Smartphone manufacturers all have their ‘here’s one that just works’ for the average consumer, but they also need halo devices that show them working at the cutting edge… hoping that the success of the technological treasure chests will boost name recognition and sales further down the portfolio.
The current measure of prowess is the foldable phone. Samsung’s Z Fold and Z Flip series are riding high in the charts, Google is expected to announce a Pixel Fold at some point in 2023, and Honor has announced its own foldable in the shape of the Magic Vs.
I’ve spent time with a pre-production version of the Vs to find out Honor’s thoughts on what a foldable smartphone should be.
It’s worth stressing here that this is an early look at the Magic Vs, so the software running on the hardware is not finalized. I’ll be looking at that closer to the release, so in the meantime, I loaded up the handset with a bundle of open-source options, including K-9 for email, DuckDuckGo for web browsing, Tusky for instant messaging, Nextcloud for cloud services, and VLC for music and video.
Android’s universality and ability to cope with multiple hardware profiles meant that these apps managed with both the closed and open modes of the Magic Vs. While Honor’s software will improve the user experience on its foldable, apps will not need to be coded explicitly for this device… they just need to meet the current Android specs for recognizing hardware.
It’s also worth noting that Android 12L should play a large part in the foldable’s user interface. Google’s ‘large screened’ update to Android offers improvements for tablets, foldables, and dual-screened devices, making for a better and more consistent user experience. The integration of Android 12L into Honor’s MagicOS will no doubt be a critical focus for the Magic Vs software team.
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This isn’t Honor’s first foldable device; the Magic V was its first foldable offering. The latter was a Chinese-only release, while the former will be the first destined for the global market. That means there’s a wealth of user feedback and experience to draw from the V that has contributed to the Vs design choices. The most important is the reduction in moving parts around the hinge, with Honor highlighting the gearless hinge mechanism.
In practice, the hinge mechanism just works. The real test will be after months if not years of use, with Honor presumably hoping the reduced parts count means less to go wrong, less to break, and more longevity. In my pre-production model, there’s a nice bite to the hinge that offers great feedback; when it’s closed the device is very much closed, and when open, it stays comfortably in the open position.
What you don’t get is any intermediate positioning. You won’t be comfortably using this like a tiny Nokia Communicator or nineties PDA with a screen, hinge, and keyboard feel. Your two choices are open or closed.
As with all foldable displays seen in consumer handsets, the fold is visible on the device. It’s not completely flat; there’s a curved valley running down the screen. Typing across it, especially if you are using slide-to-type, and you can feel the change in shape. In use, the fold isn’t visually apparent when you are looking at the screen as the user, moves away from the zero-viewing angle, and that valley lights up in your vision.
It also matches the current trend of fast refreshing displays with a 90 Hz rate, and this screen supports 100 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut. Unsurprisingly there are a lot of technology and cutting-edge choices in this display which is fitting given the flagship role the Magic Vs will play.
What’s going to make the Magic Vs stand out in the foldables crowd is the outer display, because it’s not a cut-back display, or an awkward shape. Yes it is thinner than the ‘regular’ flagship but a 21:9 ratio screen is not an unknown in the Android world and there are no problems using the outside display as a regular phone… there’s an argument that being narrower allows my thumb to reach over the whole width comfortably.
Honor is leaning into the flagship stakes with the Magic Vs; it’s coming with the top-of-the-range SnapDragon 8 Plus Gen 1, a massive 5000 mAh battery (split 50/50 over both sides to keep the phone as balanced as possible), a triple-lens camera with three harmonious choices (a fifty-megapixel main camera, a fifty-megapixel ultrawide, and an x3 optical zoom), all wrapped in a modern mesh of materials that clearly mark this handset out as something special.
Taking the lessons learned from the Magic V and literally giving it a classic ‘S’ update means the Magic Vs has a head start with the international market. It will be seen by many as Honor’s first foldable, when it’s actually an interactive improvement on the first version. The specifications are almost on point… with a 2023 release date the SnapDragon 8 Plus Gen 1 will have potentially been superseded, the 90 Hz refresh is nice, but 120 Hz is more common, and I’ll be paying close attention to the final storage and memory options
The broad strokes of the Honor Magic Vs are a success. It’s the finer details, the focus on reaching perfection, the attention to every pixel, the feel of every edge and texture, that elevates a handset from a flagship smartphone to one that defines a sector. Honor has the former. It has a few months to find the latter.
Disclaimer: Honor provided a pre-production Magic Vs handset for preview purposes…