Honor Magic V5: Better Value And A Monster Battery, But Can It Beat The Competition?

One of the key advantages that the world has over the United States is the absolute blizzard of phones that you can buy and use as a daily driver. Options in the U.S. are limited to a handful of companies. Honor is one company who, every time it launches a new phone, I chafe at the fact that the brand can't/won't sell it in the U.S. because if they'd find a way to do so, they'd be serious contenders for the biggest names in the business.

Enter the Honor Magic V5 and here you have another real quality foldable-display-toting phone offering. Only now, unlike Honor's foldables in the past (like the Honor Magic V3, for example), U.S. companies like Samsung and Google are giving it a run for its money. But Honor has always risen to the challenge and, indeed, has often led the charge in these arenas. Now that the V5 has launched in Europe, it's time to see what it has to offer — and what we can't have here in the states.

Honor will tell you — loudly, and as often as you'll let it — that the Honor Magic V5 is the thinnest book-style foldable in the world. That qualification is only accurate in the vegan leather models. Whether or not Honor beats out the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 or not in the thin department is not for me to say — it's for people with lab equipment that can be as accurate as needed when the difference is in a single millimeter. Honestly, that's not the point.

The camera bump on this phone is also ridiculously huge, and I found it very interesting (and hilarious) that the camera bump on the Honor Magic V5 is thicker than the (unfolded) body of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge. The good news is that the camera bump is in the top-center of the phone (when folded closed), so the phone is not nearly as wobbly on a table. The phone also comes in one configuration — 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage and a massive 5,820 mAh battery.

The inside and outside screens are both really great with excellent contrast ratios and color reproduction. The inside screen measures at 7.95 inches while the outside screen is a wonderfully modest 6.3 inches. As someone who appreciates smaller phones (I'll take the Pixel 10 Pro over the XL version) I really love this screen size, inside and out.

A lot of Honor's software remains unchanged from previous smartphones that we've looked at, but one new feature — or at least new to me — is a "Quick Layout" area that becomes available when you open the phone. Honor assumes you'll do most of your multitasking when the phone is open, which makes sense. When you tap this quick layout button, you get the choice between two or three apps open at once. Both can use Android's new 90/10 multitasking (split screen, as shown in the photo above) that comes with Android 16, which is very reminiscent of OnePlus's Open Canvas, first developed on the OnePlus Open.

What's cool is, this is really intuitive. Tap on the icon, select two or three apps, then just tap to open the apps sequentially and boom, they all open up. You can drag the separator bars to make the apps larger, like in that 90/10 layout and just tap on the sides to switch between apps. I love that interface, but I prefer OnePlus's implementation where the three apps open in a two on top, one on the bottom configuration, rather than three in a row.

It's mostly an aesthetic preference to be totally fair, because three apps are three apps after all, but OnePlus's Open Canvas feels a bit more futuristic by thinking about both dimensions — height and width. It's like that scene in "Contact" when Hadden points out to Dr. Arroway that she wasn't thinking in four dimensions.

Unfortunately, my review device for the Honor Magic V5 arrived at the same time as the Pixel 10 Pro which only uses eSIMs and then I had to leave the country, so I wasn't able to test this phone on a phone network. That being said, like other Honor phones we've reviewed in the past, we can confidently say that the Honor Magic V5 wasn't made for American networks, so definitely keep that in mind if you're thinking about importing one.

But that also means I wasn't able to test it away from Wi-Fi when the phone is trying to get a cellular signal all the time. Regardless, this phone is every bit the battery champ its massive battery suggests it is. I routinely went two days on battery, primarily using this phone for watching media and reading on the Kindle app. To that end, Honor shipped the phone with a case with a camera bump ring that opens into a kickstand for the phone which is really nice for a foldable. My only criticism of the kickstand is when the phone is open, the kickstand forces you to prop up the phone with the fingerprint sensor and volume buttons on the bottom which is not ideal.

On the performance end, the phone uses the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor which we have already determined is remarkably fast. Gaming is smooth with no frame drops, and the multitasking keeps up easily. On Geekbench the phone returns a 1,218/4,756 single/multi-core score which is a bit on the low side for this processor.

As for the cameras, the massive camera island houses a 50-megapixel main camera, a 64-megapixel telephoto camera with 3.5x optical zoom, and a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera. It's worth noting that telephoto camera in particular benefits from some AI enhancements that are only available when the phone is online, so keep that in mind.

Overall, I have few complaints about the camera set in good lighting conditions. In my typical amusement park setting, the camera performs very well. Zoom in particular is pretty good, even without the AI working its magic. Photos all the way up to 100x are recognizable though rather blurry at that extreme end. But colors are vibrant and even motion, such as the weaving of a flag, is captured very well by all of the cameras.

Adam Doud/SlashGear

Macro shots are fine. Most of the macro shots I took lacked a sense of depth, which is one of the more important aspects of a macro shot. Why get close if not to see the depth? Also portrait mode while it still includes the delightful Harcourt collaboration mode, curiously includes the option to turn bokeh off, which again, is the point of a portrait photo. But who am I to judge?

After dark, photo output is still good, with the same caveats as usual. If your subject is moving, you'll lose sharpness. But if you're shooting non-living things, you can get quite good shots with great detail with all the lenses. You will not want to go beyond the 3.5x zoom though.

Also, as mentioned, movement causes a lot of blur, even in burst mode. You should be able to capture good photos if your subjects are posing or otherwise holding their position, but if they move unexpectedly, it will not go well.

Adam Doud/SlashGear

Video is also very challenging for this camera set. It's not unusual to see footstep shaking and graininess in a phone camera, but the closer you get to flagship quality, the less that tends to be an issue. That's not really the case here. Video footage at night starts at "not ideal" and goes downhill from there.

Overall, this is an easy phone to love, with the only exception to that being the nighttime camera performance. Then there's the other caveat — U.S. customers need not apply. That's a shame, and we've already discussed the baggage that keeps Honor from entering the U.S. market. But really, we're missing out on some great phones.

There's also the fact that this phone is pricey, but undercuts Samsung's (£1,799 U.K., €2,099 Germany, as of September 2025) Galaxy Z Fold 7 by £100 — or £200 if you take RAM/ROM configuration into account. Then there's the battery tech, which is very common in markets not in the U.S. and allows a battery which is a full 32% bigger. That's ridiculous, either oh Honor's part, Samsung part, or more likely both.

But at the end of the day, this is a phone that is remarkable in many ways, and if you're in a market where you can enjoy it, you absolutely should. If you're in the U.S., go get a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 and you'll have a similarly good experience. If you're elsewhere, head to the Honor Store online and find the Honor Magic V5 on sale starting at £1,699.99 in the U.K. (€1,999.90 Germany) for now.