HONOR has been faithful to the narrow bookfold format, which offers a closed form factor that’s similar to a regular bar-type phone, but that still has a usefully large inner display, albeit with thick black bars when consuming wide-screen video content. However, if consumers respond similarly to Samsung and Apple’s passport style devices as Chinese consumers have to Huawei’s Pura X, HONOR may need to scramble to close the gap in its foldable line-up. 

Hands-on with the Magic V6; feels familiar

I have been using the HONOR Magic V5 as my daily driver for several months, and it has become a firm favorite thanks to its relatively slim and light closed dimensions, excellent battery life and good enough cameras (more on that later). And it has been sufficiently durable for everyday use including some significant abuse such as getting dropped and drenched in rain.

The Magic V6, which was launched in China a few months back and is getting its international launch, first in Malaysia and Singapore in early-June, and Europe in early July, builds on the strong foundations of the Magic V5. As you can see from the pictures here, at first glance, it’s barely distinguishable from the Magic V5 – indeed, it’s possible to interchange the provided clip-on protective covers without issue, which speaks to the almost identical dimensions.

HONOR Magic V6 (left) next to HONOR Magic V5 (right)

The Magic V6 I am trialing is the white color-way, which HONOR says is 0.1mm thinner than the other color-ways, but I can discern no difference compared to the gold colored Magic V5. The most noticeable change is in the camera module, which is slightly neater on the Magic V6 – being a millimeter or so less protuberant. But if you didn’t have them side-by-side, it would be tough to notice.

Toughened up

While there are few readily identifiable external changes, the new product does include some meaningful upgrades in key areas. Hinge strength, which was never an issue with the Magic V5, has been improved again and is now rated at 2800 MPa. This number is fairly meaningless to most people, but the bottom line is that it can easily withstand the rigors of daily use. This also extends to water and dust protection where the IP-rated protection goes up from an already decent IP58/59 on the Magic V5 to the more comprehensive IP68/69. And the external display gets HONOR’s proprietary NanoCrystal Shield coating – over 5000 layers of silicon nitride, which confers impressive levels of scratch resistance.

The inner 7.95” display makes use of UTG flexible glass that reduces the appearance of the crease. The crease line was not particularly noticeable on the Magic V5 but does appear slightly reduced on the Magic V6.

HONOR Magic V6 (left) has a less noticeable crease than the Magic V5

The outer 6.52” display is also very slightly larger than the Magic V5 – again not noticeable without a very careful side-by-side comparison – and it can deliver slightly higher peak brightness at 6000nits to the Magic V5’s 5000nits.

Cameras – same, same

On paper, the camera specs look almost identical to those of the outgoing Magic V5. While I have found the camera performance on the V5 to be adequate, it was noticeably less good than class-leading flagship cameras such as the vivo X300 Pro and even HONOR’s own Magic8 Pro. I have yet to put the Magic V6 through its paces, so I am going to withhold saying too much on this point yet, but it would be disappointing if there’s no noticeable improvement.

Battery – no range anxiety here

Under the hood, the Magic V6 gets a larger SiC battery – bumped up to 6,660mAH from 5,820mAH in the previous model. Battery life on the Magic V5 was already excellent and so the Magic V6 is unlikely to disappoint. The charging capability is also upgraded in the Magic V6; offering 80W wired, 66W wireless and now includes reverse wireless charging as well. And this has barely moved the weight, which is a scant 2g heavier than the Magic V5.

Latest Snapdragon

The SoC is also upgraded to the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite Gen5 and paired with LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.1 storage in various configurations, although 16GB/512GB is likely to be most popular. These are sufficient to run various AI tasks.

Can HONOR maintain its price positioning?

There is no word yet on Euro pricing – that will be announced in early July – but the inclusion of plentiful RAM and NAND means that HONOR will have had to deal with significant increases in the Bill of Materials cost since the Magic V5 came to market. Pricing could therefore be higher – as it was with the recently launched HONOR 600 Pro versus the HONOR 400 Pro. However, launch pricing in Singapore converts to around Euro 1,750 so there is a chance that HONOR will bring the product to Europe at the same Euro 1,999 that the Magic V5 started out at, albeit that HONOR fairly swiftly started offering discounts on the Magic V5 that may not be quite so readily applied to the Magic V6.