Mats Hellqvist
Honor is currently holding a two-day launch event in China that will later also see the start of the Honor 80 series. At today’s kickoff, the first highlight came straight to the stage – the new foldable flagship Honor Magic Vs. Thanks to a completely new hinge design, the Magic Vs is thinner and lighter than its predecessor and can be closed without a gap.
Wrinkle-free Magic Vs thanks to the new hinge
The Honor Magic Vs is powered by a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset and 8/256, 12/256 or 12/512 GB of memory. The 7.9-inch foldable OLED main display has a resolution of 2,272 x 1,984 pixels with a refresh rate of 90 Hz and a maximum brightness of 800 nits. At least on paper, the panel appears to be the same as the original Magic V.
The external 6.45-inch OLED display has a resolution of 2,560 x 1,080 pixels and supports HDR10+ and a refresh rate of 120 Hz. Both panels offer 10-bit color. The foldable screen is virtually wrinkle-free, according to Honor, as the new hinge is “carefully crafted using one-piece processing technology.” Instead of 92 elements, it consists of only four with the same durability. Tests in the Honor Labs ran with 400,000 folds. With 100 folds per day, this corresponds to a service life of more than ten years.
The Honor Magic Vs brings a revamped triple camera setup with a 54-megapixel Sony IMX800 main sensor behind an f/1.9 lens. The same combination is already known from the Honor 70 Pro. There’s also a 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera that doubles as a macro lens, and an 8-megapixel telephoto camera with triple optical zoom. Honor installs a 16 megapixel selfie camera with an aperture of f/2.45 on the cover display. A second selfie camera for video chats is located in the right half of the main display.
The 5,000 mAh battery charges at 66 watts, which means the battery goes from 0 to 100% in 46 minutes. The recently announced MagicOS 7.0 is used as the user interface, but the basis is still Android 12.
Prices and availability
The Honor Magic Vs comes in three colors – Orange, Turquoise and Black. The base model with 8/256 GB costs 7,499 CNY ($1,050). 12/256 GB are CNY 7,999 ($1,120) and the top version with 12/512 GB will set you back CNY 8,999 ($1,260).
Honor is already taking pre-orders in China, while the first sale is scheduled for November 30th. Honor wants to start international sales in the first quarter of 2023.
