After a steady start, the foldable phones market is fast becoming a busy marketplace, with every phone manufacturer worth its salt throwing its hat into the ring with an option for consideration.

Honor is one of those, introducing its third foldable in just over 18 months, following on from the Magic VS last year. It’s working fast, and the Honor V2 is the result – something that may not be a surprise for anyone who keeps their eye on the Chinese release market. It launched over there just a couple of months ago, and now it has confirmed it is preparing to launch in global markets.

I’ve got my hands on this new flagship ahead of the launch to get a feel for its design and some of its pretty impressive specs – keep reading to see how I have found it.

Design

• 9.9mm thick when folded, 4.7mm unfolded
• 231g

Probably the first thing you’ll notice when you hold the Magic V2 is just how slim it is. In fact at 9.9mm when folded (and 4.7mm unfolded), it is the first foldable phone to get below 1cm. By comparison, the Galaxy Fold 5 folds down to 13.4mm, so Honor has shaved a considerable amount from the frame.

It is not yet at the stage where it doesn’t feel like you’re holding a foldable, but it’s going that way, with dimensions of 156.7 x 74.1 x 9.9mm and weighing just 231g, it is just as easy to put in your pocket as any other flagship bar phone. In fact, it is smaller in the hand than the iPhone 14 Pro Max (although the iPhone is still obviously thinner).

It feels great in the hand too. There is an option for faux leather back panel or glass – the version I saw was the glass and it feels lovely – it was a frosted, matte finish called Silk Purple. It seemed good for repelling fingerprints, but other finishes are the more of the traditional shiny finish.

The hinge is one of the biggest stories in the Honor V2 design, made from titanium and rated for 400,000 folds. It feels solid and smooth on opening and stable when open, with the infamous crease on the centre of the screen when unfolded subtle and not distracting in use.

Screens

• 6.34-inch cover display, 7.92-inch internal
• 3840Hz PWM dimming

When it comes to screens, the V2 has a 6.43in cover display, with a 7.92in unfolded display – both OLEDs with a 120Hz refresh rate and just a touch bigger than the displays on the Fold 5. In my very short time with the phone, the screens seemed bright and vivid – with on paper specs of 2,500 nits peak brightness for the cover display and 1600 nits for the internal display.

The displays are also super sharp, with 2156 x 2344 pixels (2376 x 1060 unfolded), and 402 ppi across both. There’s support for HDR 10+ and 100 per cent DCI-P3 colour gamut, which should mean watching video on the V2 is great, and certainly scrolling round the interface was snappy and responsive.

Like we saw in the Honor 90, Honor is again touting it eye-friendly 3840Hz PWM technology, which will minimise the almost invisible flickering that screens do and the fatigue they almost unknowingly cause to our eyes. It’s a first for a foldable phone and extends Honor’s commitment to this side of display technology.

Hardware and software

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
• 16GB RAM, up to 1TB storage
• 5000mAh battery

Honor is using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset in the Magic V2, with 16GB RAM and up to 1TB of internal storage.

There’s a super-slim 5000mAh battery keeping this running, a battery so slim it looks like a credit card, and this in part has enabled Honor to get the V2 as slim as it is. As we are used to from Honor, it will support super-fast 65w charging over a wired connection.

It will run on Android 13 with Honor’s Magic 7.2 OS over the top, though I currently have had no confirmation on how many years of updates it will be supported for.

In terms of hardiness, there’s no official IP rating here, but Honor has said that it will withstand rain and mild splashes just fine – just don’t go dunking it in the bath.

Cameras

• 50MP main, 50MP ultra-wide, 20MP telephoto
• Front-facing dual 16MP cameras

There is a triple rear camera setup on the Magic V2, with a 50-megapixel main camera (f/1.9, OIS), a 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera (f/2.0), and a 20MP telephoto camera (f/2.4, OIS).

The front-facing dual camera setup features two 16-megapixel cameras (f/2.2) and supports various capture modes for creators to capture and produce content, with that super stable titanium hinge helping you to access different angles to get the shot you need.

We weren’t able to test the camera during our brief hands on, but as always, we’ll be sure to be putting it through its paces in our full review.

First impressions

While I didn’t get to put the Honor Magic V2 through its paces to any great degree, there is no doubt that it feels incredible in the hand, and is the first foldable to truly feel like a regular phone in your pocket – bringing everything that’s great about the foldable experience without any of the compromises. If the software experience can live up to the external one, then it will be a foldable that Samsung, and others, should be watching closely.