Honor Magic V6 achieves three foldable firsts

On paper, the Honor Magic V6 reads like a breakthrough for foldable phones: it’s the thinnest model ever made, packs the largest battery in its class, and boasts the strongest water-resistance rating to date. In real-world use, however, only the bigger battery feels like a genuine step forward. The other achievements are mere fractions of improvement over what already existed.

That’s not entirely Honor’s fault. Differentiating a foldable phone is becoming increasingly difficult, especially since last year’s models already felt like complete flagship devices. Huawei’s Pura X Max turned heads with an unusual aspect ratio, a design choice that Samsung and Apple are both expected to adopt later this year. Meanwhile, trifold devices occupy a category of their own. But the traditional book-style Android foldable has matured to the point where it can compete with standard flagship phones in nearly every category.

Honor has been one of the most aggressive players pushing foldable innovation, so the company has earned the right to release a phone with only modest hardware upgrades. Still, I wish the company had invested more effort into a software overhaul, because MagicOS remains the biggest obstacle holding the Magic V6 back.

The Magic V6 debuted at February’s MWC trade show, initially launching only in China. It has taken until now for Honor to begin a global rollout. The device is currently on sale in Malaysia and Singapore, priced at RM 7,699 (roughly $1,930). More markets, including the UK and Europe, are expected to follow later this month.

It’s only fair to start with the phone’s three foldable firsts, even if they are mostly incremental. First, it is the thinnest foldable in the world, measuring just 4mm when open and 8.75mm when folded shut (the white version; other colors are slightly thicker at 9mm). Closed, it is no thicker than an iPhone 17 Pro Max, which is a genuine achievement. Yet it is only 0.05mm thinner than Honor’s previous-generation Magic foldable , roughly the width of a human hair. That difference is imperceptible in practice.

My gold review unit isn’t the absolute thinnest, but each half is still barely thicker than the USB-C port.

The Magic V6 is also the first foldable with an IP69 rating, meaning it is dust-tight and can survive exposure to high-pressure, high-temperature water jets. This rating gives it better dust protection than the Magic V5’s IP59 and allows it to withstand water exposure that the IP68-rated Pixel 10 Pro Fold could not. The practical benefits feel minimal , I don’t often encounter high-pressure water jets , but the extra peace of mind is welcome.

The most important of the three upgrades is the battery, now 6,660mAh thanks to improved silicon-carbon cells (China gets an even larger 7,150mAh version). This is the biggest battery in any foldable and a meaningful jump from the Magic V5’s 5,820mAh. The payoff is real. The V5 could last a day and then some, but I’ve comfortably used the V6 for two days at a time, charging every other night. Even heavy users would struggle to drain it in a single day. That feels like a genuine improvement.

When closed, it’s increasingly hard to distinguish foldables like this from regular slab phones. The Magic V6 defaults to overly vivid display settings, but you can tone them down. The triple camera island is large but actually thinner than the Magic V5’s. It’s a bit flashy, but I don’t mind the glittery gold finish , it reminds me of silicon wafers.

Elsewhere, things are predictable, but only because I now take these features for granted in flagship foldables. Of course the Magic V6 runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Of course it offers up to 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM. Of course it supports fast wireless charging (though not Qi2). Of course it has dual 120Hz OLED displays, a triple rear camera, and stylus support. These features are no longer surprising; they are assumed.

Still, as much as foldables have advanced, compromises remain. The camera is the biggest one. The triple rear camera is impressive and likely the best in any foldable except Oppo’s Find N6. But like that phone, the camera system lags behind the absolute top-end slab phones, held back by smaller sensors that limit light capture, heavy saturation on many shots, and inconsistent color processing. In short: the camera is good, but not great, and that remains one of the major trade-offs with any foldable.

Then there’s the crease. The V6’s is fairly subtle, but nowhere near as hard to detect as the nearly invisible one on Oppo’s latest. Durability is another concern. Yes, the IP69 rating helps, but it’s still a foldable: the hinge is fragile, the inner screen is soft, and it’s difficult to protect fully with a case. Outside China, Honor can’t match the repair and support infrastructure of Samsung, so a broken device could be harder to fix.

Then there’s software. The good news is that Honor promises seven years of OS and security updates, two more than Oppo and matching Google and Samsung. The bad news is that MagicOS remains one of my least favorite Android skins. The UI is cluttered (and increasingly inspired by Apple’s Liquid Glass), Honor pre-installs its own-brand apps, and multitasking isn’t as powerful or intuitive as Oppo’s. I strongly prefer other versions of Android, and software is a major reason the Oppo Find N6 remains my favorite foldable.

We don’t yet know what the rumored foldable iPhone will offer, or Samsung’s imminent Galaxy Z Fold 8. But Apple will be entering a mature foldable market, and I have to credit Honor as one of the companies that helped make that possible. Over the past few years, its Magic foldables have repeatedly pushed the limits of design and battery capacity, and the Magic V6 is the culmination of that steady hardware progress , even if the software side has been neglected. This is an impressive, complete foldable, but those incremental upgrades are starting to feel boring. Let’s see if Apple can make things interesting again.