Honor Magic V5 is now the thinnest foldable phone but only in Ivory White

Oppo had to jump through a lot of hoops to make the impossibly thin Find N5 foldable phone released earlier this year. It said that the thickness reduction is nearing its limits, barring some engineering breakthrough further down the road.

The newly announced Honor Magic V5, from whose predecessor Oppo snatched the title of the world's thinnest foldable phone, seems to confirm that claim. It is only a fraction of an inch thinner than the Oppo Find N5 - 8.8mm vs 8.9mm when closed - and only in its white color version at that.

This goes to show how hard it has become to go further down in foldable phone thickness without compromising durability. Still, with the white Magic V5, Honor is regaining the thinnest foldable phone crown.

Design

Honor said that it had to play around with a steel hinge, silicon carbon battery, and other engineering achievements in order to hit the 8.8mm spot when the Magic V5 is closed.

For comparison, Oppo also uses a thin silicon carbon battery for the 8.9mm Find N5, but its hinge is made of a potentially sturdier titanium alloy.

The Ivory White Magic V5 is 4.1mm thin when opened, while the Black, Dawn Gold, and Reddish Brown color versions are 9mm when closed and 4.2mm thin when unfurled, respectively.

Displays and processor specs

Honor has seemingly borrowed the main and cover screens of the Magic V5 from last year's Magic V3 that is now discounted on Amazon, at least when it comes to size. The cover display offers a 6.4-inch diagonal, while the main screen is 7.95 inches, which is smaller than what the Oppo Find N5 offers.

Both the external and main displays of the Honor Magic V5 come with 120Hz refresh rate, but Honor boosted their brightness levels to 5,000 nits. While this sounds impressive, Honor fails to mention the screen area it has been measuring, which makes all the difference when it comes to peak brightness of OLED displays. The typical brightness number will probably be much lower.

Honor has powered its flagship 2025 foldable with Qualcomm's top-shelf Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, while memory clocks in at 12/16 GB RAM and up to 1 TB of storage, at least in China, where its battery will be 6,100 mAh.

The rest of the world will get a Magic V5 variant with 512 GB of storage and a smaller, 5,820 mAh battery for some reason. The 66W wired charging speed gives way to the 80W of the N5, while the 50W wireless charging is par for the course for a flagship Chinese phone.

Camera

Besides the ultrathin design, the Magic V5 shines with its triple camera kit:

• 50MP 1/1.56" main camera with OIS
• 50MP ultrawide camera
• 64MP 3x periscope zoom camera with Omnivision's OV64B sensor and 0.7 micron pixels
• 20MP selfie cameras

The periscope zoom camera on the back comes with a 64MP sensor compared to the Find N5's 50MP. It is also a sensor with smaller pixels, so the jury on its quality against Oppo's foldable flagship is still out there.

Honor Magic V5 price

The Magic V5 is priced from the equivalent of $1,255 or €1,070 and £923 for the 12/256GB configuration, to $1,535 and €1,300 or £1,128 for the China-exclusive 1TB model. Needless to say, these prices are likely to be up to 30% higher when the phone hits global markets like Europe.