For the third year running, Honor has announced what it calls the world’s thinnest book-style foldable phone. For the second year running, it has been paired with the largest battery in any foldable. This year, for its third and final move, the company went ahead and made sure it was also the first foldable with an IP69 rating.
The Honor Magic V6 was announced today at MWC in Barcelona, though Honor has played a little fast and loose with timing to guarantee those three records: The V6 won’t go on sale in China until sometime later this month, and the international release is still months away, in the second half of the year, so Honor isn’t saying anything about pricing yet. Still, I’ve had a sample of the phone for a few weeks, so its big claims aren’t all fanciful.
Last year Google proved its hardware proficiency with the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, which was the first foldable with an IP68 rating, which means the maximum rating for dust protection and almost the top rating for water. Honor has overtaken Google with the Magic V6, which boasts both IP68 and IP69 ratings, meaning it is rated to withstand submersion in water and exposure to high pressure and high temperature water jets. So now you can fold both baths and showers, not to mention the inside of an industrial carwash.
The V6 is 4mm thick when open, and 8.75mm thick when closed (well, there’s the white version – the other colors are fractionally thicker). It’s similar to the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and thinner than previous foldables, but just barely: it’s 0.15mm thinner than Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 7, and only 0.05mm thinner than last year’s Magic V5, although Honor has slimmed down its bulky camera module a bit. We’re deep into hair-splitting territory now, but it’s still enjoyable that a foldable can feel as thin as a standard slab smartphone.
The battery is more efficient. The Magic V6 has a larger 6,660mAh battery, up from 5,820mAh in the V5, and a full 50 percent larger than the Z Fold 7’s 4,400mAh. I haven’t spent enough time testing the phone to get a good idea of how long the battery lasts in practice, which I’ll save for a full review when it actually goes on sale, but even with two screens I expect it to last all day and then some. The large battery was my favorite part of the Magic V5, and now Honor has taken it even further.
By now you might have guessed that Honor has achieved this feat by using a silicon-carbon battery. This year, the amount of silicon in it has been increased from 15 to 25 percent, making the battery even more energy-dense than before. The company claims to have also developed a 32 percent silicon battery, which will be available in China exclusively in a 1TB version of the V6 – Honor hasn’t yet said how big that battery will be, but it will apparently break the 7,000mAh line.
Other specifications are typically high-end: a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, stylus support on both screens, 80W wired charging, and also wireless charging – though not magnetic Qi2. The triple rear camera includes a 64-megapixel, 3x periscope, which Honor claimed in a press briefing to have “the best telephoto in a foldable.” I can’t test it objectively right now as my sample phone is still on pre-release camera software, but I’d be surprised if it could beat the telephoto on Vivo’s recent foldables.
The Magic V6 has another trick up its sleeve: Honor has leaned forward in its efforts to create cross-compatibility with Apple devices. The Magic V6 will apparently be able to support the full software feature set of AirPods, even including Find My tracking (though, strangely, it won’t support any other Find My devices). This is in addition to the ability to sync notifications across iPhone, send them to Apple Watch, and share screens and files with iPhone or MacBooks. Honor wouldn’t confirm to me if it plans to team up with Google to support AirDrop, but you have to imagine it’s in the works.
The V6 may not be as unique as Honor’s gimbal-equipped robot phone, which was also shown at MWC. Each of its three records will sound quite modest in isolation, but hopefully they add up to a meaningful upgrade. We’ll definitely find out when we get the call In fact Will launch later this year.
Photography by Dominic Preston/The Verge
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