Honor Magic V3

While foldable phones were initially a market dominated mostly by just one manufacturer, even this ambitious, cutting-edge form factor has now been explored by a wide range of competitors. What this hasn't really resulted in is further exploration of unconventional implementations of the technology, nor a price war.

This means you can shop online and find these latest foldable phones for roughly the same price. Sure, Samsung still charges considerably more for their latest Galaxy Fold 6, but a OnePlus Open, an original Pixel Fold or an imported Xiaomi Mi Mix Fold can be had for between £1,400 and £1,700. This is where Honor has apparently chosen to place their latest Magic V3.

But Honor, even though it may not be a brand you have a particularly strong relationship with, actually has some pretty good ideas about how the modern foldable phone should be put together, so it's actually worth listening when they put together a keynote, and they have held one at this year's IFA fair.

First of all, the Honor Magic V3 is one of the most impressive pieces of foldable hardware we've ever tested, and here we include the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold. Of course, it all starts with how thin the Magic V3 is when folded. We're talking 9.2 millimetres, a world record by the way, which really creates a persistent, powerful illusion that you're actually "just" holding a traditional smartphone. It's also lightweight at just 226 grams, which is roughly the same as an iPhone 15 Pro Max. It may "only" have an IPX8 certification, but Honor claims that this is by far the most rugged foldable phone in the world, and even had GSM Arena test it by throwing it in the washing machine, dropping it without any protection and it survived.

And there's just more good news all round on the hardware side. Honor's Qinghai Lake battery is a whopping 5150mAh, good for two days of use, and there's 66W of wired charging and a whopping 50W of wireless charging. Add pretty good stereo speakers, a solid fingerprint reader on the side and Bluetooth 5.3, and you've got something that really delivers. The only complaint is that the camera module on the back looks a little off, the straight lines around the module create the illusion that the whole thing can be unscrewed with a wrench, which is a little too rugged for my taste. Otherwise, this is a grand hardware victory all round.

Inside we find the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 that we've talked about countless times, and it's accompanied by an Adreno 750 GPU, up to 1TB UFS 4.1 space and 16GB RAM. These are serious specs, and Honor can certainly sit at the high table among the established giants.

There are, true to tradition, two displays. One is 6.43 inch OLED, running at 1050x2376 and featuring 120Hz, Dolby Vision and a brightness of 5000 NITS. That's something of a record, and you can feel it here, where Magic V3 has overcome virtually all lighting conditions with razor-sharp results. Open the phone and you have a 7.92-inch LTPO AMOLED, also running at 120Hz with 1800 NITS - not bad at all.

Judged purely on display, battery, SoC, charging and all the other aspects that make up the hardware part of the overall user experience, this is a slam dunk, no doubt about it.

But the software is a bit of a different story. Granted, this version of Honor's own Android skin, Magic OS 8, has been reconfigured to suit the European market, which means that notifications arrive on time and apps aren't shut down with the same authoritarian resolve that Chinese software suites tend to do. Plus, there's full access to the Google ecosystem, which most people here need in one way or another. No, there's still some fine-tuning to be done. There is often incorrect spacing, there are even spelling mistakes here and there, and Honor also has a habit of suddenly using caps lock. There are also little things like a double tap on the lock button can't become a camera shortcut and you have to swipe down from the corner to get your notification menu. These are just small usability issues that are suddenly queuing up, and while you can get used to most of them, Honor should unlock their user interface more.

The cameras are fine, decent even. You get a 50 megapixel standard wide with optical stabilisation and a 40 megapixel ultra-wide, which unfortunately is only 112 degrees and therefore can hardly be called an ultra-wide. The latter is a 50 megapixel periscope telephoto that can "only" achieve 3.5x optical zoom. Sure, it's more than the 2x that several phones are stuck with, but neither does it match the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold's 5x optical. However, the images are fine, especially in favourable lighting conditions. Honor does have software to combat lens flares, digital noise and other classic issues once natural light starts to give way. There is undoubtedly a processing layer missing, the automation that post-processes images, which both Apple and Google, and to some extent also Samsung, manage to do. No, I'm not talking about beautification or some of Google's more ethically questionable features, but about pulling more detail out of shadows, extending dynamic range and ensuring even colour chemistry between lenses. Honor could benefit from a collaboration with Hasselblad, Leica or another legendary camera manufacturer to ensure that the capable hardware is combined with a more comprehensive software solution. There's nothing broken here, but it's no match for the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, or the OnePlus Open, or even the Galaxy Z Fold 6.

That said, Honor has pulled off such a stroke of genius with pretty much every hardware feature here that it's hard not to marvel at how all this can be packed into such a slim device. But ultimately, it also arrives at a time when Google has just launched their Pixel 9 Pro Fold, and in our review it's pretty easy to see that Google nails every aspect including a slim profile and downright magnificent software.

This means Honor already has a fight on its hands, but at the same time we should recognise their ability to design innovative, robust hardware. But maybe it's time to find a software partner?