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Honor’s Magic V5 is the thinnest book-style foldable in the world, but you probably couldn’t tell.
It’s just 0.1mm thinner — that’s four-thousandths of an inch — than the Oppo Find N5 or Samsung’s recent Galaxy Z Fold 7. If that’s a difference you claim to perceive, then I’m afraid I simply don’t believe you. I’ve put the V5 side by side with the Find N5 and I can barely feel the difference, let alone see it.
Fortunately, the Magic V5 has one extra trick up its sleeve: better battery life than either of those phones, and quite substantially so when compared to the Samsung, solving one of the last concerns people have about switching to folding phones.
The Magic V5 was announced in China early last month, but today it was released in Europe too, where it costs £1,699.99 / €1,999 (around $2,300). That already gives it a leg up over the Oppo Find N5, which isn’t available outside Asia. Don’t expect it to officially release in the US, though.
I said when I reviewed that Oppo phone in February that it would mark the start of diminishing returns for thinner foldables, a point where things simply can’t get thinner, and here we are. The returns, they are diminished.
This may be the thinnest foldable in the world, but it’s by such a fractional amount that it simply doesn’t matter. It measures 4.1mm thick when open or 8.8mm when shut, compared to 4.2mm and 8.9mm on the Samsung and Oppo phones. That doesn’t even apply to every version of the Honor phone — while my white model is the thinnest around, the different materials used on the black, gold, and brown models make them the same size as those two rivals.
This isn’t a small camera bump. It’s noticeably thicker than the Oppo Find N5’s.
There’s another big caveat to the record thinness: you have to ignore the camera bump. Now, that’s par for the course when talking about phone dimensions, but it’s particularly noteworthy here: the Magic V5’s chunky, circular camera bump is thicker than either Samsung’s or Oppo’s, bringing the closed phone to 16mm or so if you measure at the thickest point, compared to 14mm for Samsung and 13mm for Oppo. Again: diminishing returns.
Otherwise, the phone looks and feels great. It’s about the same size and shape as the Z Fold 7, and when closed it really does feel remarkably like a normal phone. Like that phone, you sort of forget it’s a foldable at all until it’s time to open it up. My white model has a simple, smooth texture to the finish, and generously rounded corners that keep it comfortable to hold in either mode.
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