The foldable phone market has been shaken up yet again. It really does feel like we’re getting to the stage where foldable phones are not only great to use, but you can fully live with them.
Our current faves are plentiful. There are three great superb foldables at the top of our list at the moment; the year-old OnePlus Open, the recent Samsung Galaxy Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 and even more recent Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold. Can the Honor Magic V3 join the party?
The Magic V3 was originally announced in China in July and follows up the Magic V2 which we gave a four-star review to. We’ll be bringing you a full review of this phone as soon as we can, pending a little more camera and battery life testing.
In terms of price, the Magic V3 clocks in at £1699.99. That’s £100 less than the Z Fold 6 and £50 less than the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. So far so good. It’s also the same as the OnePlus Open on paper. However, the OnePlus has a £200 price cut at present, bringing it down to £1499, so that’s the key deal at present.
Design: a new frontier in thin
There’s no doubt that the look and feel of the Honor Magic V3 is its key selling point. At 9.2mm thick when folded and weighing 226g, it’s 2.5mm thinner than the OnePlus Open and is 10g or so lighter too. It’s quite an achievement.
Honor says that it has used 19 different materials and 114 ‘microstructures’ to hold the thing together and resist impacts. Honor says the back cover is 30% thinner than on the previous model.
The cameras are housed in an elegant-looking octagonal camera module which looks fully premium. It’s available in three finishes – black, green and reddish brown in the UK.
The phone is also water-resistant, too, with an IPX8 rating. The Z Fold 6 also has a water resistance rating, but it’s not as good.
Displays: super inside and out
The displays are similar in size to the OnePlus Open and
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6, with 6.43in external display and 7.92in internal screens. `The former is a LTPO OLED, whereas the inside display is AMOLED. Both support Dolby Vision and are capable of up to 120Hz refresh rates.
The external display is super-bright, with support for up to 5000 nits though you’ll rarely hit those heights. As you can see from our photos of the device, the displays looks great even in a sunny environment. The internal display is also pin-sharp, comparable to other foldable models on the market.
Honor has been talking up various technologies it is using on this phone to reduce eye strain including AI-enhanced defocus tech.
Performance and cameras: top of the class
It’ll be no surprise that the Honor Magic V3 is an excellent performer with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 at the heart of things. Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3 are also supported as you’d expect. The memory and storage are a standard 12GB+512GB.
The 5150mAh battery lasts well and we’ll bring you our definitive verdict on that in our full review. 66W wired charging is on board and if you buy the Honor SuperCharge charger accessory you can wirelessly charge the phone at 50W.
As you’d expect Face Unlock is the primary method you’ll use to get into the phone, though there’s a side-mounted fingerprint reader- though we found this a bit finickity to use, partly because it’s hard to tell if your ringer is properly on it at times.
Honor’s Falcon Camera System is a fairly standard premium setup with a 50MP f/3.0 telephoto with periscope zoom, a 50MP f/1.6 standard wide lens, and a 40MP f/2.2 112-degree ultrawide. We’ll bring you a full range of shots from the phone in our full review.
Software: AI-enhanced
As you’d expect Android 14 is running the show with Honor’s Magic OS 8.0.1 on top. the Magic V3 includes the AI-enhanced Magic OS features we saw with the Honor Magic 6 Pro. There’s Magic Portal which gives you context-sensitive actions, translation tools and camera features such as AI Eraser, AI Motion Sensing for fast shots and portrait mode enhancement.
Early verdict
Honor’s Magic V3 is undoubtedly a premium foldable phone and the super thin design means it has to be considered up there with the very best. It’s also very well priced, though cuts to other phones in the market mean you’ll need to make a conscious decision to choose it versus what else is around.