strong showing in the new Magic V3 book-style foldable that's even thinner, lighter and better -- while not increasing its price! #honor #magicv3 #foldablephone
By Cheryl Tan -
Note: This review was first published on 26 October 2024.
After an impressive showing last year with the Magic V2 book-style foldable's winning acclaim for Best Foldable Phone during our 2024 Tech Awards, our expectations are sky-high for the new Honor Magic V3.
This time, Honor wasted no time bringing the phone to international markets. We here in Singapore got the phone about two months after the China launch.
When it launched, the Magic V2 was the thinnest book-style folding phone in the world, but the Magic V3 takes it a step further, 'magically' reducing the thickness to just 9.2mm when folded and 4.35mm when unfolded (down from Magic V2's 9.9mm and 4.7mm, respectively). These are truly impressive figures, which even the newly launched Samsung Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition in Korea can't match.
The company also kept to its hardware chops with 2024's flagship choice, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor paired with LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.0 storage. The sizes for the LTPO OLED displays remain unchanged, at 7.92 inches for the internal screen and 6.43 inches for the external screen.
TL;DR: Honor has done a fantastic job improving on an already impressive predecessor, making the Honor Magic V3 a better book-style foldable smartphone with better durability and performance in an even thinner and lighter package.
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The hinge is now rated for 500,000 folds (up from the 400,000 that the Magic V2), thanks to a new Honor Super Steel material that allows for a thinner hinge body (2.84mm), resulting in space for an extra set of swing arms for additional structural reinforcement. Going by Honor's claims, a power user who unfolds their device 200 times a day will still get close to 7 years of usage. That's assuming these users even stick around on the same phone for that long.
Honor has also upgraded the rear camera array with a big step up in telephoto capabilities. Since its predecessor did quite well in our photography tests, we'll see if the new cameras offer a marked improvement.
Does the Magic V3 live up to even higher expectations? Could it be in the running for the next Best Foldable Phone award? Let’s take a closer look through the following segments:-
Thinnest book-style foldable phone in the world… again
Honor Magic V3 in green. Photo: HWZ.
The Magic V2 was one of the prettier folding phones on the market back then, and Honor has done it again with the Magic V3. The Green option reminds us of a lush forest, and the deep green is gorgeous. To top it off, the satin finish on the back makes it fingerprint-free at almost all times, which further adds to its design marks.
Thinner and lighter. Photo: HWZ.
Honor has also reduced the phone's weight by a couple of grams. The glass-back model weighs 226g, while the PU leather model is slightly heavier at 230g. Such improvements are minuscule, but they make an already thin and light option feel even thinner. For us, the USB-C port was the first thing we looked for on the Magic V3 after touching it because it was that unbelievably thin!
Our previous gripe about Magic V2's fingerprint reader has also been resolved in this version. The Magic V3's fingerprint reader is blazing fast.
Visible crease, but only at an angle. Photo: HWZ.
The crease line visibility seems unchanged from before. It's noticeable when the display is powered off and stared at from an angle. During use, it’s invisible to the eye, although you can still feel it if you run your finger over it. If you have been following our assessment of foldable phones, you can tell that this observation is a positive one in our books, so it's good that this aspect has stayed the same.
Honor also says the inner display is protected with an impact-resistant silicone gel, offering five times more scratch resistance. However, we're not going to ruin our test phone by purposely jamming a fingernail on it, so we'll have to take Honor’s word for it.
Inner display. Photo: HWZ.
Both the inner and outer displays are bright and legible under 'Singaporean sunlight', and playing games and watching content on them is a joy with pleasing colour vibrance and pop.
Yet another improvement is that Honor finally managed to design and certify the Magic V3 for water resistance with an IP rating of IPX8. It’s not quite as good as the Samsung Z Fold6’s IP48 since Honor has no dust protection, but having an official rating for water resistance is a big step up from the Magic V2 which had none, and thus some peace of mind.
Still no true AI features, but it's not needed
Just like before, there’s full Google Mobile Services support. The phone also comes pre-installed with a slew of Google apps just in case you ever doubted its compatibility. You get your standard YouTube, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Maps, YT Music, Google Wallet, and more.
As an Honor flagship device, Magic V3 runs on MagicOS 8.0.1, which is Honor’s Android 14 skin. It looks suspiciously similar to Huawei’s EMUI, but it’s clean and sleek with good optimisation.
Returning features include Magic Portal, which we’ve covered in our Honor Magic6 Pro and Honor 200 series reviews. However, this isn’t the phone to get if you want your phone to be absolutely bursting with AI smarts.
Easy to prop up for photos. Photo: HWZ.
Day-to-day usage is highly similar to how the Magic V2 was. You can half-fold the phone and prop it for photos and the like, and most apps fit nicely if you plan to use them in split-screen mode, with the ability to create app pairs for combinations you use frequently. Other than that, there’s very little to discuss here since we're not new to Honor's foldables (or good foldables, generally speaking).
Unfortunately, features like the Magic Capsule and Magic Portal aren’t really “smart” in the same way you’d expect an AI-powered feature to be.
Also, the AI is particularly egregious when you start editing photos on the phone. The results from Honor's AI Eraser feature are more often terrible than good. Just take a look at the samples we tried AI Eraser on.
Before AI Eraser. Photo: HWZ.
After AI Eraser. Photo: HWZ.
Before. Photo: HWZ.
After. Surprisingly decent result here. Photo: HWZ.
Before. Photo: HWZ.
After. Photo: HWZ.
Before. Photo: HWZ.
After. Another surprisingly decent result. Photo: HWZ.
While it's commendable that the AI isn't out to trick anyone into thinking these photos are real, many aren't usable for social media or personal use. Honor needs to revisit its algorithms and fine-tune AI Eraser further before we can confidently say that the brand has AI-capable smartphones.
Imaging performance
Rear cameras. Photo: HWZ.
The triple camera array on the back of the Magic V3 comprises the following:-
- 50MP wide primary camera (f/1.6, 1/1.56-inch, 1.0µm, PDAF, OIS)
- 40MP ultra-wide camera (f/2.2, 112˚ FOV, AF)
- 50MP telephoto camera (f/3.0, 1/2.51-inch, 0.7µm, PDAF, OIS, 3.5x optical zoom) with a 100x zoom.
There are also two 20MP cameras on the inner and outer displays, but a big selling point of a foldable phone is the ability to use the rear cameras as if they're front cameras, so we’re not sure how much regular use these 20MP cameras get beyond video calls.
Main Camera
Main camera. Photo: HWZ.
Main camera. Photo: HWZ.
Main camera. Photo: HWZ.
Main camera. Photo: HWZ.
Photos taken with the main camera are impressive for a foldable smartphone, with a good level of saturation and contrast, given the slightly overcast sky when we were shooting. There’s plenty of detail retention and the dynamic range is pretty good, even if the photos don't appear as bright (and enhanced) as other Android alternatives.
Zoom Performance
2.5x optical zoom, 50MP. Photo: HWZ.
2x digital zoom. Photo: HWZ.
2.5x optical zoom. Photo: HWZ.
2x digital zoom. Photo: HWZ.
2.5x optical zoom. Photo: HWZ.
2x digital zoom. Photo: HWZ.
2.5x optical zoom. Photo: HWZ.
2x digital zoom. Photo: HWZ.
2.5x optical zoom. Photo: HWZ.
100x digital zoom. Photo: HWZ.
The new 50MP telephoto camera is a huge improvement from before, with much better detail and sharpness when the 2.5x optical zoom is used. Compared to the unmoving results from the 2x digital crop, we highly recommend skipping the 2x option for the 2.5x option.
The 100x zoom feels like it’s just there to pad up its specs, and it’s not usable in most scenarios since the photo basically looks like a poorly maintained oil painting.
Ultrawide Camera
Ultrawide camera. Photo: HWZ.
Ultrawide camera. Photo: HWZ.
Ultrawide camera. Photo: HWZ.
Ultrawide camera. Photo: HWZ.
The ultrawide camera changes the photo's aesthetics quite a bit, with increased brightness, saturation, and contrast. However, it also has a slight greenish tint, which is a bit of a bummer. However, the fisheye distortion is well-controlled.
Night Mode
Night mode. Photo: HWZ.
Night mode. Photo: HWZ.
Night mode is quite impressive, with accurate colours, minimal blur, and a good amount of scene brightening to help bring out details.
Benchmark Performance
The Honor Magic V3 uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. That puts it on par with most flagship devices launched this year. We're pitting it against other SD8G3 rivals, book-style foldables, and for comparison's sake, the preceding Magic V2.
Putting it to the test
To find out how the competitors line up specs and price-wise, check them out in this link.
To find out more about the tests we conduct and what they relate to, we've jotted them down here.
Benchmark Performance remarks
Similar to how the numbers weren’t outstanding for the Magic V2, the Magic V3 performs decently in the tests, though it's not stellar like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6.
Despite the differences, Magic V3 performed as expected within its tier and it's still miles ahead of midrange phones or phones using non-Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processors, so day-to-day performance is excellent. The phone struggles a little with heat management when playing games like Honkai: Star Rail, but the device can handle two or three productivity apps used concurrently for doing work and multitaskng.
Battery Life
Our battery benchmark uses PCMark for Android’s Work 3.0 Battery Life test to determine a modern Android-based smartphone's battery uptime in minutes. This controlled benchmark simulates real-world usage with a combination of both web and social media browsing, video and photo editing, parsing data with various file formats, writing (on documents), and more.
Surprisingly, the Magic V3’s battery test was average despite boasting a larger 5,150mAh silicon-carbon battery. Compared to the jaw-dropping results of the Magic V2, this was a surprising step backwards, but it's still better and longer-lasting than the other SD8G3 foldable, as seen above.
However, day-to-day use remains just as excellent. With 22 hours from the last full charge, I managed to get eight hours of screen-on time (of which, five hours went into Honkai: Star Rail) and still had 15% left at the end.
It's possible that the phone’s optimisation doesn't cater to the battery test, and it’s a nice reminder that it's always good to check both ways (synthetic benchmarks and real-world use). All in all, the battery life of the Magic V3 is just about as good as the Magic V2 in our opinion from real-world use.
Charging speeds are outstanding for a foldable, with 66W wired Honor SuperCharge and 55W wireless Honor SuperCharge provided you purchase the Honor wireless charger separately. In contrast, Magic V2 didn't have wireless charging capability at all, which is yet another big convenience point added for the new Magic V3.
The phone reminds you to unfold it for better heat dissipation to get the best charging speeds. We don't think it's necessary unless you're actively using the phone while it juices up. It took us 25 minutes to charge to the 50% mark and a full charge from 0-100% was pretty quick at just 49 minutes, which is somewhat similar to the expectations set by Honor's Magic V2.
Conclusion: Excellent job, yet again
Honor Magic V3. Photo: HWZ.
Meaningful upgrades to the Honor Magic V3 certainly make this capable flagship foldable phone feel like great value for money - considering the new Magic V3 costs exactly the same as the Magic V2! All of our quibbles from the Magic V2 have been rectified with the addition of IPX8 water resistance, a new telephoto lens that can now reach much further, and support for fast wireless charging.
Also, Honor has made the phone even lighter and thinner than before while updating the components and hardware with newer and better options. It does feel like Honor is genuinely listening and willing to make changes to improve its products actively, and we appreciate that.
We gave the Honor Magic V2 a very high 9 out of 10 rating last year because it was impressive for its time and helped bring down the cost of a capable flagship foldable phone. This year, we’re retaining that score for its successor, which is rather insane because phones rarely progress so positively gen-on-gen. We’ll try to break our reasons down below.
Design-wise, few book-style foldables can offer what the Magic V3 delivers, especially since Honor addressed a key portability issue with these metal hunks of 'pocket sandwiches'. If one had to nitpick, the Magic V3 does have thicker screen bezels than the competitors, but we would argue that the improved portability feels like a more urgent point to address, which they have done repeatedly since their Magic series debuted.
While the phone doesn't really boast noteworthy AI features, it still handles everything that a foldable phone is expected to (which is flexibility, productivity, and novelty), and it does it well. Be it split-screen apps or floating windows; everything works without having to fuss over its layout or usability in the settings.
Honor Magic V3. Photo: HWZ.
MagicOS 8.0.1's user-friendliness is also fantastic. It is polished and intuitive, even if it repeats an old formula. The overall look is great, and the operation is fluid and enjoyable. Too bad we can't say the same for the phone's AI Eraser results, but seeing how nascent AI is to phones in general and how Honor is relatively affordable against rivals of its class, this let-down hardly hurts the phone's overall proposition.
The improved cameras also offer great photos and much more utility now that the telephoto camera has an extended digital zoom range. While its predecessor, Magic V2, already delivered well in the photography segment, we’re pleased to see that Honor has maintained the same good results as the Magic V3 and improved its telephoto capabilties.
At S$1,999 (512GB), Honor Magic V3's price tag is hard to argue with.
Competitors like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 and Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold start from S$2,548 and S$2,399 for much less storage while touting the same chipset underneath the screen. While great phones themselves and offering better software and AI smarts, these alternatives didn't innovate as boldly as Magic V3's physical properties, which is crucial if foldable phones want to be taken seriously for the mainstream audiences and not just the 'power users' who need the real estate. The same also applies to the phone's value proposition while still offering everything you could possibly ask for in a leading phone.
Whether it’s your first time with a foldable phone or not, the Honor Magic V3 is an incredibly compelling option that builds on the solid foundation of the Magic V2 and makes it even better. It's no wonder our team decided to bestow an Editor's Choice award to the Honor Magic V3.
The Honor Magic V3 comes in Classic Black, Mossy Green and Silk Brown. Retailing at S$1,999, there is only a single 16GB + 512GB configuration available in Singapore. The phone can be purchased at Best Denki, Challenger, Courts, Gain City, Harvey Norman, Shopee, Lazada and authorised Honor retailers.