Honor Magic V6 review: the foldable phone that finally fixes its biggest flaw

It's almost hard to believe that we've had foldable phones for seven years. That's getting on for four contract cycles for the average phone user.

While we're still waiting for Apple to play its hand in this increasingly hotly contested market, and while we're waiting for Google to do something that might genuinely rival Samsung, some of the smaller brands have been emerging as key players.

Honor is very much one of the key players right now. Hot on the heels of its impressive Magic V5, which broke new ground in terms of thickness, the Magic V6 has just launched in the UK. And it's impressive.

Compared to the Magic V5 is doesn't immediately feel that different. There are some new colour-schemes, including a controversial red with a textured leather-like panel, and the camera bump has, thankfully, been reigned in so it doesn't sit quite so awkwardly on a flat surface.

The display is every bit as good as it was before, with a fairly invisible crease, and a hinge that's said to be stronger than ever. It certainly feels like it can take some abuse.

But the real party piece lies within. Impressively, the Magic V6 has a 6,660mAh silicon-carbon battery, which is enormous for a phone that measures as little as 8.75mm thick when closed,

For general users, this means two-day battery life is within reach, and that's an absolute first for the folding phone sector. It actually address something of an issue that has been dogging folding phones, and it's not only a big battery for folding phones, it's a big battery for any phone.

And, let's bear in mind as well, this is in a handset that weighs 219g and measures 4mm when open. This means that, folded shut, it is much closer to carrying a conventional flagship phone than the chunky early folding models that felt like two handsets taped together. That's the first thing folders need to achieve, at the end of the day.

It supports 80W wired and 66W wireless charging, there's a 6.52-inch OLED display on the outside and a 7.95-inch OLED panel inside. Both offer adaptive refresh rates of up to 120Hz.

The UK model combines Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, but it's in the software where the Magic V6 starts to lose some of its shine.

MagicOS 10 is based on Android 16 and comes with seven years of updates, but it's still quite a cluttered interface, with some awkward design choices and inconsistent multitasking support.

Honor has built fabulous hardware and then filled parts of it with software that still feels as though somebody forgot the final polishing session.

The cameras tell a similar story. There is a 50-megapixel main camera, a 50-megapixel ultrawide and a 64-megapixel periscope camera offering 3x optical zoom.

That is a strong setup for a foldable, but a conventional flagship would wipe the floor with it. There are definitely still compromises, then, even if they are becoming less significant.

But this is not a bad camera phone. Far from it. The problem is that its launch price of £1,999.99 buys you the right to be extremely fussy.

At that price, “good for a foldable” sounds a little like praising an expensive restaurant because the chairs were comfortable.

Honor’s launch promotion makes the argument considerably easier. At the time of writing, the company is advertising a £500 early-bird voucher, complimentary packages worth up to £349 and one screen-damage claim within 24 months.

That potentially brings the handset down to £1,499.99 before the extras are considered, and it's pretty good value. You can be sure it'll have whatever Apple comes out with beaten into a cocked hat in terms of price.

Until that day, it's fair to say the Honor Magic V6 is one of the finest pieces of foldable hardware ever produced. Its slim design is impressive, its performance is effortless and its battery could finally remove one of the category’s biggest compromises.

MagicOS does need refinement, but it's not a disaster. And while the cameras cannot quite match the best conventional flagships, if you wade in to folding ownership expecting everything to be as good as a top Samsung, you're not doing your due diligence.

At £1,999.99, I would hesitate. At the launch price of £1,499.99, it becomes far more tempting. The Magic V6 certainly stops short of making folding phones affordable, but it might be the model that finally makes one practical enough to use every day.