Honor Magic Vs Folding Phone to Launch This Month

Honor has announced that its second-gen folding phone, the Honor Magic Vs, will launch in China on 23 November.

The foldable is following on quickly from the Honor Magic V that went only went on sale in China in January 2022.

Honor says the 23 November launch event is in China, suggesting that like the original Magic V it will only go on sale there, but we can hold out hope for a global version given Honor is hitting its stride without being beholden to Huawei, its former parent company.

Unlike Huawei, in Europe Honor’s phones ship with the Google Play Store and natively support Google Mobile Services for apps like Uber.

I presume the ‘Vs’ in Magic Vs is pronounced ‘vee es’ as it looks like an S version update of the phone – like the iPhone 4S, say – but it makes me want to call it the Honor Magic Versus, which sounds quite cool.

Honor has only shared the above image of the phone, but it does indeed look quite similar to the original Magic V, which has a 7.9in inner folding OLED display with a single camera cut out at the top on the right half.

Looking down from above as the promotion image does, you can see the gold model has a similar camera positioning, but it gives little else away.

The Magic V currently comes in silver, black, and an orange vegan leather version, so this gold looks like a new hue. Given the phone is an ‘S’ version, it’s safe to say the updates could be quite incremental.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in the first version should at least see an upgrade to the more battery-efficient 8+ Gen 1, and while the triple 50Mp cameras looked decent, those lenses are always an area to improve on updated phone models.

There’s no word on pricing for the Honor Magic Vs yet – all details are promised at the launch event. The first version cost ¥9,999, which is about $1,370/£1,200 at the time of writing. This is very competitive given the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 costs $1,799/£1,649, but if the Magic Vs comes to the UK it’ll surely cost more than the converted price.

Still, I hold out hope for a European launch of the phone. Folding phones are exciting but have already hit a bit of a bump in the road with no amazing new features. Samsung is the obvious market leader, and we need companies like Honor to keep the competition up. It’ll keep ideas fresh and hopefully drive the price down to make these exciting new devices more affordable for more people.

Honor has announced that its second-gen folding phone, the Honor Magic Vs, will launch in China on 23 November.

The foldable is following on quickly from the Honor Magic V that went only went on sale in China in January 2022.

Honor says the 23 November launch event is in China, suggesting that like the original Magic V it will only go on sale there, but we can hold out hope for a global version given Honor is hitting its stride without being beholden to Huawei, its former parent company.

Unlike Huawei, in Europe Honor’s phones ship with the Google Play Store and natively support Google Mobile Services for apps like Uber.

I presume the ‘Vs’ in Magic Vs is pronounced ‘vee es’ as it looks like an S version update of the phone – like the iPhone 4S, say – but it makes me want to call it the Honor Magic Versus, which sounds quite cool.

Honor has only shared the above image of the phone, but it does indeed look quite similar to the original Magic V, which has a 7.9in inner folding OLED display with a single camera cut out at the top on the right half.

Looking down from above as the promotion image does, you can see the gold model has a similar camera positioning, but it gives little else away.

The Magic V currently comes in silver, black, and an orange vegan leather version, so this gold looks like a new hue. Given the phone is an ‘S’ version, it’s safe to say the updates could be quite incremental.

Honor

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in the first version should at least see an upgrade to the more battery-efficient 8+ Gen 1, and while the triple 50Mp cameras looked decent, those lenses are always an area to improve on updated phone models.

There’s no word on pricing for the Honor Magic Vs yet – all details are promised at the launch event. The first version cost ¥9,999, which is about $1,370/£1,200 at the time of writing. This is very competitive given the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 costs $1,799/£1,649, but if the Magic Vs comes to the UK it’ll surely cost more than the converted price.

Still, I hold out hope for a European launch of the phone. Folding phones are exciting but have already hit a bit of a bump in the road with no amazing new features. Samsung is the obvious market leader, and we need companies like Honor to keep the competition up. It’ll keep ideas fresh and hopefully drive the price down to make these exciting new devices more affordable for more people.