I love the HONOR Magic V3's astounding hardware but I'm stumped by its software

Update, September 5, 2024 (10:00 PM ET): In the review below, we mentioned an issue in which HTML code would appear in the face-to-face translation app. However, HONOR tells us that this was found and fixed in the latest software update, so it should not happen on retail units. We have updated the text below to reflect this.

Original article, September 5, 2024 (09:00 AM ET): Recently, we learned that the foldable phone category is on a significant upswing globally, and one company is at the forefront: HONOR. The Chinese brand’s foldable sales reportedly grew by a whopping 455% year-over-year. This success was primarily based on the well-received HONOR Magic V2, the thinnest book-style foldable you could get when it came out.

Now, here we are with the follow-up: the HONOR Magic V3. The company has outdone itself again regarding thinness, as the Magic V3 makes the Magic V2 seem like a chunker in comparison. Once again, it earns HONOR the privilege of saying it has the thinnest book-style foldable on the market anywhere — as opposed to Google, which needs to lamely tack “…in the United States” to the small print of any of its claims of foldable records.

But making your foldable phone thin is only part of what will make it a good phone. I got to use the HONOR Magic V3 for about a week, and while I will admit its design is absolutely incredible, hardware alone can’t entice me to use this as my daily driver.

The most beautiful foldable I’ve ever used

Before I get into things here, let me be upfront: I am not a foldable phone enthusiast. From the launch of the original Galaxy Fold in 2019 to the launch of the Galaxy Z Fold 6 just a few months ago, I’ve been asking the same question: “But why?” Why should I spend $1,000 more on a phone that folds instead of buying a much less expensive, much more durable slab phone that does pretty much all the same things, sometimes even better? So far, no foldable I’ve used has fully won me over.

During the first few moments I held the HONOR Magic V3, though, my mind was temporarily changed. This phone is so, so thin… almost impossibly thin. The actual folded thickness, minus the camera bump, is 9.2mm, which is only slightly thicker than the Galaxy S24 Ultra. At 230g, it is lighter than the Galaxy S24 Ultra, too (the black version, for some reason, is even lighter at 226g). In other words, it is the first foldable I’ve touched that, when folded, feels truly like a “normal” smartphone.

It’s not only the thinness at play here. Book-style foldables usually have a hinge that juts out so far on the left side that it feels oblong and tricky to hold. With too much weight on that side of the device, gripping it in one hand feels awkward. The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold has this problem, as does the Galaxy Z Fold 6. The HONOR Magic V3, though, doesn’t — or at least is closer to not having the problem than any other foldable I’ve used.

Simply put, using the Magic V3 in its folded state feels just like using a Galaxy S24 Ultra, Pixel 9 Pro XL, iPhone 15 Pro Max, or any other big smartphone out there. HONOR didn’t skimp much on specs, either, considering the cover display is a gorgeous 6.43-inch LTPO OLED with up to 5,000 nits of brightness and an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate. Even if you never unfolded it, you would likely be happy with the design of this device.

But then you unfold it, and it’s wondrous. The inner 7.92-inch OLED display has a screen-to-body ratio of 90.5%, interrupted only by thin uniform bezels and a center-right display cutout for a selfie camera. It’s bright and smooth with the same adaptive 120Hz refresh rate as the cover display. It’s an enormous canvas on which you could watch videos, play games, or even get some work done with all the screen real estate you could want from something that still fits in your pocket. Even the display crease is less pronounced than on any other foldable I’ve used before — book-style or clamshell.

Because it’s so thin when unfolded (only 4.35mm!), it feels light as a feather. If it didn’t fold, it would be an incredible compact tablet for people who want something more powerful than an e-reader but less bulky than even an iPad Mini. It’s so thin that the USB-C port barely has room to exist. Somehow, even with all this thinness, HONOR still managed to include an IPX8 rating — a nice upgrade over the Magic V2, which didn’t have any IP rating at all.

Even the back of the phone is wonderful. HONOR went with a faux leather cover in three elegant colorways: Black, Green, and Reddish Brown (the color you see in my photos). It feels nice to the touch and prevents the phone from being super slippery (seriously, why don’t all phones have faux leather backs?). The color also beautifully complements the soft gold accents around the phone’s edges and surrounding the rear camera module.

Speaking of the camera module, it’s… hefty. It is very big and very thick, and its octagonal shape is quite bold. I can’t say I’m in love with it, but I do appreciate that it is mounted in the center so the phone doesn’t wobble when resting on a desk. The Galaxy Z Fold 6 is a wobbly nightmare in that position, so kudos to HONOR for doing this right.

Honestly, that mild chuff of the camera bump is all I have to criticize about this phone’s design. Physically, this is peak foldable phone — at least until HONOR inevitably outdoes itself next year with what I can only assume will be called the HONOR Magic V4. If I never turned the phone on, I would give it a 10/10. No notes.

However, I can’t fully review a smartphone until I turn it on, and that’s where the Magic V3 starts tripping over itself.

Some of the worst software I’ve ever used

The HONOR Magic V3 ships with Android 14 out of the box, skinned over with Magic OS 8.0.1. When we ranked Android skins earlier this year, Magic OS didn’t come in last place, but it did come in third-last, just above Xiaomi’s ad-ridden Hyper OS and TECNO’s anemic Hi OS in second-last and last place, respectively. Unfortunately, Magic OS has not significantly progressed with the Magic V3.

With Magic OS, HONOR commits pretty much every cardinal sin you can with an Android skin. Turning off the app drawer, augmenting a dramatically altered notification drop-down with an iOS-like control center that is literally called Control Center, pre-installing a ton of bloatware (including AliExpress, Booking.com, and Amazon Shopping), publishing terrible English translations (like “New camera, know you better”), making the overall aesthetic way too much like iOS — the list goes on and on.

Even the AI-powered features HONOR is heavily promoting with this phone’s launch are ho-hum at best. HONOR AI Eraser is just Google’s Magic Eraser but built into HONOR’s Gallery app (literally: Google Cloud powers it). By using the Google Photos app instead — which comes pre-installed on the Magic V3 — you could get the same or better results.

Meanwhile, HONOR’s face-to-face translation service needs some work. As the name suggests, it’s very similar to Google’s own dual-screen translation systems built into Google Assistant (and, more recently, Google Translate). While holding the Magic V3 unfolded, you can look at the internal screen, and the person you’re communicating with can look at the cover screen. Then, you can speak to the phone in your language, the other person can speak in their language, and you can both see and hear translations back, allowing you to get around the language barrier.

Unfortunately, this app is clunky. It’s confusing to set up (there’s no app by default; you need to “create” the app by going to Android Settings > Assistant > Face-to-face translation and adding a shortcut to the home screen), and it’s also confusing to use. For example, the language on the left (French, in the screenshot below) appears on the cover display, while the language on the right (English) is what appears on the interior display. This feels backward to me because I’m speaking English and looking at the inner display and want it translated to French on the cover display, so shouldn’t it be the other way around?

In the screenshot above, you’ll also notice the app has created HTML code for three apostrophes. This was a bug present in an early release of the phone’s software, and HONOR has since patched it with the latest release.

The third new AI feature lives in the HONOR Notes app. It allows you to take a written/typed note while simultaneously recording audio. As you record the audio, it will transcribe the conversation and even translate it. However, it doesn’t offer a summary of the audio, which is where generative AI would really be useful, especially for long lectures and interviews. So really, this just ends up being a way to conveniently take written notes while recording and transcribing audio, which is great — but not really the AI-powered app most would hope for in 2024.

I will give credit where it’s due, though. Magic OS has a terrific theming system and a full-color always-on display that shows your wallpaper, a nice feature that even the Pixel 9 series doesn’t have. The Magic Portal system — which allows you to drag and drop content from one app to another intelligently — is also genuinely useful, supporting over 150 apps now. Finally, and most importantly, HONOR has promised four Android upgrades and five years of security patches for the Magic V3, one of the best commitments we’ve ever seen from the brand, though not on par with Google and Samsung.

Ultimately, Magic OS isn’t all bad; it just gets so much wrong that you tend to forget about the things it gets right.

Performance is great, but battery life isn’t

Inside the Magic V3, you’ll find many of the top-of-the-line specs you’d want from a premium Android flagship. At the top of the heap, you have the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, which is still the best Android chipset you can buy (until the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 launches in just a month or so). Paired with that, we have 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, making the Magic V3 a real performer.

As one would expect, the phone handled all the tasks I threw at it without breaking a sweat. It also has plenty of smooth animations, such as when you jump from the cover display to the interior display when unfolding the phone. Even playing Genshin Impact on the giant interior display was a smooth affair. If a performant foldable phone is what you crave, the HONOR Magic V3 delivers — and then some.

Unfortunately, all that performance comes at a significant price: battery life. Remember how thin the Magic V3 is? Samsung, Google, OnePlus, and other OEMs haven’t gone that thin with their foldables yet, and this is one reason why. A chassis only 4.35mm thick doesn’t leave much room for a battery cell.

HONOR made a valiant effort to offset this problem by bringing in a silicon-carbon battery. The company says the battery is made up of over 10% silicon, which it claims is an industry-first. The large capacity of the battery (5,150mAh) combined with this technical achievement would suggest battery life would be great here. But it’s just not. I saw battery life drop at an alarmingly fast rate while doing my testing — far faster than I’ve seen with any slab-style phone I’ve tested recently. Just during the lengthy install of Genshin Impact, the battery dropped by about 8%. Ouch. The battery dropped a lot while playing the game, too. Obviously, higher battery consumption is expected when playing this game on the big internal display, but not by as much as I saw.

Thankfully, you can offset this problem with the Magic V3’s fast wired and wireless charging. With the included HONOR SuperCharge wall adapter and USB-C cable, you can see up to 66W of wired charging speeds, which should get you from zero to full in under an hour. With a SuperCharge wireless charger (sold separately), you can see up to 50W speeds. That last bit is a nice upgrade over the Magic V2, which sadly did not support any kind of wireless charging. Both of these features far outclass both Google’s and Samsung’s foldables, which are still stuck in the Stone Age when it comes to charging speeds.

A solid camera experience is encouraging

The cameras on the HONOR Magic V3 are comprised of high-end hardware, though not quite as impressive as the Magic 6 Pro we saw earlier this year. The rear camera module has the flagship phone trifecta: premium wide, ultrawide, and telephoto lenses. Each one is slightly better than what we saw on last year’s model. On that same front, we have two selfie cameras: one on the cover display and one on the interior display. Those have also been upgraded, meaning we have five new cameras on the Magic V3.

All in all, I am impressed with what the Magic V3 can do in terms of photography. The 40MP ultrawide and the 50MP zoom lenses, in particular, perfectly match the color output of the 50MP primary shooter.

The 3.5x shot above is noteworthy because it’s an optical capture: no digital cropping is involved. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said once you go beyond 3.5x. Things hold up just fine at 10x, but beyond that, you get into shaky territory

Of course, you should pretty much never zoom in past 10x on any smartphone and still expect good results, but it’s great to see that the HONOR Magic V3 holds its own in the zoom department up to 10x.

Selfies with this phone are also pretty notable. You have three choices for selfies: the cover display cutout, the inner display cutout, and the rear module. The display cutouts are both the same 20MP sensor, so they produce nearly identical results:

However, this being a foldable phone, you should almost never use the selfie cameras for selfies (wild, I know). Instead, use the far superior rear camera by unfolding the phone and flipping it around to use the cover display as a viewfinder. Not only will this give you better photos, but it will also allow you to zoom in 3.5x on your face without any loss of detail. I don’t recommend doing this, but you can!

The one thing I’ll say about the Magic V3 that I’m not a fan of is how much it pushes the colors. People seem to like this level of saturation — it’s one of the reasons Samsung cameras are some of the most popular and best camera phones you can get — but I think it’s just too much. I prefer the more subdued coloring of the Pixel line, but that’s all a matter of taste.

You can check out full-resolution versions of these shots at this Google Drive link.

Finally, for video, you get 4K with all cameras. However, you only get 60fps with the rear cameras when shooting in 4K; the two selfie cams max out at 4K/30fps. Still, you’re going to see great video footage from this phone thanks to the high-res cameras and the optical image stabilization (OIS) on the three rear lenses.

HONOR Magic V3 review: Tainted love

Physically, the HONOR Magic V3 is a masterpiece. It’s impossibly thin, incredibly powerful, and HONOR took the time to address some major pain points of its predecessor, such as bringing in wireless charging and an IP rating. It is a tangible upgrade over the Magic V2, an engineering marvel, and will have wide availability in Europe only a few months after its release in China — something that definitively did not happen with the Magic V2 after it was delayed into oblivion. Without any further investigation past its design and raw hardware, this phone is a slam dunk.

However, I still can’t recommend this as a viable alternative to other foldables on the market simply because the software and battery life wreck my enjoyment of using it. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 ($1899.99 at Samsung) is the most obvious competitor, and it has far wider availability, a resoundingly better Android experience, a longer software upgrade commitment, and demonstrably better AI-based features in the Galaxy AI portfolio.

Meanwhile, the just-launched Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold ($1799 at Amazon) comes with what many would consider to be the best Android skin, the incredible Pixel Camera experience, way better AI, and deep integration with the wider Google ecosystem. Yeah, neither of these phones is even close to being as thin as the Magic V3, but the excitement over its thinness will wear off, while disappointment with Magic OS and poor battery life certainly will not.

That all being said, personally, the HONOR Magic V3 is a touchstone device for me. Like I said earlier, before I turned it on, it was the first foldable phone that I thought to myself, “Wow, I could use this.” Granted, there still aren’t enough reasons for me to pay close to $2,000 for a foldable phone, but the design of this one legitimately wowed me into thinking, just for a moment, that a foldable might really be the smartphone future Android OEMs say they are.

In the end, though, I’ll be sticking with my slab phones for now. But the Magic V3 has shown me a glimmer of a future I hadn’t really thought possible, and that is an achievement.