Earlier in the year, mobile hardware company Honor launched a flagship foldable smartphone called the Magic V, but the former Huawei sub-brand released the handset in China only. Now its second folding phone, the Magic Vs, is pegged for international availability.
“The Honor Magic Vs will be our very first foldable flagship to debut in overseas markets and we are confident that it will deliver huge advancements, transforming how people all around the world use their smartphones,” said company CEO, George Zhao.
The new flagship foldable sports a similar premium looks to the Magic V model, and also features a smartphone-like outer OLED screen that measures 6.45 diagonal inches, and rocks the same resolution and refresh rate as before.
The Magic Vs measures just 12.9 mm (0.5 in) thick when folded, and weighs in at 261 g (9.2 oz), which Honor claims makes it the industry’s lightest foldable yet.
Honor has reduced the number of components in the supporting structure of the proprietary gearless hinge from 92 to just four, and says that it’s been designed to survive more than 400,000 folds without sign of wear, which the company translates to 10+ years of daily use at around 100 folds per day.
The hinge mechanism is reported to boast a gapless fold and a creaseless tablet-like display when unfolded, with the interior OLED screen sprawling to 7.9 diagonal inches at 2,272 x 1,984 pixels and up to 90-Hz refresh rate. The handset supports 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, and packs dynamic dimming and a low blue light mode to reduce eye strain.
The camera array around back comprises a 54-MP main that’s based on Sony’s IMX800 image sensor, a 50-MP ultra-wide/macro and an 8-MP telephoto with 3x optical zoom. Honor is promising best-in-class computational photography courtesy of its AI imaging engine, 4K UHD video recording is possible and optical image stabilization is available. The imaging party is completed by a 16-MP selfiecam to the front.
The Magic Vs is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 mobile platform with octa-core processing and integrated graphics, and can be had with up to 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. There’s a 5,000-mAh battery for the promise of all-day usage on a single charge, with 66-W fast-charging supported for a full top-up in 46 minutes. And it runs Honor’s MagicOS 7.0, which is based on Android 12.
The Magic Vs has gone up for pre-order today in China for RMB 7,499 (which converts to around US$1,050, though the international release schedule has not been shared as yet).
Honor’s next-gen foldable phone to be available beyond China [New Atlas]