Review: Honor Magic V3

The jury is still out on whether folding phones are the future, but after a couple of weeks with the Honor Magic V3, my skepticism is softening. Early folding phones felt like two phones stuck together and were priced accordingly, but Chinese manufacturers like Honor and Xiaomi have slimmed them down dramatically. Missing flagship features such as wireless charging and water resistance are now here, and prices are even starting to fall, though they are not yet low enough to achieve mainstream appeal.

The Honor Magic V3 is the best book-style folding phone I have used. The daring design is impossibly slim and light, there are some interesting AI features, and it ticks all the traditional flagship boxes with a versatile camera, long battery life, and fast charging. Honor’s software has dragged its devices down in the past, but a few minor issues aside, I had a better time with the Magic V3 than with the Magic 6 Pro.

The global version of the Honor Magic V3 comes with Google’s apps onboard. It feels like a regular Android smartphone when closed, much like the new Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold, but you can always pry it open to play games or videos on the big screen. The big downside is it's not officially sold in the US, but for folks in the UK or Europe seeking something different, the slick Magic V3 demands a look.

Super Svelte

You won’t find a slimmer folding phone than the Honor Magic V3. It is 9.2 mm thick when folded and 4.4 mm when open. To put that into context, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 is 12.1 mm folded and 5.6 mm open. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold is 10.5 mm and 5.1 mm. Only the Xiaomi Mix Fold 4 gets close at 9.5 mm folded and 4.6 mm open. These sound like tiny differences, but we hold our phones so often that even shaving a millimeter or two helps the Magic V3 feel like a regular phone when folded. I do need to point out that no one includes enormous camera bumps in these measurements.

The Honor Magic V3 is also relatively light at 226 grams compared to 239 grams for the Z Fold6 and 257 grams for the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. Hell, the iPhone 15 Pro Max weighs 221 grams. While I don’t have the knack of opening the Magic V3 one-handed, holding it with one hand when open or closed was manageable. But there’s so much screen here that it’s tricky to fold and unfold without accidentally tapping an app or opening a menu.

You may assume such a thin device would be fragile, but Honor was at pains to point out its durability, claiming its impact resistance is 40 times better than the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and that the hinge is good for at least 500,000 folds. I can't speak to the accuracy of those claims. The Magic V3 also scores an IPX8 rating, meaning it can be submerged but has no dust protection, like most folding phones. The whole phone feels solid enough. If I had to find fault, I'd say the plastic bezel around the inner screen gathers dirt and dust easily.

Speaking of the screens, the Magic V3 has a lovely bright 6.43-inch outer screen and opens to reveal a 7.92-inch inner screen. Both have a dynamic refresh rate that goes up to 120 Hz but drops when appropriate to save battery life. They are equally sharp and pleasant to read, play games, or watch videos on, though the inner screen is much dimmer, which can be a problem in direct sunlight. The fold is as subtle as they come, rarely visible when looking straight at the screen, but occasionally catches the light.

Honor mentions various innovations designed to reduce the potentially damaging impact of the screens on our eyes, but the one that caught mine was the AI Defocus Display technology. This feature uses AI to defocus the display and reduce the risk of transient myopia (nearsightedness), which is prevalent because we spend so much time staring at close-up displays. I couldn’t see much difference after toggling it on, but as an increasingly myopic old man, this is the kind of AI innovation I need.

One final plus for the design is the presence of a responsive fingerprint sensor in the power button. There is face unlock via both the front-facing cutout cameras on the external and internal displays, but the lack of a time-of-flight sensor in the Magic V3 means it cannot match the security or low light performance of the Honor Magic 6 Pro (akin to Apple's Face ID). Honor has decided to retain the magic capsule (dynamic island), so the camera cutout extends to a lozenge shape that shows what you are listening to, with a tap to expand media controls. Any iPhone owners who can't wait for Apple's first foldable should feel right at home.

Added AI

The AI features Honor showed off in the Magic 6 Pro are here. Magic Text lets you quickly extract text from an image. Magic Portal lets you drag content, such as a paragraph of text or a screenshot, over to the right to drop into another app, like Gmail or Notes. It works best for dropping addresses into Maps. I found the Pixel-like AI suggestions very handy, throwing up app shortcuts or quick settings for what the Magic V3 thinks you need at any given moment (it gets better as it learns).

Speaking of Google, there are also three handy features powered by Google Cloud. Honor AI Eraser lets you remove unwanted photobombers and other details, just like Google’s Magic Eraser. Face-to-face Translation uses both screens to enable conversations in two languages, with audio and text displayed on the inner and outer screens. Honor Notes can transcribe conversations in real time. It isn’t as slick as the Pixel’s Recorder app, but it does seem accurate.

Honor has let its AI loose on the camera too, so you can auto-capture shots with AI Motion Sensing and lovely portraits with the AI Portrait Engine. The camera system doesn’t quite match the best smartphone cameras, but is not far behind. The 50-megapixel main camera is excellent. It is speedy enough for action shots, has a relatively large sensor and aperture for solid low-light performance, and generally produces pleasing photos.

The 50-MP periscope camera supports 3.5X optical zoom and up to 100X digital zoom, though things get muddy the higher you go. It is well matched, with the main lens and handy for capturing something from a distance. The weak spot is the 40-MP ultrawide, which distorts at the edges and produces weirdly unnatural-looking photos. It crams plenty in but fails to color-match the other two lenses, often creating an oil painting effect (see the camera samples). The two front-facing cameras are rated at 20 MP apiece and suffice for selfies and video calls.

With a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and 12 GB of RAM, performance is silky smooth. You also get a generous 512 GB of storage. I played hours of Kingdom Rush: Alliance on the Magic V3 without a stutter, and it never got warm. The big screen is ideal for gaming and video, but I enjoyed reading on the Kindle app too. I prefer a laptop for work, but the Honor Magic V3 also proved handy as a surrogate second screen when I was missing my dual monitor setup.

Battery life is excellent. Honor’s third-generation silicon carbon battery has a 5,150-mAh capacity, and I was surprised to find it regularly lasted two days between charges. When you need to top up, you can charge wirelessly at up to 50 watts or plug in for up to 66 watts, enough to fully charge the Magic V3 in under an hour. It warns you to unfold the phone to juice up the dual batteries at maximum speed.

Final Hurdle

The Honor Magic V3 is a delightful device. Honor’s hardware is deeply impressive, but there’s always a but. As I found with the Honor Magic 6 Pro (7/10, WIRED Review), its software doesn’t quite reach the same heights. Pleasingly, the Magic V3 feels far more polished, but I still encountered a few wee irritations.

The transition between the front and inside screens occasionally went wrong and displayed something stretched or squashed. Once, the inside screen was completely unresponsive, but closing and opening fixed the issue. I got sick of the battery warning about the Oura app but could not find any way to stop it. Certain apps, like the Play Store, kept displaying the wee red icon to show something new long after there was nothing new to see.

The Honor Magic V3 runs Android 14 with MagicOS 8 on top, but it is easy to customize and comes with just a sprinkling of bloatware. You can also decide how to take advantage of the dual screen with multiple windows and different layouts in the settings. You can expect four years of OS updates and five years of security patches (short of the seven years Google and Samsung promise, but not bad).

The obvious competitors for the Magic V3 are the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 and the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold, and it’s a familiar trade-off: Do you opt for slick software or superior hardware? The Xiaomi Mix Fold 4 is the closest device in terms of design, but won’t be released outside of China, so the Honor Magic V3 is a better choice for most folks. Despite the minor foibles, this is a truly excellent folding phone, maybe even the best folding phone you can buy right now. That said, you still don’t need a folding phone.