At only 4.1mm thick at its thinnest unfolded point, the Honor Magic V5 is incredibly skinny. In fact, the company has said it's the world's thinnest foldable measuring in just 0.1mm skinnier than Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 7. That claim is debated -- it depends whether you include the built-in screen protector or not -- but we're almost literally splitting hairs at this point. World's thinnest or not, it's mind-blowingly svelte.
Well, it blew my mind, anyway. The other foldables I've been using recently include Google's Pixel 9 Pro Fold and the OnePlus Open, both of which feel positively bloated when held against the Magic V5. Getting my hands on Honor's latest foldable made me realise just how far the technology has come in a few short years.
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But you'll pay for that skinny design. Starting at £1,700, the Magic V5 is hardly what you'd consider cheap, although it's around £100 cheaper than Samsung's equivalent. Honor doesn't sell its phones officially in the US, so for reference that UK price converts to $2,299.
I've spent the last couple of weeks with the phone and here's what I Iike about it.
The camera unit dominates the rear of the phone. Andrew Lanxon/CNET
Skinny design
It's an obvious start, really. That thin body addresses my main concern about book-style foldables. It's barely thicker than a regular phone when folded up, so it's much easier to hold and easier to slide into a jeans pocket. Well, most of it is. While the phone's body is only 8.8mm thick when shut, the camera unit protrudes an additional 7mm -- almost doubling the overall thickness of the phone.
As a photographer I've never said this about a phone before but it's almost a shame Honor didn't really cut back on the cameras. I'd have loved to see what a foldable phone felt like that was so slender the whole way across.
While you'd probably imagine such a thin phone would be incredibly delicate, Honor actually boasted that it holds a Guinness World Record for the heaviest weight (104 kilograms) lifted by a foldable phone. How that actually translates to real-world durability over time remains to be seen, but the phone certainly felt sturdy in my hands-on time.
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