an introduction
Following up on the Magic V from the beginning of 2022, Honor has just announced an improved version of its large foldable variant marked with ‘s’ – Magic Vs. Advancements are being announced in many areas, including build, screens and, in a way, the camera system.
With the phone set to hit the market on December 30th in China, however, there are still a few things that need to be ironed out on the software side, and the unit we have here isn’t ready for our review yet. The hardware is pretty much ready to go, and we confirmed that, so we’ll agree to that.
But let’s quickly go over the main changes first. The gearless hinge replaced the geared hinge from the Magic V—Samsung made a similar move from Fold3 to Fold4—dropping the component count from 92 to just 4 (though there should be some innuendo there to explain the new component count). Meanwhile, switching from aluminum to magnesium and titanium helped reduce about 10% of the V-engine’s weight.
Screens are now much brighter, with a claimed 800-nit peak for the foldable panel and 1,200 nits for the external display, though the internal display remains limited to 90Hz — Samsung’s is 120Hz. we will Run some brightness tests later, because we understand that falls under the hardware category. In addition, comparisons are explicitly encouraged in the press materials we obtained.
Sadly, we won’t be looking at camera samples, but this is one area where the Vs bring some changes to the V. There’s now a telephoto camera, albeit a modest 8-megapixel 3x single, instead of the “ultra-spectrum” 50-megapixel unit in the Magic V we couldn’t Absolute experience. The ultrawide camera remains the same, but the primary camera is new for this generation foldable — by the looks of it, the 54MP unit is shared with the Honor 70. A couple of 16MP selfie cameras, one punch-hole per screen, bring the count to 5 cameras.
The Magic Vs also get a chipset upgrade from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 to the plus version – it may be too early for Honor’s foldable devices to get a Gen 2.. The 66W charging should help keep the time you spend tethered to the wall to a limit Reasonable.
A quick overview of the Honor Magic Vs specifications:
- the body: 160.3 x 141.5 x 6.1mm, 261g; Glass front, glass back or eco-leather back, magnesium alloy frame, titanium alloy folding mechanism.
- Show: 7.90″ foldable OLED display, 1B color, 90Hz, HDR10 +, 800 nits, 1984 x 2272 pixels resolution, 10.31:9 aspect ratio, 382 PPI; Cover screen: OLED, 1B color, 120 Hz, HDR10 +, 1200 nits, 6.45 inches, 1080 x 2560 pixels, 431 ppi.
- Slices: Qualcomm SM8475 Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 (4 nm): Octa-core (1 x 3.0 GHz Cortex-X2 & 3 x 2.5 GHz Cortex-A710 & 4 x 1.80 GHz Cortex-A510); Adreno 730.
- memory: 256 GB RAM 8 GB, 256 GB 12 GB RAM, 512 GB 12 GB RAM.
- Operating system / software: Android 12, Magic UI 7.
- back camera: wide (main): 54 MP, f/1.9, 27mm, 1/1.49″, 1.0µm, PDAF; Ultra wide angle: 50 MP, f/2.0, 13mm, 122°, AF; telephoto: 8 MP, f/2.4, PDAF, 3x optical zoom, OIS.
- front camera: 16 MP, f/2.5, (wide).
- Video capture: back camera: 4K @ 30 / 60fps (10-bit), 1080p @ 30 / 60fps, gyro-EIS, HDR10 +; front camera: 1080p @ 30fps, Gyro EIS.
- battery: 5000 mAh; 66 watts wired, 5 watts wired reverse.
- Miscellaneous: fingerprint reader (side-mounted); NFC; Infrared port, stereo speakers.
Honor Magic Vs unboxing
Magic Vs ships in a large black cardboard box with a soft stripe pattern and matte finish. Inside, the phone is laid bare in a tray with the accessories in other boxes tucked away in dedicated compartments — somewhat in a world where content makers are calling for environmental protection. Then again, Magic Vs wouldn’t sell for tens of millions for that to be a huge concern.
Assembled peripherals include a 66W adapter to match the phone’s charging capabilities and a cable to match.
Inside the box is also a protector for the back of the phone — the only non-screen surface of some kind. It’s a composite/adhesive design – it will stay put without the tape, but the sticker provides an extra level of holding strength, of course.
