Honor Magic V5 debuts as world's thinnest bi-fold smartphone

Honor has launched its latest flagship book-style foldable smartphone, the Honor Magic V5 in China. And no, your memory didn’t fail you, as Honor has indeed skipped the number “4”, jumping straight from the Magic V3 to the Magic V5.

Like its predecessor did in the year before, the Magic V5 launches with record-breaking thickness, or rather, thinness, measuring just 8.8mm when folded. This makes it officially the thinnest bi-fold smartphone in the world, beating the Oppo Find N5’s 8.9mm record.

The Magic V5 is also a whole 3.3mm thinner than Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 6 when folded, and is 0.4mm thinner than its predecessor. When unfolded, the Honor Magic V5 measures 4.1mm thick. Of course, we will still have to wait and see if Samsung’s allegedGalaxy Z Fold 7 will break the Magic V5’s record when it debuts later on 9th July.

In terms of weight, it measures 217g. Despite all these, the Magic V5 is now IP58 rated, making it both dust and water resistant, an improvement over the V3’s IPX8 rating.

Display-wise, you get a 7.95″ 120Hz LTPO OLED panel on the inside with a resolution of 2532×2172 and a peak brightness of 5,000 nits. As for the cover display, you get a 6.43″ 2376×1060 120Hz LTPO OLED panel with the same peak brightness.

Powering the book-style foldable is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, which can be paired with up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage for the Chinese unit.

In the imaging department, you get a tri-camera setup on the back, consisting of a 50MP f/1.6 main camera, a 50MP f/2.0 ultra-wide-angle camera, and a 64MP f/2.5 periscope telephoto shooter with 3x optical zoom capability. For selfies, you get one 20MP f/2.2 camera for each of the displays.

Keeping lights on for the Honor Magic V5 is a 6,100mAh battery that can be charged via USB-C at 66W, and wirelessly at 50W.

In China, the Honor Magic V5 is offered in three configurations, namely 12GB+256GB. 16GB+512GB, and 16GB+1TB, along with four colour options — Ivory White, Black, Dawn Gold, and Reddish Brown.

Prices start from RMB 8,999 (~RM5,309) and top out at RMB 10,999 (~RM6,489). Although yet to launch globally, we can expect the Honor Magic V5 to reach Malaysian shores soon to battle Oppo and Samsung’s foldables.