Honor Magic Vs 5G Review: Magic Hardware And Missed Opportunities

In the world of foldables, Samsung is undoubtedly leading the charge — which is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's good because Samsung has been aggressive about getting foldables into the hands of consumers, regardless of what geographic region they happen to reside in. In the U.S., the foldable race has two horses, and one of them has two hooves tied behind its back.

In the world outside of the U.S., there is a bit more competition and that's where this review is going to be the most meaningful. The Honor Magic Vs is the company's second foldable — and in many ways, that is surprising, but it's not always a pleasant surprise. Honor has done a lot to push this space forward, and it's offering Samsung a good amount of competition.

But in one key way, Honor is lagging behind — and it can't continue to do so, lest the consumer experience knocks Honor out of the space entirely. I've been here in the U.S. using an Honor Magic Vs provided by Honor connected to data on the T-Mobile USA network — a network it was not designed for in a country it wasn't designed for — and this is my full review.

One thing that has always bothered me about Samsung's foldables is that they don't fold flat. I really don't like that gap, but at the same time, I've accepted it, as thus far it seemed that a flat fold must be impossible. Honor didn't think so, so this phone folds completely flat, and it's lovely. Honor spent a lot of time talking about its hinge and the fact that it's made up of just four parts. That's a bit mind-boggling, to be honest, but I'll go with it.

The downside to that is the hinge is not as adjustable as you'd like when it comes to having the Vs half-open. The hinge is a bit floppy when it's not completely open or completely closed. That makes it hard (but not impossible) to do things like let the phone be its own tripod for photography.

The hinge action is smooth, with no creaks or crackles, but there is also a noticeable pushback when you're closing the phone, so much so that sometimes it may reopen itself if you don't push it closed with a reassuring thwap. It's not a big deal, but after using the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 and its Flex mode, it's hard to fully appreciate the engineering that went into this hinge.

As for the crease, Honor says there is no noticeable crease — and Honor is wrong, but let's face it, that's the cost of admission for a phone that folds in half. It's truly not a big deal.

It would be unfair to call the software on the Honor Magic Vs the Achilles heel of the phone, but it just seems like it's underbaked and needs more time in the oven. Honor has done some smart things here, including a fairly easy split-screen mechanism that allows you to take advantage of the space on the inner screen. Indeed, you can run a number of apps all at the same time, and the most common way is to run them side by side.

You can make just about any window float, and open as many of those as you want. When you minimize them, they show up at the side like a floating bubble that you can tap to expand. I found this to be the most useful when I was waiting with an app open to buy something, or show a barcode while reading at the same time.

But the software needs to do more. When I look at the outer display, I see a 5x6 grid of icons and widgets. When I open the phone, I get the same 5x6 grid, but bigger. I expected opening the screen would give me a whole new layout where I could line up seven or eight icons across along with widgets or whatever else I wanted. Instead, you just get a blown-up copy of the home screen. It's a bit of a waste of space.

That isn't to say that everything is bad on the software side. Indeed, Honor does some smart things here. Smart multi-window is a neat feature that is a version of what a lot of other phones do. Swipe in from the side of the screen and hold in order to get a sidebar of apps that you can launch. When you launch them, they open into floating windows that you can move around and resize.

Further, every app has a bar at the top that allows you to manage your windows either by closing them, minimizing them, snapping them to one side or the other, or blowing them up to full screen. It's very simple and very intuitive to learn.

Overall, the software on the phone feels like a work in progress that's almost there but just needs a few more pushes in the right direction to cross the finish line.

On the camera side, on paper, Honor has some impressive specifications. The main camera is a 54-megapixel sensor with f/1.9 aperture, the ultrawide camera is a 50-megapixel sensor with f/2.0 aperture and 122-degree field of view, and the telephoto sensor is an 8-megapixel sensor with f/2.4 aperture and 3x optical zoom. So overall, they're very not bad. In practice, they are serviceable, especially the main and ultrawide sensors. The telephoto lens is just ok.

On the plus side, the benefit you get from a large ultrawide sensor is that you don't lose detail when you zoom out. Too often manufacturers will still have a tiny ultrawide sensor in the phone to complement a massive main sensor. That's not the case here. Unfortunately, the color science between the two is very different with the ultrawide clocking in a lot darker than the main sensor. You can see that above in the two shots (left: ultrawide, right: main) of chalk drawings on a friend's driveway.

Adam Doud/SlashGear

Honor is also not compensating very well for the fisheye effect you get from ultrawide sensors as seen above. The rocks in the foreground appear distorted compared to the rocks further out. This is frankly a problem that most phone makers have compensated for long ago, so I'm not sure what's up with this lens. It may be a software issue, and if so, hopefully, Honor can fix it.

At night, the main problem I see is a lack of focus across the board. Even with the larger sensors at play, shots are a little fuzzy and grainy. On the device's smaller screen, they look pretty decent, so we can rate the cameras as "Social Media Good" at night, which is not great for a flagship phone, but at least they're not as bad as budget phones.

Which makes video performance at night surprisingly not terrible. I still see judder when walking with the phone at night, but it's noticeably less pronounced than what I usually see in a phone camera at night, which is a fun surprise. I wouldn't plan of shooting any late-night movies with the phone, but if you want to video your friend at karaoke, this will probably give you passable results.

One other note on video recording: during the day, when passing through a tunnel back into bright light, the phone does not handle the light at the end of the tunnel very well. Where It's very blown out and looks rather like you're walking into a supernova — anyone or anything near the light simply disappears into the brightness. Most flagship-level phones handle this situation with much more aplomb.

Overall, this is a second-generation product that still feels a bit like a first-generation product. Honor spent a lot more time focusing on the hardware of this phone and probably not enough on the software side of things. It's like buying a 95-inch TV without bothering to subscribe to cable or streaming services. Sure, you can watch TV over the air but ... you're missing the point.

I absolutely love the hardware on this phone. It is so good, and the fact that the gap is just flat-out gone is amazing. The design on the back of the phone is a sparkly matte finish with a fun-shaped camera bump. All of that is great, but the software has a long way to go before it's on the same level as, say, a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4, and the price needs to be lower.

But this phone is competition for Samsung which is hugely important. Samsung has virtually owned this space, at least in western markets for years, so it's exciting to see a very good competitor slot in at number two. Plus, the issues that the Honor Magic Vs suffers from can very easily be addressed going forward with updates, so I'm happy to say, "Honor, you have my attention." In some ways, that's enough.