After living with the Honor Magic V6, here’s why I think it’ll be the last great ‘tall’ foldable phone

Introduction

Domestic rivals might regularly skip Europe, due to foldable phones being more of a niche proposition to Western audiences than Chinese ones, but Honor has been happily bringing the fight to Samsung for five generations now. That makes the Magic V6 the latest in a string of book-style handsets that’ve gotten slimmer and slicker with each new iteration.

This year’s effort has an even bigger battery than the retiring Honor Magic V5, along with class-leading resistance ratings and a new CPU generation. Software that’s better suited to multitasking and a legitimate claim to being the World’s Thinnest Foldable should seal the deal.

But while Honor officially pipped home turf rival Oppo’s Find N6 to an official reveal, it’s taken months for the Magic V6 to make it to countries outside of China. Now Samsung’s rumoured wider Galaxy Z Fold 8 is just a few weeks away and Motorola has entered the fray in North America, where Honor (and other Chinese brands) are entirely absent. Apple is also expected to finally throw its hat in the ring by September – after which point I think the trend for tall, narrow foldables will well and truly be over.

The other stumbling block? A spicy £2000 retail price, although launch discounts do bring that down to a slightly more attainable £1500. Time to find out if there’s enough here to make you forget about the competition.

Is the Honor Magic V6 the thinnest book-style foldable?

Honor has played hot potato with Samsung and Oppo over the ‘world’s thinnest book-style foldable’ title for a few generations now; whether the Magic V6 has done enough depends whether or not you buy the white version, which has a super-slim back panel made from aerospace fibre. This makes the phone just 8.75mm when folded (not counting the camera bump) and only 4.0mm at its narrowest point when open.

The black and red models are 9.0mm when folded and 4.1mm while unfolded, so there’s very little in it, but enough for Honor to once again say you won’t find thinner elsewhere – at least until Samsung and Apple show their hands later in the year. It’s enough to make the Magic V6 feel like a traditional candybar phone when shut, helped by the svelte 219g weight. That was true of the old model, though, as we’re talking fractions of millimetres of improvement between generations that are impossible to spot by eye or in the hand.

Design-wise my red review unit is a real head-turner, with a gold coloured aluminium frame, diamond patterned hinge and an eco-leather rear panel that feels like suede. The latter is fully fingerprint resistant, with a colour tone that’s ruby-rich when viewed face on but almost silver at extreme angles in the right light; the black model is far more subtle, though I’ve only seen it in photos. The frame’s rounded-off sides make it a very comfortable thing to hold. Honor also gets a thumbs up for perfectly matching the bundled case to the phone’s finish; it’s got a handy kickstand hidden around the camera bezel so is well worth clipping on.

That bezel has been carried over from the Magic V5 almost wholesale, with the same geometric pattern and knurled edging. It sticks out a fair bit from the phone body, but less so than it did on the outgoing phone. It’s otherwise a very similar story at the sides, with a fingerprint-sensing power button that’s satisfyingly speedy and speaker grilles in opposing corners for convincing stereo sound. The punch-hole selfie camera can do basic facial recognition, but not the kind that’ll authenticate your banking apps like the Magic 8 Pro.

It’s underneath that the real work has been done. Honor says the stainless steel hinge is now twice as strong as a car’s A-pillar, opening with a reassuring amount of resistance, and rated for over half a million opens and folds. It’s also sealed shut tight enough at either end the Magic V6 has earned both IP68 and IP69 ratings. That’s class-leading dust and water resistance right there, which should reassure anyone worried about spending big money on a delicate piece of tech.

Have the Honor Magic V6’s screens improved from last year?

The Magic V6 might not physically be any bigger than its predecessor, but Honor has slimmed the outer screen’s bezels down enough that you’re getting a 6.52in panel this time out – a welcome bump from the 6.43in one we got last year. It’s a beauty of an OLED, with sharp resolution, 1-120Hz variable refresh rate, and the sort of impactful colours I expect from the panel tech. The aspect ratio also gets very close to that of a non-folding phone.

Inside, the 7.95in flexible OLED display isn’t far behind. It has an equally high resolution with great clarity, a matching variable refresh rate (which was quick to react to scrolling and onscreen motion) and equally eye-grabbing colours. The new anti-reflective coating doesn’t look – or feel – as plasticky as before and is usefully effective at stopping distracting reflections while holding the phone face-on.

As for the crease? It’s still there, but less noticeable than last year. The Magic V5 already did a good job on this front so Honor has definitely made an improvement between generations, but it can’t quite match the Oppo Find N6’s near-invisible crease.

Both screens also have stylus support, although Honor doesn’t include one in the box.

Honor claims a ridiculous 6000 nits peak brightness for HDR content on the outer screen, or 5000 nits on the inner one; that only applies to the tiniest portion of the screen, though. For the most part I thought each screen did very well, never being too dim to see in bright outdoor environments, and being usefully brighter than the Galaxy Z Fold 7.

The Magic V6’s speakers are again split across its two halves, with one grille at the bottom right when opened and the other at the top left. It’s still all too easy to block one when holding the phone in landscape, but there’s a good amount of volume and clarity is decent enough for a phone.

Are the Honor Magic V6’s cameras class-leading?

The Magic V6’s rear camera trio will seem very similar to anyone that used the old Magic V5. The 50MP lead lens, 64MP periscope telephoto (good for 3x magnification) and 50MP ultrawide are essentially unchanged, while tweaks to the camera app have largely focused on usability.

You still get to pick between Natural, Vibrant and Authentic colour tones, as well as a bunch of treatments that try to mimic analogue film stock, and a few ‘Magic Colour’ presets that replicate seasonal hues. That’s on top of the selection of Instagram-style filters, so you really can dial in a particular look before you even press the shutter button. I bounced between Natural – which gives a treatment that stays very true to life – and Authentic, which has a subtle vignetting effect and more pronounced grain.

This setup was enough to put Honor among the very best foldables for photography last year, and based on my time with the V6 I think that’s still the case in 2026. Daytime performance is excellent, with all three lenses capturing vibrant colours and there being plenty of dynamic range on display. Honor still prioritises highlights over shadows, so bright skies are rarely blown out. There’s no shortage of detail from the main snapper, albeit not to the level of the best non-folding flagships – the sensor is only so big, after all.

Bokeh blur in the portrait mode is convincing enough and all three lenses can double as macro shooters. As ever with a foldable, you’ll want to open up the V6 and use the cover display to frame selfies using the rear camera, as the 20MP punch-hole sensors are merely OK.

The 3x zoom lens is better than every rival I’ve tried for clarity; it has a larger sensor than the Oppo, plus more pixels than either the Samsung or Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold. Generative AI zoom begins at 30x magnification and won’t be to all tastes, but I appreciate that it’s not as keen to hallucinate objects into existence than previous Honor phones were.

It’s low light where the limits of the smaller sensors begin to show in earnest. Some of my shots leaned towards being oversharpened, with the processing having to make up the difference. The sun setting doesn’t immediately spell disaster, but you’ve got to be more selective with your shots – moving subjects become that much harder, while sharpness decreases across the board and noise is more prominent. The ultrawide is weakest here, looking much softer than the other lenses.

My biggest takeaway was that Honor’s imaging pipeline remains scattergun in its effectiveness. Some pics would be spot on, but others would be grainy and others still appeared overly smooth. Exposure could vary between lenses more widely at night too. The Oppo Find N6 is more consistent, but can’t hit the same highs the Honor can.

Is the MagicOS Android skin well suited to a foldable form factor?

The styling still leans too heavily into Apple’s liquid glass look for my liking, but MagicOS 10’s foldable-specific tweaks largely made up for it during my time with the Magic V6.

As well as a 50/50 split view and floating windows, the new Multi-Flex mode lets you have three apps open at once on the inner display, with one taking the majority of the screen space but the other two just a tap away – plus there’s the option to have another app in a floating window on top. It’s up there with Oppo’s Boundless View for convenience. Quite why Google Chrome doesn’t work with it is a mystery, though; a web browser is top of my list for apps I want to multitask with.

I’m less enthused by the ramming of AI down your throat. The ‘a’ and ‘i’ in ‘MagicOS’ even glow during the initial Android boot, in case you somehow forgot about the tech world’s latest obsession. Beyond familiar features like live subtitles, foreign language translation (both face-to-face and during calls) and AI image editing, there’s a generative photo-to-video tool and the AI memories hub for storing screenshots and voice notes. The AI settings agent is then a chatbot that can change things like font size or screen brightness through conversational language. A double tap of the power button can be used as a shortcut to get to your favourite faster.

There’s the usual abundant selection of own-brand apps on top of Google’s defaults, with everything being dumped across multiple homescreens by default. It can be overwhelming if you’ve copied all your apps from another handset. After a bit of cleaning I felt more at home, and liked how much customisation is on offer throughout the interface.

It’s all based on Android 16 and comes with the promise of seven OS upgrades over its lifetime, which is as good as it gets in the Android world.

Cut me and I bleed Android, but Apple users will be interested in how this phone can integrate with your MacBook. Install Honor Connect and your phone can become a second screen, share files directly to a Mac, and browse Keynote, Pages and Numbers files saved to iCloud. Being able to control the more advanced features of your AirPods is also neat.

How does the Honor Magic V6’s CPU and battery compare to rival foldables?

This isn’t the first foldable I’ve used with Qualcomm’s top-spec Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 silicon – but unlike the Oppo Find N6, which dropped a CPU core in order to tame temperatures, the Magic V6 has the full eight. Honor also found room inside for a vapor chamber, something you won’t find in the Galaxy Z Fold 7. Combined with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, this should be a more than capable performer.

That cooling system can only do so much, however, forcing Honor to dial back clock speeds in the Standard power profile. Synthetic tests show a huge drop-off as a result, with scores being half that of rival foldables. Switching to the Performance profile uncorks the chipset, helping it come out on top over both the Oppo Find N6 and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 in the majority of tests.

Does that mean Performance mode is a requirement for everyday use or while gaming? Not at all. The Magic V6 feels perfectly responsive at all times, never getting overly hot and able to play The Division Resurgence at high details and a smooth frame rate for over an hour. The GPU doesn’t really benefit from the Performance mode anyway, with similar scores in 3DMark to the Standard profile. Unless you care about raw numbers, you’ll be perfectly happy with the V6’s level of pep at stock settings.

Honor also continues to impress on the battery front, having squished a massive 6600mAh silicon-carbon unit inside the Magic V6’s slender shell. That’s a big boost from the Magic V5’s 5820mAh cell and a big jump up from the Oppo Find N6, which was the previous battery champ. It absolutely eclipses Samsung’s meagre 4400mAh Z Fold 7.

Amazingly the Chinese version climbs as high as 7150mAh depending on storage capacity, but it’s hard to feel short-changed when the international model I tested can comfortably last two days between top-ups. Not even a bunch of gaming and video streaming on the inner screen was enough to fully deplete it in a single day.

I found the rival Oppo was a little more energy efficient, despite the Honor being overly keen to postpone or cull background apps. Having one fewer CPU core probably works to the Find N6’s advantage there. Non-folding flagships also remain the go-to if you want to last as long as possible away from the mains, but this is still up there with the best book-style handsets for lifespan. It’s comfortably ahead of anything in the Google and Samsung camps.

Chinese phone makers are seemingly as unwilling as ever to trade fast proprietary wireless charging speeds for the slower convenience of Qi2, so there are no magnets built into the Magic V6. That does mean it’ll refuel at a nippy 66W with a compatible charging pad, though, or an even speedier 80W over USB-C. That’s enough for a full refuel in just under an hour.

Should you buy the Honor Magic V6 in 2026?

If foldable fans found it tricky to pick their favourite from last year’s selection, 2026 is going to be even more of a head-scratcher. The Magic V6 has improved on its predecessor in all the right places, so is now right up there with the best of the breed.

Wider availability will give it the edge over the Oppo Find N6 for most people, while the slimmer build and better battery life has the Pixel 10 Pro Fold licked. Pricing is more sensible than the Motorola Razr Fold too, at least while launch day discounts remain in place. Photography gains aren’t huge, but this can snap a very fine pic for a foldable. I still think Samsung has the edge on software, but the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is facing imminent retirement and it’s unlikely the firm will have silicon-carbon battery tech ready in time for its replacement to rival the Honor’s outstanding longevity.

Wider foldables might quickly become the norm if Apple decrees it – after all, where the iPhone goes most rival phones tend to follow – so this could be the last narrow book-style handset we get from Honor. If you want high quality cameras and brilliant battery life in this specific form factor, the Magic V6 should be at the top of your list.

What are the Honor Magic V6’s technical specifications?