There’s plenty to praise about the Magic V6, but I’m going to start with the obvious fact there’s a hell of a lot of carry over. Releasing a handset so quickly after its predecessor hit the market means much of what was true about the Magic V5 remains true here. You’d be justified in calling this less of a V6 and more of a V5 Plus or Pro, whichever suffix better suits your worldview.
Last year, I said the Magic V5 crossed the rubicon from slender to dainty, making me feel a little nervous about how robust the hardware is. The Magic V6 is, obviously, a wee bit thinner again, even if only one of the four colorways actually is thin enough to claim the record. My memory of the older handset was that it felt much easier to flex compared to the rigidity of the V6. I’d still insist on using a case for this phone, but I’m far more at ease throwing it around than before.
Doubly so, in fact, because Honor’s made the Magic V6 IP68 (immersion) and IP69 (pressure) dust and water resistant which should help reduce the dangers inherent in a foldable. The company says its cover glass is 33 percent more resistant to impact than the V5 and can be used in wet weather. I’m really looking forward to the money-is-no-object YouTubers putting one of these handsets under water and seeing if the promises match the reality.
I can never get out of my head the notion that Honor’s design is a deliberate attempt to give it some distance from Samsung. Whereas the Z Fold 7 is quite austere in the hand, with harder edges, Honor emphasized the chamfering to make this phone easier to hold.
Like its predecessor, the Magic V6 has a 7.95-inch, 2,352 x 2,172 AMOLED primary display with a variable refresh rate between 1 and 120Hz. Face on, that crease is sufficiently subtle that only those with the most delicate of palates will notice it. Unlike its predecessor, the cover screen is now a 6.52-inch 2,420 x 1,080 AMOLED, thanks to the bezels shrinking slightly. My only nitpick is, as with every book foldable on the market, the cover screen is a little taller than I wish it was.
The real magic — unintentional pun noticed three hours after writing this sentence — of this phone is inside. To shave a mil from the phone’s total thickness, Honor put its focus on a major redesign of many of the handset’s internal components. The company redesigned the antenna, speaker chamber, vibration motor, NFC module, SIM slot and USB-C housing. The saved space also helped to accommodate the pretty beefy battery in such a relatively small package, too.
Honor’s Magic V6 is the first foldable to ship with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 paired with 15GB RAM and 512GB storage. To say it moves quickly would be an insult to things that move quickly, because this thing zooms, glides or sprints. I’ve not yet been able to make this thing stutter or slow down, and it’s an absolute dream for gaming. I spent plenty of time playing FIFA EA Sports FC Mobile on Ultra, and set Sword of Convallaria and Fortnite to play at 60 fps. Yes, the phone did get warm, but not problematically so, and this would be an ideal device for a half hour playing session on your commute into work.
Those gaming sessions might not take too much out of the V6’s battery, either, especially given how much juice it’s packing. The international version is equipped with a 6,660mAh silicon carbon battery with 25 percent silicon content. That volume of silicon would ordinarily have a deleterious effect on the cell’s overall life, but Honor claims its design work ensures “long-term battery durability.”