Honor Magic V2 review: Shaking up the book-style foldable scene

Note: This review was first published on 11 March 2024.

Folding with a little bit of Magic

If you've read our Honor Magic V2’s launch coverage here and our hands-on piece here, it would be no surprise to you that we’re incredibly impressed by the bookstyle foldable handset. 

The TD;LR version: 



The foldable phone options in Singapore are better, because of this slim bookstyle foldable, with a lower price tag and true flagship components.

The Honor Magic V2 is technically a smartphone launched in 2023, but that was limited to the China market. The global (and Singapore) launch came a little later in Q1 2024, so we're reviewing it now.

It might be the world’s thinnest folding smartphone at 9.9mm thick when folded, and 4.7mm unfolded, but the Honor Magic V2 doesn’t compromise when it comes to hardware. Inside comes a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor paired with 16GB LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage. 

The internal and external screens are also some of the largest in town. Magic V2 boasts a 7.92-inch internal and 6.43-inch external screen size, both using LTPO OLED displays that can get up to 120Hz refresh rate. Honor paired them with peak brightness rates of up to 1,600 nits for the internal screen and 2,500 nits for the external screen, on top of support for HDR10+.

To round things off, the external screen is protected by Honor’s Nanocrystal Glass 2.0, which is 10x more drop-resistant than its previous phone.

The folding hinge is now made with a new steel material that the company claims to be 25% thinner and 20% stronger than the steel used in the older Honor Magic Vs, while the hinge cover is now using titanium alloy. There’s also a redesigned support structure, all of which comes together to ensure the Magic V2 can withstand more than 400,000 folds throughout its lifetime. If you're folding 100 times a day, that's approximately 10 years.

The rear camera bump is home to a triple camera array featuring a 50MP main camera, a 50MP ultra-wide camera and a 20MP telephoto camera that provides 2.5x optical zoom. Stats only tell you one side of the story, but check out our impressions piece earlier where we found the phone to be quite competent.

So why are we impressed with the Honor Magic V2? Does it really offer the ultimate folding phone experience? Or are there still some ways to go in getting foldables right?

Thinnest book-style foldable phone in the world

It’s hard to say there’s any folding phone on the market right now that's better designed than the Honor Magic V2. Even if you look past the phone being the thinnest, thinnest bookstyle foldable, it still has a gorgeous Purple colourway, featuring a slightly sparkling matte-finish glass back that immediately catches the eye. The rear glass stays free from oily fingerprints or unsightly blemishes. 

The titanium hinge cover is colour-matched, while the phone's edges are curved and glossy. The shade of purple chosen hides fingerprints well, and the rounded edges of the phone make it comfortable to hold and use. A thin power button doubles up as a fingerprint reader on the side, along with a volume rocker. On the bottom, there’s a USB Type-C 3.1 port, with a dual SIM tray slot and speaker grilles. 

It’s a simple design, but it helps Honor keep the weight to just 237g for the glass-back version, and just 231g if you opt for the Black PU rear finish.

However, the fingerprint reader is so thin that my prints can’t be read on the first try. I've also noticed this issue when reviewing the OPPO Find N3 as well. A workaround is registering the same finger twice, focusing on verifying the outer edges. It helps to improve the sensor's accuracy. Of course, face recognition is also an alternative.

Thanks to the redesigned support structure, Honor claims the depth of fold marks on the inner screen has been reduced by 47% compared to its previous version.

While I don’t have an Honor Magic Vs on hand to compare, I do, luckily, have the OPPO Find N3, which wow-ed me with how unnoticeable the inner crease is.

When viewed together, the Honor Magic V2's crease is more visible than Find N3's. The Magic V2’s crease is deeper when viewed head-on or from the side. It is less noticeable when the display is actively in use, though you can still feel the crease when you run a finger over the middle.

However, unlike its competitors from Oppo and Samsung, the Honor Magic V2 does not have any officially tested water resistance rating, which could be an issue if you need some assurance against splashes.

Full Google Mobile Services support seals the deal

Honor is a Chinese phone brand, and the Magic V2 runs on Honor’s MagicOS 7.2 skin (based on Android 13). Thankfully, it supports the full suite of Google Mobile Services, unlike Huawei.

Once you boot up the phone, a folder of Google apps, including Gmail, Maps, YouTube, Drive, YT Music, and more, is pre-installed for your convenience. 

Die-hard Huawei fans would recognise MagicOS because the interface looks very much like Huawei's phone UI. They were, after all, the same company at one point before splitting apart.

Some nice QOL features on the Honor Magic V2 are the enlarged folders that allow you to tap into apps simultaneously and have up to three windows showing simultaneously on the large internal screen.

The overall interface feels snappy and responsive, with no lag or stutter when launching, closing, or using apps.

Looking for price and buy links? The Honor Magic V2 comes in Black, Purple and a Black PU vegan leather option for S$1,999. The phone can be purchased at StarHub, Best Denki, Challenger, Courts, Gain City, Shopee and authorised Honor retailers, with every purchase entitled to a complimentary Honor Watch GS3 (worth S$299)

Let's move on to the performance aspects on the following pages to understand better why this foldable phone is hard to resist.

Imaging Performance

The Honor Magic V2 comes with a triple rear camera array:-

• 50MP wide main camera (f/1.9 aperture, with OIS)
• 50MP ultra-wide camera (f/2.0 aperture)
• 20MP telephoto camera (f/2.4 aperture, with OIS)

While there are no fancy camera collaborations here, the camera set performed relatively well in our testing. Performance aside, Honor’s design team has done a great job with its camera housing. The curved edges on the camera's sides help soften the overall blocky look and feel. This also results in fewer instances of the camera bump getting caught on fabric when sliding the phone into a pocket or bag. 

As mentioned in my hands-on article, we found the photos taken with the Honor Magic V2 to have accurate colours and plenty of detail retained. 

Shots taken in low light conditions are brightened considerably, which isn’t ideal if you’re looking for an accurate portrayal. Having said that, most will find it useful and convenient to capture a good-looking shot despite the dim ambience. The trade-off? You lose some fine details, like small text, but most users would be understanding in these circumstances. 

Photos come out a little smudged in very low-light conditions, so you’ll want to avoid extremely dim settings. 

The phone also has strong contrast performance. It handles scenes with bright neon lights well and keeps them correctly exposed and consistent with the rest of the environment. 

Ultrawide shots are handled nicely, with very little distortion around the corners of the frame. 

The one downside is that the telephoto lens included only has a 2.5x zoom, which is barely a “telephoto” lens to us. You'll probably be using the 10x digital zoom if you want to get up close to subjects. Fortunately, we're happy to share that the 10x digital zoom was quite serviceable for the most part, as seen in our above captures, although lines and fine details start to smudge a little when shooting in low-light situations.

Looking for price and buy links? The Honor Magic V2 comes in Black, Purple and a Black PU vegan leather option for S$1,999. The phone can be purchased at StarHub, Best Denki, Challenger, Courts, Gain City, Shopee and authorised Honor retailers, with every purchase entitled to a complimentary Honor Watch GS3 (worth S$299)

So the phone's handling and imaging are commendable, but can it really perform or did Honor cut corners? Find out on the next page.

Benchmark Performance

Because the Honor Magic V2 was first launched in 2023, it uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. While it isn't Qualcomm's newest processor, it is still a powerful processor that affords the Magic V2 plenty of performance and is on fairly equal footing with competitive foldable phones available now.

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

While the numbers can’t beat the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 and Galaxy Z Flip5, the Honor Magic V2 is no slouch either and performs quite respectably and better than the Oppo Find N3 at times. 

Numbers aren’t always the end-all-be-all, and the Honor Magic V2 performs brilliantly during normal usage, with multiple windows open or even when I had Honkai: Star Rail open and running alongside a Chrome window.

Battery Life

Our new 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. 

With a 5,000mAh battery capacity, the Honor Magic V2 has one of the best battery life for a foldable phone we’ve tested. Considering Honor had the largest internal and external screens to drive and with more pixels than the Galaxy Z Fold, it's astonishing. This is undoubtedly thanks to the dual Silicon-carbon batteries inside that Honor is incredibly proud of as well as its LTPO OLED display that's more power conscious than the screens used on the competition. Claiming a 14-hour battery life while streaming videos and 23.9 hours during reading sessions, we certainly believe that now after our tests.

When left idle for a whole day, the phone sapped only ~12% of its battery when connected to Wi-Fi and receiving notifications on and off from apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, Gmail and more.

There is 66W wired fast charging, but there’s no wireless charging available. As with most Chinese brands that have their own super-fast charging technologies, I would recommend using the provided charging brick and cable in the box to get maximize claimed charging capabilities. Testing it with a third-party 140W GaN charger and 200W cable resulted in slower charging speeds, likely because they lack a compatible ampere/voltage combination.

66W fast charging was quick enough to juice the battery from 0-100% in just 49 minutes, which is excellent, and a quick 17-minute charge brought the battery from 0% to 50%. For comparison, the charging rates we've observed with Honor's Magic V2 are a tad better than Oppo's Find N3 and its SuperVOOC Flash charging.

Coming out ahead

Foldable phones have come a long way, and we’ve seen some really great products like the OPPO Find N3 and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 in recent years. That said, one of the biggest hurdles for foldable phones is the size. We’ve mostly seen thick, chonky phones more than 10mm when folded up.

The Honor Magic V2 changes that while still retaining a decent amount of performance and even managing to squeeze in larger internal and external screens with industry-leading battery uptime according to our tests.

When you consider that the Magic V2 only costs S$1,999, it’s definitely one of the more affordable bookstyle foldable smartphones out there.

As we noted in our OPPO Find N3 review, the prices of foldable phones have been inching down slowly. The competitive price of the Magic V2 takes it further by positioning it closer to regular premium flagship phone price territory, making the price gap less of a concern when choosing between handset types.

Hardware-wise, Honor has also done a good job with the rest of the phone, with bright screens, a less noticeable crease (than Samsung), excellent design, fantastic battery life and fast, snappy day-to-day performance.

Of course, some trade-offs have been made. It notably lacks rated water resistance handling and a good telephoto camera with high levels of optical zoom. There’s also no wireless charging on the phone, which is a bit of a shame. The crease isn't quite gone either, and it's more visible than from its Oppo rival.

Depending on your budget, these downsides can feel minor when you realise other bookstyle foldables of the same class can command nearly S$1,000 more (especially for a 1TB storage variant from Samsung). In that vein, the Honor Magic V2 seems excellent, both as a representation of its category and what to expect from this class of devices in the future. It seems like the days of expensive flagship-class bookstyle foldable phones will eventually come to pass if Honor keeps the pressure on the incumbent.

We're giving the Honor Magic V2 an overall rating of 9 (out of 10) despite what it misses. Honor didn't only make an effort to slim down the phone while still providing a great foldable experience. It still provided high-performing hardware, a good main camera, and exceptional battery life. Being five hundred bucks cheaper than its main rival also helps it get a slightly higher rating because of its overall strong showing. Sure, it's missing wireless charging and water resistance, but you probably won't get the svelte foldable phone that people have been hoping for, and this is Honor's design choice.

The Honor Magic V2 comes in Black, Purple and a Black PU vegan leather options for its rear backing. Retailing at S$1,999, there's only a single 16GB + 512GB configuration available in Singapore. The phone can be purchased at StarHub, Best Denki, Challenger, Courts, Gain City, Shopee and authorised Honor retailers, with every purchase entitled to a complimentary Honor Watch GS3 (worth S$299). There's a lot of value to be had in this foldable phone.