Honor Magic V3 Overview: Skinny as a pancake!

Behold the Honor Magic V3! The thinnest foldable available on the market. It is thinner than an iPad Air and thinner than any smartphone you may consider. I used to be considering of intelligent methods to start out this evaluation, however typically the blunt reality is one of the best ways to go.

The Magic V3 is the newest iteration of the Chinese language foldable, and its purpose is to tackle the Galaxy Z Fold 6. A few days previous to the official launch of the V3, Honor dished out a really daring and aggressive PR marketing campaign, displaying a tiny engraved message, engraved on the Honor V3’s hinge. It was a dig at Samsung within the type of an “apology” to all Galaxy Z house owners.

Lengthy story quick, it says one thing alongside the traces of “Sorry should you’re feeling betrayed, our telephone is healthier.”

I believed the times of corporations trolling one another had been lengthy gone, however this daring transfer reveals the arrogance Honor has in its product. And it’s nice. It is unbelievably skinny, it sports activities a big battery, the chipset onboard is flagship-grade, the digital camera system is potent, and the charging is tremendous quick.

However is it nice “for a foldable” or simply nice? We will discover out!

Our new ranking system deserves just a few sentences right here. We have revamped all the things, and we now have a really thorough and scientific strategy to ranking telephones. There are 10 completely different areas we consider, and every one consists of many smaller parts you do not see within the closing rating. Additionally, completely different areas have completely different weight towards the ultimate rating, as some are extra essential than others. Lastly, should you suppose our scores have instantly grow to be very conservative, you are proper. Our top-rated telephone in the meanwhile (the Honor Magic 6 Professional) has an aggregated rating of 8.0 out of ten, and a rating of seven.5 is often superior. We have executed this to depart ourselves wiggle room for future telephones, which little question will get higher and higher scores. With that out of the best way, let’s begin the evaluation.

Honor Magic V3 Design and Show

Skinny as a pancake

Okay, guys, I do know that pancakes within the US aren’t that skinny, however the place I grew up, they’re virtually clear. So, I am preserving the analogy! This factor may be very, very skinny. At 4.35 mm, it virtually feels too skinny. Wanting on the backside, this foldable is barely capable of home the USB-C port.If you fold the Magic V3, you get an virtually compact telephone with a 6.4-inch display and round 9 mm thickness. I do know the distinction to different foldables is not that vast (the Galaxy Z Fold 6 measures 5.6mm unfolded and 12.1mm folded), however a few millimeters make an enormous distinction. It is uncanny!

Now, after I’ve blabbered in regards to the thickness of the system for a lot too lengthy, let’s take a look at the design. The telephone makes use of unique supplies for its building, resembling Particular Fiber (just like fiberglass, Kevlar, and carbon fiber), Tremendous Metal (the hinge ought to stand up to 500,000 folds and unfolds), Tremendous Armored Inside Display (nanoscale coating allegedly making the versatile display 500% extra scratch-resistant), and NanoCrystal Protect for the quilt display.

Whereas these are a whole lot of “Tremendous,” and “Particular” phrases slapped right here and there, the tip result’s fairly sturdy and feels very premium within the hand. It is nonetheless a foldable telephone, although, so I will not be doing scratch or drop assessments.

It is value noting that the stereo audio system are mounted within the left wing of the telephone, so while you unfold it, they continue to be left aspect, leading to a bit bizarre audio expertise should you maintain the telephone vertical.

The amount rocker is on the left wing, whereas the ability button resides on the correct, and so they’re offset in such a means that when the Magic V3 is folded, you’ve good and intuitive entry to each.

The again is matte and repels fingerprints fairly properly, the hinge may be very shiny and polished, and the digital camera system on the again is housed in a circle, which in flip resides in an octagonal polished steel body. General, the telephone appears to be like very fashionable and premium.

The obtainable colours are Black, Inexperienced, and Reddish Brown, all wanting elegant and considerably business-y. The Magic V3 can also be IPX8 water-proof, so you do not have to fret a few splash or two.

Talking of the included case, it is a leather-based coated again cowl with a tiny extra body for the quilt display. There is a steel ring across the cutout for the digital camera, which mimics the form and materials of the one across the digital camera itself, and it additionally serves as a kickstand due to a tiny hinge.

Shifting to the show, or ought to we are saying shows of the Honor Magic V3. Honor has gone for uniformity in terms of decision, pixel density, and refresh fee between the interior and canopy screens. Each are OLEDs with 402 PPI pixel density, and each use LTPO tech to supply 1-120Hz dynamic refresh charges. You even management each screens from a single tab within the settings menu.This leads to a really easy and coherent visible expertise. The interior show can also be fairly vivid at over 1000 nits, the crease remains to be seen, but it surely’s one of many much less distinguished we have examined to this point.

There are some fascinating health-related settings within the menu. Along with the excessive frequency pulse width modulation (3840Hz and 4320Hz for the interior and canopy screens, respectively), there’s now one thing known as Defocus Eyecare. It makes use of myopic defocus stimulation to alleviate refractive stress on the eyes. You additionally get the Pure Tone toggle, which mechanically adjusts tone relying on ambient lighting, and the Eye Consolation setting as properly, which filters blue mild.

By way of biometrics, the Honor Magic V3 has facial recognition and a side-mounted capacitive fingerprint scanner, housed within the energy button. Now, when you’ve a tool that is 4.35 mm thick, you may solely use a lot house for a fingerprint scanner. It is tiny, and typically it fails to learn your finger. More often than not, nevertheless, it really works as supposed, so no enormous issues right here.

The facial recognition depends on a single front-facing digital camera, so it is not on the identical stage as FaceID or the facial recognition on the Honor Magic 6 Professional, for that matter.

Honor Magic V3 Digital camera

A strong setup

Fundamental Digital camera

Photographs taken with the principle digital camera look nice, with good element, and the dynamic vary can also be fairly broad. The saturation is on the upper finish, and it won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, however general, the exposition, white stability, and tone of the samples are all very pleasing to the attention.

Evening photos are, as at all times, a little bit of a hit or miss, as they rely closely on algorithms and your regular hand. Even with the evening mode turned off, there’s some post-processing occurring, making use of HDR and different tips to get extra particulars out. Typically, the tip result’s good, with one of the best images being those snapped with the principle digital camera. The ultrawide and telephoto each have a tendency to supply artifacts, and there is some lack of element in low mild circumstances.

Zoom High quality

The periscope zoom system is a useful software while you wish to body a distant object and you do not have entry to it, but additionally as a portrait software. At 3.5x zoom, photos are fairly good, detailed, and there is minimal digital processing occurring. Backgrounds can flip a bit tender and the colours are barely muted (we might say pure, however they appear muted in comparison with the photographs from the principle digital camera), however general the Magic V3 can take respectable photos at its 3.5x optical zoom vary.

Selfies

The selfie scenario is a feast, actually. You’ve gotten two devoted 20MP selfie cameras on each screens, and likewise the power to make use of the principle digital camera system to fulfill your narcissistic ideations. The latter yields one of the best outcomes, as you may think about, and you may as well apply Harcourt results to your self portrait. The bokeh can also be fairly convincing, and we might use the principle digital camera for such functions, leaving the punch-hole ones for videocalls and different non-beauty-critical duties.

Video High quality

Honor Magic V3 Efficiency & Benchmarks

Snapdragon on responsibility

The Honor Magic V3 comes working MagicOS 8.0.1 out of the field, primarily based on Android 14. There’s a whole lot of customization at hand, you may select the house display fashion (drawer or all the things on the house display), the lock display fashion, icon measurement, placement, and colours, fonts, textual content measurement, and so on.

You need to use break up display mode simply, and open apps in break up display or floating mode, you may drag them to the nook of the display and entry them from the aspect menu, and you may as well break up them horizontally or vertically and save them as pairs.

The AI options onboard embody the Magic Portal, which lets you choose textual content and pictures from mainly anyplace on the display and drag them to the nook to ship them to completely different apps (Fb or Instagram for a put up, Gmail to connect to an e-mail, Notes, and so on.).

There is a new Face-to-Face translation choice that lets you translate between 10 languages with voice-to-text reside translation and vice versa. There’s additionally AI recommendations within the type of a folder on the principle display and likewise within the taskbar.

What’s much more fascinating is that Gemini is accessible on our take a look at unit, and this consists of Gemini Superior with Gemini Reside. We’re unsure how this collaboration works precisely, and we have reached out to Honor to ask for added particulars, as we all know that Gemini Reside is a subscription service that is obtainable on the brand new Pixels with a one 12 months free of charge interval.

There are different goodies from the Google AI Cloud obtainable, resembling Magic Eraser, you may edit annoying colleagues out of your footage, and we’re fairly certain extra AI options shall be coming to the Honor Magic V3.

General, MagicOS appears to be like an increasing number of polished, and what’s even cooler is that the Magic V3 will obtain 4 main OS updates and 5 years of safety patches. It is not on par with what Google and Samsung are providing on this division, however 4 years sound fairly strong.

Honor Magic V3 Battery

Third technology silicon-carbon

Honor was the primary model to commercially provide silicon-carbon batteries in smartphones exterior China with the Honor Magic 6 Professional. The V3 sports activities the third-generation silicon-carbon battery tech, and because of it, we now have an enormous 5,150mAh battery onboard. We are saying enormous as a result of the physique is so skinny that it is actually spectacular. The telephone homes a flagship processor, a periscope zoom digital camera, and a twin battery association of the aforementioned capability.

PhoneArena Battery Take a look at Outcomes:

The Honor Magic V3 obliterates the competitors in terms of net shopping and video streaming, and solely loses by an hour and a half to the Z Fold 6 in our gaming take a look at. This can be all the way down to thermal throttling.

In actual life circumstances, the battery lasts a full day of heavy use simply, even should you use the interior display more often than not. With extra blended and reasonable utilization, you may stretch this to 2 days (should you use the quilt display more often than not), which is once more very spectacular given the scale of the telephone.

PhoneArena Charging Take a look at Outcomes:

The charging scenario can also be very spectacular, the Honor Magic V3 helps 66W of wired charging energy and 50W wi-fi (although you will want Honor’s proprietary wi-fi charger to get the complete beans). How they discovered house for the wi-fi charging coil on this 4.35 mm physique is past us.

A full cost with the bundled quick charger takes solely 48 minutes, and a fast 15-minute top-up will get you to 40%. We did not get the possibility to check the complete potential of the wi-fi charging, as we’re nonetheless ready for the Honor SuperCharge wi-fi charger.

Honor Magic V3 Audio High quality and Haptics

Must you purchase it?