The best book-style foldable of 2025 — top creators independently call it the best folding phone on the market.
World's thinnest book foldable (8.8mm folded / 4.1mm open) that feels like a normal flagship when closed.
Class-leading foldable battery — the ~5,820mAh silicon-carbon cell out-endures the Z Fold 7 and Oppo Find N5.
Dual 5,000-nit OLED LTPO 120Hz displays — a huge brightness jump over the Magic V3.
An industry-leading 7-year OS and security update commitment.
Deal Breakers
Pros & Cons
Honor Magic V5
Pros
The best book-style foldable of 2025 — top creators independently call it the best folding phone on the market.
World's thinnest book foldable (8.8mm folded / 4.1mm open) that feels like a normal flagship when closed.
Class-leading foldable battery — the ~5,820mAh silicon-carbon cell out-endures the Z Fold 7 and Oppo Find N5.
Dual 5,000-nit OLED LTPO 120Hz displays — a huge brightness jump over the Magic V3.
An industry-leading 7-year OS and security update commitment.
Detailed Comparison
Design & Build
Honor Magic V5
The headline: the world's thinnest book foldable that feels like a normal flagship when closed — though the camera bump it excludes from the measurement is hefty.
It's the thinnest inward-folding phone on the market — 8.8mm folded and 4.1mm open (ivory white), taking the crown from the Oppo Find N5.
It's the thinnest only if you ignore the rather hefty camera bump, which isn't included in the measurements.
The frame uses Honor's Resource 7-series aluminium and aerospace fibres for strength without bulk, with a signature rectangular camera module.
It feels like a normal flagship when closed, then delivers a genuinely useful big-screen upgrade when opened.
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A hefty camera bump that the thinness claim conveniently excludes, making it considerably thicker than a Pixel 9 Pro Fold with bumps included.
The telephoto's reach was shortened to ~70mm, and the camera isn't quite flagship-tier for a $1,600+ phone.
MagicOS pushes AI heavily with bare-minimum customization, plus patchy (China-first) global availability.
Honor Magic V6
What Reviewers Agree On
Among the thinnest, lightest book foldables ever — ~8.75mm folded, ~4.1mm open, ~219g, lighter than an iPhone 17 Pro Max
The largest battery in any foldable: 6,660mAh global (up to 7,150mAh in China) — the first foldable to cross 7,000mAh
Class-leading foldable endurance — ~7h54m full-drain, 69% left after a 5-hour mixed test, topping the foldable battery leaderboard
Best-in-class sustained performance on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 — throttles far later than rivals and drains only ~41% in 90 minutes of max load
Outstanding durability: a 2,800 MPa Honor Super Steel 'Luban' hinge, armored screens and IP58/IP59 (IP69) ratings
A genuinely strong camera for a foldable, led by a stabilized 64MP 3x periscope telephoto
Very bright screens — ~2,000 nits outer / ~1,300 nits inner full-screen, >5,000 nits peak — plus fast 80W wired / 66W wireless and a 120W charger in the box
Deal Breakers
Expensive — base ~¥8,999 (~$1,300) and well over $2,000 for top storage, with prices extrapolated from the £1,699 V5
Limited official global availability; most buyers import a Chinese-ROM unit with Google-services friction
The 50MP ultrawide is weak in low light and slightly narrower (15mm) than the previous generation
Honor's MagicOS is built around niche interactions and trails Samsung/Google on foldable software polish
Cons
A hefty camera bump that the thinness claim conveniently excludes, making it considerably thicker than a Pixel 9 Pro Fold with bumps included.
The telephoto's reach was shortened to ~70mm, and the camera isn't quite flagship-tier for a $1,600+ phone.
MagicOS pushes AI heavily with bare-minimum customization, plus patchy (China-first) global availability.
Honor Magic V6
Pros
Among the thinnest, lightest book foldables ever — ~8.75mm folded, ~4.1mm open, ~219g, lighter than an iPhone 17 Pro Max
The largest battery in any foldable: 6,660mAh global (up to 7,150mAh in China) — the first foldable to cross 7,000mAh
Class-leading foldable endurance — ~7h54m full-drain, 69% left after a 5-hour mixed test, topping the foldable battery leaderboard
Best-in-class sustained performance on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 — throttles far later than rivals and drains only ~41% in 90 minutes of max load
Outstanding durability: a 2,800 MPa Honor Super Steel 'Luban' hinge, armored screens and IP58/IP59 (IP69) ratings
A genuinely strong camera for a foldable, led by a stabilized 64MP 3x periscope telephoto
Very bright screens — ~2,000 nits outer / ~1,300 nits inner full-screen, >5,000 nits peak — plus fast 80W wired / 66W wireless and a 120W charger in the box
Cons
Expensive — base ~¥8,999 (~$1,300) and well over $2,000 for top storage, with prices extrapolated from the £1,699 V5
Limited official global availability; most buyers import a Chinese-ROM unit with Google-services friction
The 50MP ultrawide is weak in low light and slightly narrower (15mm) than the previous generation
Honor's MagicOS is built around niche interactions and trails Samsung/Google on foldable software polish
Including each device's camera bump, the Magic V5 is considerably thicker than the Pixel 9 Pro Fold and slightly thicker than the Z Fold 7 in non-white colourways.
Honor still includes extra goodies in the box, a nice touch at this price.
Honor Magic V6
Honor's signature trick — the thinnest, lightest book foldable — taken further, with a wider candy-bar-like outer screen and a premium feel that survives the diet.
Honor's new foldable is the thinnest yet (though only just) but packs a bigger battery than any before.
The Snow White version measures ~8.75mm folded and ~219g — surprisingly reasonable even compared to standard candy-bar phones — and is lighter than an iPhone 17 Pro Max (233g).
Once unfolded the thickness drops to just ~4.1mm — less than half the thickness of an iPhone 17 Pro Max — with an extremely narrow 1.18mm outer-screen bezel.
Honor went slightly bigger on both displays (7.95-inch inner, 6.52-inch outer), giving the front a wider flagship candy-bar aspect ratio.
Even with the flatter design the phone is still very comfortable to hold, with newly redesigned thinner, lighter haptics, antennas, SIM tray and hinge.
Displays
Honor Magic V5
Dual OLED LTPO 120Hz panels with a class-leading 5,000-nit peak — a huge brightness jump over the Magic V3 and well ahead of the Z Fold 7.
Both the external and internal screens hit a 5,000-nit HDR peak with 120Hz and high-PWM dimming for less eye strain.
5,000 nits on both screens is a massive jump over the Magic V3's ~1,800-nit inner display.
Against the Galaxy Z Fold 7, it's 5,000 nits peak versus 2,600 — a decisive display-brightness win.
Both displays are OLED LTPO panels at 120Hz with dynamic refresh, smooth visuals and no eye strain during long sessions.
Honor Magic V6
Two bright LTPO 2.0 panels — a 6.52-inch outer and 7.95-inch inner — with high real-world brightness, a much-reduced crease and anti-reflective, drop-resistant coatings.
7.95-inch foldable inner screen at up to ~5,000 nits peak and a 6.52-inch outer at up to ~6,000 nits local peak, both 1–120Hz LTPO.
In real-world testing the outer screen reaches ~889 nits manual / >2,080 nits full-screen and the inner ~700 nits manual / ~1,390 nits full-screen, with ~93% brightness uniformity and 4,320Hz PWM dimming.
The new bridge-hinge design significantly reduces crease visibility, making it one of the best in the industry.
The Magic V6's foldable 7.95-inch screen hits 6,000 nits peak versus only 2,500 nits on the Galaxy Z Fold 7.
Cameras
Honor Magic V5
A genuinely improved system over the Magic V3 — strong main and excellent subject separation — but the shortened telephoto reach and a high price keep it short of true flagship-camera status.
It's a triple 50MP main + 50MP ultrawide + 64MP periscope telephoto, with dual 20MP selfie cameras.
Cameras were a Magic V3 weakness, but on the V5 the camera is brilliant in 90% of situations with subject separation better than even Samsung and iPhone.
The main camera is the same as last year and the telephoto now has a shorter ~70mm reach.
At $1,500–$2,000 for a folding phone it should have the best camera sensors — there's a real sacrifice in the other two cameras here.
Video tops out at solid 4K60 (no 8K) with consistent colours and smooth lens switching while recording.
The large camera dish buys optical versatility rather than crop zoom — a deliberate trade for the thin body.
Honor Magic V6
The strongest camera in its foldable class, anchored by a stabilized 64MP 3x periscope. The ultrawide is the weak link, and it still trails the best slab phones on fine detail.
A 50MP main (f/1.6, 1/1.56", OIS), a 64MP 3x periscope telephoto (70mm, f/2.5, OIS) and a 50MP ultrawide (15mm, f/2.2), with CIPA 6.5-stop stabilization.
Despite the thin chassis Honor fitted a 64MP periscope telephoto with 3x optical, OIS and PDAF — very impressive given the narrow dimensions and great for far-off or low-light subjects.
The V5 — and so the V6 — is the closest any manufacturer has come to a flagship camera system in a foldable.
It loses some of the detail the iPhone picks up, and the iPhone's video is just more natural.
The 50MP ultrawide camera is quite weak in low-light conditions.
Performance
Honor Magic V5
Snapdragon 8 Elite delivers flagship-grade performance, with a default-off performance mode that conserves battery and heat at the cost of peak speed.
It runs the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite, so you can count on flagship-grade performance.
The high-performance mode is disabled by default to conserve battery and minimise heat; enabling it significantly raises performance.
Gaming with the full-HD inner display fully stretched out changes everything — though the battery does start to drain a little under sustained play.
Everything from form factor to software, support, battery, optics and AI feels very polished and mature.
Same-chip foldables behave differently on power output — efficiency gains from the 8 Elite plus the foldable software show in real endurance.
Honor Magic V6
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 with the best sustained behaviour in the foldable class — it holds frames far longer than rivals before any throttling.
Powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the Magic V6 surpasses the Galaxy Z Fold 7 on performance.
After 5 minutes of sustained load every competitor throttles 30–40%, but the V6 drained just 41% over 90 minutes of max load — best in class — with an AnTuTu sustained score of ~847,000, 18% ahead of second place.
Honor of Kings averaged ~119–120fps at max graphics (3.45–3.65W, ~38–42°C); PUBG Mobile held ~119fps for 30 minutes.
Genshin Impact at ultra/60fps for 30 minutes averaged 59.5fps with minimal fluctuation, the only trade-off being a screen-brightness drop to ~250 nits.
Frame rates begin to throttle after about 10 minutes maxed out, but dropping graphics one notch locks a steady 59.74fps at just 41.5°C.
Battery & Charging
Honor Magic V5
The Magic V5's defining strength: a thin-but-dense ~5,820mAh silicon-carbon cell that wins extreme drain tests against the Z Fold 7 and Oppo Find N5, with fast 66W wired and 50W wireless.
In an extreme multi-task drain test it finished first at 7h31m, beating the Oppo Find N5 (7h27m) and the Galaxy Z Fold 7 (5h57m).
It's the first foldable that consistently delivered over 10 hours of screen-on time — all-day heavy usage mixing inner and outer screens.
It beat the Galaxy Z Fold 7 by almost 1h35m of battery and even defeated the Oppo Find N5 in a super-extreme test.
The ~5,820mAh silicon-carbon cell charges at 66W wired (full in roughly an hour, >90% in ~40 minutes) plus 50W wireless.
One content reviewer never got it close to dropping below 5% in a heavy day's usage — exceptional for a foldable.
Wireless and wired charging both require Honor's proprietary chargers to hit peak speeds.
Honor Magic V6
The headline: the biggest battery ever in a foldable, delivering slab-phone endurance in a 4mm-thin body, with fast wired/wireless charging and a 120W charger in the box.
A 6,660mAh silicon-carbon cell (256/512GB) — the largest ever in a foldable — rising to a 7,150mAh Qinghai Lake battery in the 1TB China model, the first foldable past 7,000mAh.
It lasted 7 hours 54 minutes from full charge to shutdown — over 2 hours longer than most standard phones — and beat the OPPO Find N5 (5h43m) and Vivo X Fold 5 (4h33m).
After a full 5-hour mixed-usage test, 69% remained — securing first place on the foldable 5-hour battery leaderboard — with a Bilibili loop running to 13h23m before death.
Over heavy Lunar New Year use — video, gaming, documents, social — only about 30% of the battery was used per day.
80W wired charging hit ~27% in 15 minutes and a full charge in ~49–55 minutes, plus 66W wireless and an included 120W GaN charger.
Software & AI
Honor Magic V5
MagicOS with a class-leading 7-year support promise and strong sync/sharing — but AI is pushed everywhere and customization is bare-minimum.
Honor promises a total of seven years of OS and security updates — an amazing support policy for a foldable.
The OS includes easy device sync and content-sharing capabilities baked in.
Customization is bare minimum — no lock-screen widgets, and you can't even remove the step counter without disabling the whole health suite.
A year of MagicOS updates has been focused on pushing AI into every corner of the device.
Just about every aspect of the device is superior to the Galaxy Z Fold 7, with software the main subjective exception.
Honor Magic V6
MagicOS 10 on Android 16 with a strong 7-year update promise and capable AI, but Honor's good ideas remain built around niche interactions and the imported Chinese ROM adds friction.
Runs Android 16 with MagicOS 10 and a 7-year update commitment; the global version restores the Google home page and Honor AI.
Owning a Chinese-ROM unit means real friction versus a global version — a key consideration since global availability is limited.
MagicOS feels near-identical to Huawei's EMUI down to the icons — familiar to some, derivative to others.
Honor's good software ideas are based on niche interactions — the only thing that takes the experience down a notch.
Value vs Competition
Honor Magic V5
Repeatedly named the best foldable of 2025 and a more appealing spec than the Z Fold 7 — but a high import price and China-first availability temper the value.
It's the best foldable in the world right now — as close to perfect as a folding device currently exists.
It's literally the best folding phone on the market.
It continues to be one of the best foldables on the market with a much more appealing specification than the Galaxy Z Fold 7.
Import pricing currently ranges between $1,600 and $1,700, placing it against the Z Fold 7 and Vivo X Fold 5.
Its one clear loss to competitors is availability — initially limited to China before a wider rollout.
It's cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold while arguably being the better phone.
Honor Magic V6
It out-specs the Galaxy Z Fold 7 on nearly every axis, but it's expensive and hard to buy officially in the West — value depends heavily on import pricing and config.
Those who value long battery life, ultra-thin design and maximum durability will find the Magic V6 the more appealing option versus the Galaxy Z Fold 7.
The base version starts at ¥8,999 in China — roughly £973 / ~$1,309 — with top configs far higher; pricing is expected to be expensive like the £1,699 V5.
The Magic V6 beats Samsung to one of the most-requested foldable features.
If the pricing works for you, the Magic V6 is absolutely worth considering.
The Chinese version is typically about 20% cheaper than the global version.