Honor Magic V5 Launches As World's Thinnest Foldable, Can Samsung Beat It?

We truly are back in the glorious days of 2012-ish, when "thin" was the keyword in the smartphone world, and people would happily use phones that didn't last a day in exchange for them looking like they came out of a sci-fi movie. Everyone got wiser eventually, but any fashion becomes stylish again, and 2025 is the new battleground for the race towards razor-thin handsets, as evidenced by rumors of an iPhone 17 Air and the launch of Samsung's Galaxy 25 Edge. The latest entrant in this arena is the Honor Magic V5 foldable, measuring in at a svelte 8.8 mm when closed, and weighing a mere 217 grams.

That 8.8 mm spec is more than a little impressive, since a standard-issue iPhone 16 Pro clocks in at 8.3mm. That means that you get a nearly 8" tablet-sized internal screen, plus an exterior screen, in a package that's only marginally bigger and heavier than a standard smartphone. Keeping with the theme, the Honor Magic V5 is a scant 4.1mm when open. These figures don't include the rather bulbous camera bump, but they almost never do for other handsets either. That is about the only negative point in this dimension equation, as the camera cluster is reportedly twice as thick as that of other foldables like the Oppo Find N5.


A massive screen begets an equally sized battery, and the Honor Magic V5 excels on that front as well. The juice pack has a capacity of 5820 mAh and is of a newfangled silicon-carbon mix, with higher energy density than standard lithium-ion offerings. Honor claims this the world's first mass-produced high-silicon-content design and that the energy density is an eye-popping 901 Wh per liter. The phone can top up quite speedily, too, at 66W on wired and 50W on wireless charging. Inside, you'll find a Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC coupled to 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. A China-specific version with 1 TB of storage and a slightly upgraded 6100 mAh will reportedly be available.

The displays are about as good as you can get them in a smartphone. The main internal screen measures 7.95" across and has a resolution of 2352x2172, figures that work out to a 403 PPI pixel density. The refresh rate is 120 Hz, and the company claims the display can deliver 5000 nits of peak brightness, though we would imagine that number would be for a small area of the screen. Nevertheless, it's darn high, and TrustedReviews claims the screen looks quite impressive in person. The outer display is 6.43", reportedly with the same specs. According to Bloomberg, the hinge crease is less noticeable that other foldables the outlet has tried, though it can predictably be seen with the display off.

The camera cluster contains top-notch hardware all around: a 50 MP f/1.6 main shooter, a 50 MP ultra-wide lens, a 64 MP telephoto unit, and two 20 MP selfie cameras. The phone will arrive in white, black, gold, and brick-red colorways, although the non-white versions are marginally thicker than those 8.8 mm. The physical protection levels are IP58 and IP59, meaning the Honor Magic V5 is resistant to dust and can be immersed in water.

There's no information on stateside pricing, but the phone is already available in China for around $1,255 (8,999 RMB) for a basic configuration with 12 GB and 256 GB of RAM. The model with 16 GB RAM and 512 GB storage model is selling for about $1395 in China (9,999 RMB). Honor says the Magic V5 will be available internationally "later this year."