With a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and 12GB of RAM, performance is smooth and fluid. You also get a generous 512GB of storage. I played for hours Kingdom Rush: Alliance The Magic V3 ran smoothly and never got hot. The large screen is great for gaming and watching videos, but I also enjoyed reading on the Kindle app. I prefer a laptop for work, but the Honor Magic V3 also came in handy as a substitute second screen when I missed my dual-monitor setup.
Battery life is excellent. Honor’s third-generation silicon carbon battery has a capacity of 5150mAh, and I was surprised to find that it lasted two days between charges. When you do need to top up, you can charge wirelessly at up to 50 watts or plug in for up to 66 watts – enough to fully charge the Magic V3 in under an hour. It warns you to unfold the phone to charge the dual batteries at full speed.
Last hurdle
Photography: Simon Hill
The Honor Magic V3 is a lovely device. Honor’s hardware is impressive, but there’s always a catch. As with the Honor Magic 6 Pro (7/10, WIRED review), its software doesn’t quite reach the same heights. Thankfully, the Magic V3 feels a lot more polished, but I still found a few minor annoyances.
The transition between the front and inner screens would sometimes fail, showing something stretched or squashed. One time, the inner screen was completely unresponsive, but closing and opening it fixed the problem. I got tired of the battery warning about the Oura app, but couldn’t find any way to stop it. Some apps, like the Play Store, kept showing the little red icon to show something new long after there was nothing new to see.
Photography: Simon Hill
The Honor Magic V3 runs Android 14 with MagicOS 8 on top, but it’s easy to customize and comes with just a smidgen of bloatware. You can also decide how to take advantage of the dual-screen display with multiple windows and different layouts in the settings. You can expect four years of OS updates and five years of security patches (shorter than the seven years promised by Google and Samsung, but not bad).
The Magic V3’s obvious competitors are the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 and the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold, and it’s a familiar trade-off: do you go for fancy software or superior hardware? The Xiaomi Mix Fold 4 is the closest device in terms of design, but it won’t be released outside of China, so the Honor Magic V3 is a better choice for most people. Despite the minor foibles, this is a truly excellent foldable phone, perhaps even the best foldable phone you can buy right now. That said, it’s still not a great buy for the price of a foldable phone. need A flip phone.
