HONOR Magic V2 Review : Delightful Lightweight Foldable

One of the major challenges of a foldable phone is always the bulky, big size and heavy, especially when you need to have the bigger screen when unfolded, yet tiring at your hands when using it. There goes another challenge, when you put in the pocket, it felt bulking over your pants, or jeans.

Looks like HONOR might have just found some solutions to it and we are about to find out in this review. Here comes the HONOR Magic V2, a phone that is addressing the above concern with added more goodies to it.

Unboxing

Design

HONOR learnt from their previous foldable phone, the HONOR Magic VS, which is still notably one of the challenger in the foldable phone space at that time, and from there, the HONOR Magic V2 had improved first by the thickness, down to a slim 9.9mm only, so far this is the slimmest foldable phone to date at the point of this writing. It is weighted at 231 grams and when unfolded, it is measured at 4.8mm thickness when unfolded, again this is a thin marvel that one may felt less tired and fatigue over long usage while gaming or even browsing.

Lets talk about the body, the back of the phone is made of glass or PU leather (depending on the color you choose), while the hinge is made of titanium with gearless hinge opening and closing, no frictions and thus making it easy to fold and unfold without any weird creaking noise. In the end it is creaseless and you would felt the lines if you put some light pressure to it, otherwise all your day to day operation with it should be smooth and you hardly can notice the crease in the middle. HONOR claims that the hinge can last for an approximate of 400k times or to translate in years, that would be 10 years of overall average operational usage before things starts to get loose.

The HONOR Magic V2 is available is three colors, Purple, Black(PU) and Black. There is also the PORSCHE DESIGN | HONOR Magic V2 RSR coming soon to the Malaysian market and only can be purchased via invitation.

Display & Audio

Folded/Cover Screen : 6.43 inch, 120Hz, LTPO OLED, 1060 x 2376 pixels, 402 ppi
Unfolded : 7.92 inch, 120Hz, Foldable LTPO OLED, 2156 x 2344 pixels, 402 ppi

I will start with the Cover Screen part, the glass is made of Second Generation Curved Nanocrystal Glass, which HONOR claims that is 10 times tougher compared to the HONOR Magic VS. The screen to body ration is also bigger this time, at around 90% on both inner and outer screen, making it symmetrical and balanced over the viewing experience, whichever orientation you are holding on. It does incorporate PWM dimming up to 3840Hz which makes it eye friendly when using it, day or night.

When opened, it reveals a large 7.92-inch LTPO OLED Dynamic 120 Hz display capable of displaying up to 1B colors in vibrant colors. In fact, the folded screen is also able to automatically adjust refresh rates, which is especially useful when viewing non-intensive content, such as reading programs or browsing your favorite browser. The folding is still there, but it is a little less noticeable compared to competitors who have their own folding settings, so even if you play on a large screen, there should not be any difference in experience, and the fact that the slimmer. shape makes it easier to hold and you should have longer use and play time. The internal screen can be quite bright, reaching around 2500 nits, which means that you can use it quite comfortably outdoors, while in the darkest places, Blue Eye comfort makes it easy to read your favorite articles. For movie lovers, the screen is IMAX Enhanced.

The HONOR Magic V2 does contain stereo speakers on the left and right sides of the phone, which can produce rather decent stereo effects with comparable audio delivery, including DTS:X Ultra Sound effects and a customizable audio profile selected based on the user’s preferences. Despite being a thinner phone, the experience with it remains positive, and the quality is remarkable. You can still connect to your favorite headphones by USB C or just use Bluetooth.

Camera

Day Time Shots

Night Time Shots

Camera and the optics wise, the HONOR Magic V2 rear camera is equipped with a 50MP Wide Laser AF OIS lens, a 20MP telephoto lens with OIS and another 50MP ultrawide lens. The combination portion which is the star of the show its the main lens, which can give you adequate day and night shots with very reasonable quality with a better quality over contrast and color accuracy compared to the Magic VS. Night shots are passable for us with good low lighting support, the shadows, gradient can still be exhibited quite accurately. The overall quality is nearer towards their Magic5 phone inheriting some of the features and AI from it, including motion sensing. As a foldable phone, I can say this is as good as it can get. The 16MP front cam comes with wide lens, with options enhanced by AI should you required it, but I am good with that and overall it is suitable if say you wanted it to use it with video conferences or video meeting calls, or if you wish to take a higher pixel shots, just switch the cover display on and use the rear camera as your selfie camera, which works in general, same as any foldable phones out there.

Many software capabilities are available for the Magic V2, like panoramic, super macro, high-resolution, and dual vision, to mention a few, which may be quite handy in certain situations. With the addition of Motion Sensing, it provides an overall experience that is comparable to their Magic5 series flagship phone, mixing the demands of casual shooters with some of the pro features.

Last but not least, the HONOR Magic V2 rear camera video recording may be classified upper mid-range, as it can handle up to 4K at 60FPS with visible but extremely infrequent stutters during recording, which you can also try.

Performance, Software, Benchmarks

In terms of speed, the HONOR Magic V2 is driven by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Octa Core SOC, with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of UFS internal storage. There is no external storage, such as an SD Card slot, but you can always backup your valuable data using cloud services such as Google Photos and Google Drive.

MagicOS 7.2 with Android 13 acts as a user interface and operating system, bringing many notable features and performance to further optimize the foldable function, such as split multi-window and quick application switching between the cover screen and the foldable tablet screen. smoothly Otherwise, this time the HONOR RAM Turbo can be expanded up to 7GB, which gives it a virtual RAM expansion gap almost similar to other available competitors. There is still room for improvement and as a user it is still very pleasant and rewarding every time I play with it, look at Outlook or just make a call, it is a real joy and charging is fast with the included 66W fast charger. takes you from empty to full in less than 2 hours and you’re ready to go again all night.

We’ll attach our benchmarks as usual for those who are interested, and nothing stands out from the other rivals, indicating that the performance aspect is highly tuned and taken care of.

Technical Specifications

Verdict & Conclusion

The HONOR Magic V2 is a piece of a foldable phone that we see, trying to perfect things further and addressing most of the user’s foldable phone concerns, which is size, weight and use cases combined. To be honest, they do break most of the barriers apart and did it quite beautifully this time, even some of the UI concerns over the Magic VS has been solved with the updated MagicOS 7.2. The photography side gets an upgraded treatment inherited from their Magic5 phone, making it somewhat all balanced in every corner from performance and features. RM6999 seems to be around the range of a foldable phone, and should you need all the power it has, this phone is highly considerable on your list.

For more information on the HONOR Magic V2, CLICK HERE to find out more!.