The foldable thinner than a ballpoint pen

With the sturdiness query roughly answered, foldable telephones have set their sights on a acquainted new frontier: thinness. Normally, making a telephone thinner and thinner means much less accessible area for giant batteries, worse thermal efficiency, much less spectacular cameras, and an general flimsier machine. With the HONOR Magic V2 Ultimate, HONOR is tackling all of those issues directly.

The HONOR Magic V2 Ultimate is the world’s thinnest foldable telephone. That may not imply a lot in a world the place every little thing is the “world’s something-est” however whenever you see a fold-flat foldable thinner than a ballpoint pen, it’s laborious to not be impressed. It really is a feat of engineering.

At simply 9.9mm thick (when folded), the Magic V2 is thinner than some common slab telephones. For comparability, it’s solely a bit over a millimeter thicker than the iPhone 14 Pro Max. Despite being foldable, the V2 is definitely lighter than the iPhone. Add to that a 5,000mAh battery, twin 120Hz LTPO OLED panels, and a digicam setup largely ripped from the superb HONOR Magic 5 Pro, and the Magic V2 ought to make you sit up and listen.

That is, after all, when you’re dwelling in China. The V2 is, sadly, a China unique for now. However, it doesn’t take a lot of a stretch of the creativeness to see the blueprint for a international model below the HONOR Magic Vs2 or Magic V2s moniker later this yr.

So, what else is cool concerning the HONOR Magic V2 Ultimate? For starters, it’s cool. It has a 0.22mm-thick Bionic Cooling System, which is what HONOR calls its vapor chamber. The chamber is 12.5% bigger than on the earlier technology and, mixed with graphite and thermal gel, it guarantees to handle thermals in an unfolded telephone that’s much less than a half-centimeter thick. Everything right here is powered by the newest and best Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 cell platform and 16GB of RAM.

I ran a few sideloaded benchmarks and was fairly stunned it didn’t warmth up extra (I gained’t share screenshots of the outcomes right here because the Magic V2 I’ve is presently operating non-final software program). By comparability, I can barely take a half-hour video name on the Pixel Fold with out it doing its greatest impression of the Terminator sinking into a vat of molten metallic.

The split-cell 5,000mAh silicon-carbon battery additionally helps 66W wired charging (however no wi-fi charging). The 66W charging brick comes within the field together with a nifty shell case with a stand attachment.

Speaking of the field, the Ultimate version I bought additionally consists of the HONOR Magic Pencil stylus, though as a result of software program limitations I discussed it doesn’t presently work with my assessment unit. HONOR tells me the stylus is supported on each the interior and exterior shows and it makes use of a “self-developed stroke prediction algorithm” for higher accuracy and pace, with 0.42ms enter latency.

As for these shows, they appear nice. HONOR’s default wallpaper is a bit bland and the theme engine and wallpaper gallery should not included on this software program construct, however they definitely stack up on paper. Both the interior and exterior screens are 120Hz adaptive refresh price OLED panels, with 3,840Hz PWM dimming, 2,500-nit peak brightness on the smaller display screen, and 1,600-nit peak brightness on the interior show.

The exterior display screen has a 91.2% screen-to-body ratio and follows a 20:9 facet ratio. Honor’s second-generation nanocrystal glass is used on the outside show and guarantees a 30% enchancment in drop resistance. The inner display screen has a squarish 9.78:9 facet ratio and makes use of clear Colorless Polyimide (CPI) movie and never Ultra-Thin Glass (UTG). How this may fare over time with a stylus in common use we’ll have to attend and see.

One massive upside of the interior display screen is the near-invisible crease. It’s definitely there when you go in search of it, but it surely’s much less noticeable than on the already-good Magic Vs and appears to be no hindrance in any respect to visibility or utilization.

The hinge mechanism has acquired some upgrades, with HONOR using a titanium alloy for weight and energy causes, mixed with HONOR’s proprietary metal. As with the unique Magic V and Magic Vs, the hinge is rated to 400,000 folds — that’s ten years of opening or closing it 100 instances per day. That’s regardless of the Magic V2 using a 75% thinner hinge assist construction than that discovered on the Magic Vs.

I did some mild bend assessments and the construction of the telephone feels sturdy sufficient, just like the Magic Vs, and the hinge held up nice. Some individuals will naturally handle to interrupt it however that’s true of any machine. My first impression, nonetheless, is that the Magic V2’s excessive thinness doesn’t instantly seem like it’ll be a weak level for mainstream customers. The hinge stops at any angle permitting for flexibility with taking hands-free pictures, watching movies, or taking video calls.

From my quick time with the Magic V2 Ultimate to this point, I’ve been impressed by its warmth administration, battery capability and charging pace, general design and thinness, and understated attractiveness. Small accents just like the sample on the hinge or the coloured HONOR emblem and rim of the digicam bump mix effectively with the black vegan leather-based again panel. This is the one model that breaks the 1cm barrier by the best way, the glass-backed variations are 10.1 mm thick and are marginally heavier than the vegan leather-based.

Perhaps the largest draw for me although is the one function I couldn’t take a look at in any respect: the digicam. HONOR tells me it used the primary digicam and ultrawide from the Magic 5 Pro. That’s a pair of 50MP shooters we referred to as “really competitive with the best phones from Apple, Google, and Samsung” in our assessment. The solely distinction is the two.5x telephoto digicam’s sensor drops to 20MP and the primary digicam’s aperture is a little much less extensive at f/1.9 in comparison with the Magic 5 Pro’s f/1.6. We’ll let you understand how a lot of a distinction that makes to the digicam package deal in our full assessment.

I’ll spend some extra time with the HONOR Magic V2 Ultimate within the weeks to return and let you understand how I am going as soon as I’ve bought the ultimate software program and full assist for the stylus and digicam. It’s all the time too early to select a winner after a couple of days with a machine, however to this point so good. The HONOR Magic V2 Ultimate is on the market in China for 8,999 yuan (~$1,255) for 16GB/256GB, 9,999 yuan (~$1,395) for 16GB/512GB, and 11,999 yuan (~$1,675) for 16GB/1TB.