Honor Magic V2, my friends, is a device that I have wanted to get my hands on for months. Look at how thin that is. When Honor reached out and asked to write a blog on their brand new Honor Magic V2 that hasn’t even seen a global release, I couldn’t say no.
So, I did the video on the predecessor to this device, the Honor Magic Vs, last year, and I was really impressed with a lot of what Honor had done with that. But this time around, they’ve taken it to an entirely different level. So I’ve been using the Magic for a little bit and I have some thoughts.
One of the things that is legitimately cool is Parallel Space. So it shows up as an app and essentially, oh, don’t look at my PIN. All right, it’s my secret PIN. (dramatic music) One, two, three, four, five, six. So inside Parallel Space, essentially what you can do is you can run a separate copy of most apps on your phone.
One of the cool things I’ve found you can do is you can play two games at the same time. Why you’d wanna do that? Well, that’s up to you. So with my game open, if I wanna open up the split screen option, so I’m gonna load up a second copy of the exact same game. Now, this one is logged into a different account I can play at the same time.
Graphically this is quite impressive to be able to run two copies of the game, especially because this phone is so thin that you would consider that pushing this many pixels in two full, complete copies is quite difficult. So as you can see, I have two accounts and two copies of the game running at the same time.
This is, I would say, mentally difficult because it’s a lot of work to use your brain this much, but technically this is fully functional. Do you want top or bottom? – I’m normally on top. – Don’t, okay. (laughs) So let’s play side-by-side. So, this actually works surprisingly well, though, honestly.
Even though this is technically supported, it’s not really meant to be used by two people I think, but the fact that I can do this fairly easily, and, I mean, it took like, what, two minutes to set up? Now, the only problem is this is not supported on like all apps and all games, and it’s definitely a little bit more optimized for running two copies of WhatsApp or whatever the case is, but Parallel Space allows you to essentially have an entire private little window into your apps, your games, whatever you want that can be separate from the outer sort of software.
Parallel Space Rotation
I’m legitimately impressed. Both copies of the game are running at 60 FPS, and it even rotates smoothly too, so you can use it in either orientation. I wonder what happens if I close it? I don’t think that’s gonna work, right? Oh my god, it, what? Okay, that’s kind of wild.
It just shrinks everything down. I dunno why you’d wanna do this on the outer display, but technically it works and I can just open it up. Dude, that is so smooth at how that handles that. That’s legitimately impressive. I didn’t think that was gonna work. Boy oh boy, that’s some (chimes tinkle) magic right there.
Honor Magic V2 foldable
I’m a big fan of foldables. I’ve been using a foldable as my primary device for over three years now, and I love it even though there are certainly some downsides, and really what Honor have done here is try to eliminate as many of those as possible. Essentially it is a fairly standard looking device, both front and back, but when you open it up, you have the massive internal display.
Honor Magic V2 vs iPhone vs Samsung Z fold
And because it is so thin and because it is incredibly light, it really does feel like when you have it closed up, you’re just using a standard sized smartphone. It is using the latest version of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform, which is quite powerful. So I’m gonna put this side-by-side with a Samsung Z Fold as well as an iPhone.
Look how much thinner it is than something like the Samsung Z Fold. And also if I flip them over, look at how much wider the display is. While I do typically like a slightly more narrow device, this is too narrow. I mean, obviously everyone is different, and if you like something that’s like this, but just having both these phones in my hand, not only just the width of this feels nice, but like this is significantly lighter.
It feels incredibly easy to hold. Like, I mean obviously this is a very large outer display, but like I can balance it with a couple of fingers quite easily. So let me fold it up and let’s get some weights on this. Now, Honor are claiming that this is going to be roughly as sort of thin as well as roughly the weight of like a traditional flagship device.
Weight of Honor Magic V2
So let’s start off by putting the Honor Magic V2 on the scale, and we’re gonna get 236 grams. So for context, the Samsung Z Fold is 256, so substantially lighter. How about we try the Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max. 250. So this is lighter than an iPhone.
Mind you, this is the big boy iPhone, but still, I mean, it makes a significant difference, especially when you open it up. Like, the weight is distributed across in a really nice sort of way, so it’s nicely balanced, which is not necessarily a huge surprise, but you’ve got a fairly substantial camera here and yet it doesn’t feel like it’s kind of like rotated or tilting.
Camera
I gotta say that’s actually might be one of these smallest creases I’ve ever seen. If you get in the light just right, you can see it. But, I mean, again, especially comparing to like what Samsung do, it is really, really minimal, and that’s impressive because this hinge is very simple.
So, from my understanding, the hinge is only a handful of pieces, but with that, it still will stay. So if I wanna set it up like this, right? Yeah, so it needs to be about, yeah, about 90 degrees or so and it’ll stay in some of the smaller spots.
Honor Magic V2 vs Samsung Z Fold
When you put the Honor side-by-side with the Z Fold, one of the things that does stand out is the battery specs.
Battery and Charging
So the Honor has a larger battery. So this is a 5,000 milliampere-hour battery as opposed to 4,400 on the Z Fold 5, but it goes farther than that.
The Z Fold only charges at 25 watts, whereas the Honor charges at 66 watts, and a big reason for that is that the Honor has a silicon carbon battery. That’s a newer technology which essentially is more energy dense, meaning that even though the Honor is thinner and lighter and has a larger capacity battery, it is physically smaller and charges faster.
Camera
Now, one of the benefits of Honor Magic V2 is the fact that it’s got pretty much flagship level hardware in the camera. So there are five cameras in total. So on the inner display we have a selfie camera. We also have that exact same camera on the outer display, and then we have three cameras around back, wide, ultra wide and telephoto.
So by default you can use it just like a standard smartphone. However, where it really shines is when you open up the device. So now you have a much larger window to capture your images, and on top of that, you can turn on the actual cover screen. So, if I want to switch over to video mode and hit record, I now have a very large preview to see myself on the display so I can make sure I’m framing myself up.
I don’t have too much headroom or not enough headroom, and it’s really quite nice for this to be able to easily use it for something like vlogging or what have you. Now, the only thing I will say is that in this current version of the software, which I will say, again, is not final, I don’t have a lot of controls on this outer display.
So for a lot of that, I actually do need to come back around and control it from this side. So if I wanna go to the ultra wide, I would need to pick it up and then use the ultra wide here. So, don’t totally judge the image quality based on this early software, but the ability for me to have a device which is this thin and this light for something like vlogging is nice, especially because this cover display is absolutely massive to get my framing just right.
Like, I mean, this looks nice. Now, if you’re not just going to vlog with the device, it does of course function essentially as a little tripod. So what’s nice is, is when I have it in flex mode here, I have all of like my gallery and stuff on the bottom and my controls, and on top of that, I have a nice little preview here so I can adjust the camera just right.
And if I wanna flip over to photo mode, I can take a photo of Ken on the telephoto. Look at that. Boom. It’s also nice too ’cause I can immediately see down here a full screen shot of Ken, or as I’m taking a bunch of photos, so say if I take a burst or whatever, boom, boom, boom, and it shows up right down here.
It’s a really clever implementation of having all of this additional sort of hardware space when it comes to the screen real estate that you’ve got.
Conclusion
So I have a lot of thoughts about Honor Magic V2, but to sum it up, this hardware is absolutely terrific. I like the outer display and the aspect ratio. I like the inner display.
I like the performance. The cameras are decent, and especially considering that this is a larger format device that is legitimately thinner and lighter than some of the big boy flagships out there is incredibly impressive. The amount of engineering that went into things like the hinge with it’s made out of titanium, and you think about the batteries, that they’ve entirely designed a new battery to actually fit in here to still have good capacity, there’s a lot of stuff that they’ve done well here.
Now, I will say that as of right now, Honor Magic V2 is only available in the Chinese market. So they have not announced a global launch, and to me, I think that they really should. Like, I very much hope that there is a global version of this phone because this hardware is terrific.
Now, software-wise, it is very difficult for me to evaluate, because again, this is not remotely final software. So if they had significant improvements on that front, if they really finished the software, ’cause again, it’s not the final, it’s very, very much a prototype, then I legitimately would probably switch to this.
Like, if the software is improved enough, like this hardware is the first time that I have been legitimately tempted to move away from the Samsung Z Flip when it comes to that form factor. I love how small that device is, but considering that this is quite thin, quite light, quite easy to carry in your pocket, unlike all these other giant foldable devices, if they nail the software, man, this thing is an absolute home run.
So again, thank you very much to Honor for this blog. I know you guys are watching this thing, so please, get this software in a good sort of spot and give me a global launch. Like, I think that’s all you need to do, because man, this might be the best engineered hardware of any smartphone I’ve ever seen.
