I was watching the pre-launch event where a foldable smartphone tow a 1.25-tonne Diamond DA42 Twin Star aircraft down the runway for 150 meters. A phone. Towing a plane. And then the same phone was hitched to a Ferrari and pulled that too. HONOR was making a point, and it landed loud and clear – the HONOR Magic V6 is not like other foldables.
Several well-known online tech reviewers have already called this the best foldable phone available today. Having spent a good stretch of time with it as my daily driver, I think I know why they say that.
Design and Build: Pretty on the Outside, Absolutely Indestructible Inside
My review unit came in Sunrise Gold, and it looks great. Very premium, very “okay people are going to notice this.” But if I had to pick one for myself? I’d go straight for the Ferghana Red. There’s something about that flagship red colorway that just feels right for a phone of this calibre. That said, the gold unit came with a bundled protective case that deserves its own mention. It has gold trimmings around the camera bump and a cream-colored back cover that somehow elevates the whole package into something that looks more elegant than most phone cases I’ve seen. If you are going for the gold, keep the case on. It makes it look even better.
Now, the build. The HONOR Magic V6 is absurdly thin. At 4.0mm when unfolded and 8.75mm when folded, it is the thinnest foldable in the world right now. To put that into real perspective, it is actually thinner than a lot of mid-range phones, and yes, thinner than an iPhone too. Holding it while folded just feels like holding a normal phone. There is none of that thick, bulky sensation that foldables used to be known for. It sits in your hand and your pocket like it has always belonged there.
But thinness is only half the story, because HONOR also made this thing ridiculously tough. The HONOR Super Steel Hinge is rated at 2800MPa tensile strength, nearly double a car’s A-pillar, and it has been tested for 500,000 folding cycles which works out to roughly 13 years of daily use. This is the same hinge that was used to tow an actual aircraft at the pre-briefing event, earning the HONOR Magic V6 an ASIA Record for the heaviest aircraft towed by a foldable smartphone. So yes, the hinge is going to be just fine.
The display protection tells a similar story. The external screen is shielded by HONOR’s Anti-Scratch NanoCrystal Shield, which uses a 5,600-layer silicon nitride coating that offers 10x drop resistance and 15x scratch resistance over conventional glass. The inner screen gets an upgraded Ultra-Thin Glass flexible layer with a claimed 44% reduction in crease depth. And the entire device carries both IP68 and IP69 dust and water resistance ratings. No other foldable on the market has both of these simultaneously. None. That is a first, and for someone who does not always baby their devices, it is a very comforting spec to have on your side.
Display: Two Bright, Beautiful AMOLED Screens
The HONOR Magic V6 gives you two LTPO 2.0 AMOLED displays. The external screen measures 6.52 inches at 2420×1080 resolution with a pixel density of 406 PPI and up to 6000 nits peak brightness. The inner screen steps up to 7.95 inches at 2352×2172 pixels, 403 PPI, and up to 5000 nits. Both panels run adaptive 1Hz to 120Hz refresh rates, cover 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, reproduce 1.07 billion colors, and support stylus input. Both also have anti-reflective coating, which makes a noticeable difference when you are trying to read the screen under direct sunlight or bright indoor lighting.
Being AMOLED panels, the colors are rich and punchy without looking overdone. Blacks are true blacks, whites are clean, and everything in between looks vivid and accurate. The brightness on both screens is outstanding. Outdoors in the Malaysian sun, which is not exactly gentle, both screens hold up well and stay readable without you having to squint or shade the display with your palm.
My take after regular use is that I barely unfold this phone. Maybe 10% of the time. The external 6.52-inch screen is so capable and comfortable that it works perfectly as my main daily screen for calls, WhatsApp, social media, and general browsing. Unfolding feels more like switching into a bonus mode, something I do when I want to read a long article, watch YouTube, or get some gaming in on the bigger canvas. It is not a criticism at all. It is actually a compliment to how good the front screen is. HONOR did not treat it as an afterthought.
When you do unfold the phone, the inner display is something else. Colors pop, brightness is more than sufficient even outdoors, and the screen scrolls and responds beautifully at 120Hz. The crease is present, but HONOR’s claim of a 44% reduction in crease depth compared to the previous generation is noticeable. It is still there if you deliberately look or feel for it, but during normal use it just fades into the background. I stopped thinking about it after a day.
The eye comfort suite deserves a proper callout too because it is one of the most comprehensive I have come across on any phone. HONOR packs in 4320Hz PWM dimming to reduce eye strain from flickering, AI Defocus Eyecare 2.0 across more than 2000 supported apps, Circadian Night Display that adjusts the screen’s color temperature based on the time of day, Dynamic Dimming, AI Brightness Adjustment, hardware-level low blue light filtering, and AI Motion Sickness Relief. If you are the kind of person who stares at their phone for hours (no judgment, we all do it), this display is going to be noticeably kinder to your eyes than most other screens out there.
Performance and Gaming: Raw Flagship Power
The HONOR Magic V6 is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 with an Adreno 840 GPU, built on a 3nm process. This is the fastest mobile chipset Qualcomm has ever made, and the HONOR Magic V6 is the first foldable phone in the world to run it. Paired with 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB of UFS 4.1 storage, the hardware package is as flagship as it gets in 2026.
There is also the HONOR E2 chip working in the background, which handles power efficiency and thermal behavior so the Snapdragon can focus on raw performance without burning through the battery unnecessarily.
On to benchmark numbers. In AnTuTu v11, the HONOR Magic V6 registers around 4.1 million points in Performance mode, placing it firmly at the top of the Android performance charts. Geekbench 6 results in Performance mode clock in at around 3,531 for single-core and approximately 9,524 for multi-core. In the 3DMark Wild Life benchmark, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 platform scores around 23,833 points, consistent with what other top-tier Android flagships running the same chipset have achieved.
One thing worth knowing though, the HONOR Magic V6 defaults to Balanced mode out of the box, and in this mode the CPU performance is throttled significantly. Several reviewers, including GSMArena, found that switching between Balanced and Performance mode can roughly halve or double the Antutu CPU scores depending on which mode is active. The GPU scores, interestingly, were not affected by the power mode setting at all. So if you are a benchmark enthusiast or a heavy user, switch to Performance mode in the Battery settings and let it breathe. For everyday use though, Balanced mode is perfectly fine and the phone never felt sluggish to me at any point.
There is also a HONOR RAM Turbo feature that layers an additional 16GB of virtual RAM on top of the physical 16GB, giving you a combined 32GB in theory. I turned it off personally. The built-in 16GB LPDDR5X is more than enough for everything I do, and I simply prefer working off physical RAM. Faster, snappier. But the option is there if you want it.
Gaming on the inner display is a whole experience on its own. I played PUBG Mobile and Delta Force on this device extensively, and both ran beautifully. Yes, the unfolded screen is more square-ish than a typical 16:9 smartphone panel, but after a few minutes of play you stop noticing it and just enjoy the bigger canvas. Zero lag, zero stutter, smooth throughout even during the most intense firefights. Under very prolonged, synthetic benchmark stress tests some reviewers noted thermal throttling kicking in, but in actual real-world gaming sessions I did not encounter any meaningful performance dips. Mobile gaming does not get much better than this.
Camera: The HONOR AI Falcon System and Three Very Capable Lenses
The camera setup on the HONOR Magic V6 is called the HONOR AI Falcon Camera System, and it sits inside that large circular-0octagon camera bump on the rear. Three shooters: a 50MP Ultra Light Sensitive main camera at f/1.6 with OIS, a 64MP Ultra Sensing Periscope Telephoto at f/2.5 with a 1/2-inch sensor and CIPA 6.5-stop image stabilization, and a 50MP Ultrawide at f/2.2. Maximum photo resolution goes up to a massive 9216×6912 pixels. On the front, there are dual 20MP cameras at f/2.2, one for each screen, so you are never stuck reaching for an awkward selfie angle regardless of whether the phone is folded or open.
The main camera at f/1.6 has a noticeably wide aperture that pulls in more light than most, and it shows. Low light shots are well-handled and do not look muddy or overly processed. For everyday shooting, most of my photos came out with well-balanced exposure and accurate colors without needing any post-editing. Point, tap, done. The results are consistently good enough to share straight from the phone, which is really what most people actually need from a main camera.
The real standout though is the 64MP periscope telephoto. With 3x optical zoom and the ability to reach 6x optical-level zoom, it pulls in distant subjects with impressive clarity and stability. The CIPA 6.5-stop image stabilization means handheld telephoto shots come out sharp even in situations where you’d normally expect blur. I used it a lot for shooting buildings and faraway subjects and was consistently impressed by how much detail it retains at distance. Several international reviewers have called this telephoto the best on any book-style foldable right now, and based on my experience I would not argue with that.
Portrait shots are equally strong. The bokeh from the main camera is natural-looking, not the artificial “painted” blur you sometimes get from phones that are trying too hard. Faces are sharp, edges are clean, and the overall rendering looks like something you’d get from a dedicated camera rather than a phone processing shot.
The AI camera tools are baked in throughout. The HONOR AI Image Engine handles color tuning automatically through the AI Color Engine, adds Magic Video Color for richer video output, brings in AI Super Zoom for digitally extending the telephoto range further, and offers AI Enhanced Portrait and Harcourt Portrait modes for more polished people shots. AI Motion Sensing Capture is useful for shooting kids or pets, and Moving Photo adds a short living image effect to your stills.
For photo editing after the fact, the AI Editor suite gives you AI Eraser for removing unwanted objects, AI Upscale for sharpening lower-resolution shots, AI Cutout for clean subject extraction, Instant Movie for turning photos into short clips, and AI Outpainting which extends the edges of a photo beyond the original frame. It is a full toolkit inside the camera app without needing to open a separate editor.
There is also Magic Pose, a new feature on the V6 where both the external and inner displays show AI-suggested poses before you take a shot. Useful for lifestyle and portrait shooting, especially if you want guidance on how to position yourself for a more natural-looking photo.
On the video side, the HONOR Magic V6 shoots up to 4K at 60fps on both the rear and front cameras. My initial testing already looked sharp and well-handled, with good dynamic range and stable footage. I have not done a full deep-dive into the video capabilities yet, but the foundation is clearly solid.
Battery: Two Full Days Without Worry
The 6,660mAh silicon-carbon battery in this phone is remarkable, especially for a device this thin. During normal daily use, I comfortably stretched the HONOR Magic V6 to two full days on a single charge. On days where I spent a few hours gaming, it still lasted well into the next day before I needed to plug in. That is outstanding, and it is backed by a TÜV Rheinland certification for 24-hour screen-on time while unfolded.
Charging comes in at 80W wired and 66W wireless. The phone also supports wireless reverse charging for topping up accessories. Drain it to zero, hit the charger, and it recovers quickly.
AI and Software: More Features Than You’ll Probably Use
MagicOS 10 runs on top of Android 16, and the whole software experience is smooth and responsive. HONOR has also committed to 7 years of OS updates and security patches for the HONOR Magic V6, which is a strong long-term value proposition at this price.
The AI feature list on this phone is genuinely extensive. Let me run through the key ones.
Fast Flex is probably my favourite foldable-specific software trick. When you fold or unfold the phone, it can automatically trigger a split-screen AI assistant view. You can customise which AI assistant fills that split-screen slot, including Google Gemini, DeepSeek, or ChatGPT, which is a clever way to make the foldable form factor feel like it is actually working for you rather than just being a gimmick.
Google Gemini is built in natively, and using it on the large inner display is a different experience compared to a regular phone screen. The extra real estate means Gemini’s responses, schedules, and generated content actually have room to display properly. Gemini Live goes further, offering real-time visual assistance through the camera and screen sharing, which is useful if you are trying to identify something, translate something in real-time, or get context on what you are looking at.
The HONOR AI Agents are a set of system-level assistants designed for everyday scenarios. AI Settings Agent helps you find and configure settings by just describing what you want to do. AI Photos Agent helps manage and organise your photo library with search and curation. AI Screen Suggestions picks up on what is on your screen and proactively offers relevant actions. And AI Meeting Pilot is the most ambitious of the lot: it can send intelligent meeting reminders, provide real-time assistance during calls, generate structured summaries after meetings, and even produce chapter-based reviews and mind maps from recorded sessions.
Beyond the agents, you also get Call Translation for real-time translated voice calls, AI Translation across text and images, AI Writing for drafting and editing text, Magic Portal for quick contextual lookups and actions, and AI Deepfake Detection which is an increasingly relevant feature in 2026.
Multi-Flex and Parallel Space round out the multitasking story. Multi-Flex lets you quickly launch split-screen, extend a split-screen window, or run a triple-screen display. Parallel Space lets you run two instances of the same app simultaneously, which is handy if you juggle multiple accounts.
The cross-OS connectivity with Apple devices is worth its own mention for Malaysian users who run mixed setups. Via HONOR Connect, you can browse and manage iCloud files directly on the HONOR Magic V6, transfer a 1GB file to an iPhone in about 25 seconds, and access HONOR Connect on MacBook for drag-and-drop file sharing. The Magic Ring feature lets you use the HONOR Magic V6 as a second monitor for your MacBook, edit iWork files from your Mac directly on the phone, and connect AirPods with full feature support including setup animation, noise control, and Find My tracking. Notification Sharing with Apple Watch is also a new feature that keeps your wrist in the loop even when your iPhone is nearby. It requires installing HONOR Connect on iPhone and HONOR WorkStation on Mac, which is an extra step, but once set up it works reliably.
Verdict: I Want It, and You Probably Should Too
The HONOR Magic V6 is available in Malaysia starting at RM7,699.00.
After spending real time with the HONOR Magic V6, my conclusion is straightforward: this is a phone I want for myself. The displays are bright and vibrant, performance is flawless from top to bottom, and the durability gives me a confidence with this device that I rarely feel around foldables. IP68 and IP69 together means I do not have to baby it. Dropping it or getting it wet is no longer a reason to panic. If I owned this phone, I can see myself using it for a very long time.
Several reviewers have already called the HONOR Magic V6 the best foldable phone you can buy right now, and it is hard to argue with that verdict. It is the thinnest foldable in the world. It has the biggest battery ever packed into a foldable. It runs the latest flagship chipset. It has a hinge that towed an airplane. And it is IP68 plus IP69 rated when no other foldable can say the same.
The price is steep, and I won’t pretend otherwise. But if you can afford it and you want a foldable that you can actually trust over the long haul, the HONOR Magic V6 earns every ringgit. When folded, it feels like holding a normal phone. A thin one, too, thinner than most mid-rangers you’ll come across. When unfolded, it becomes something more. That is exactly what a great foldable should feel like.
More info: https://www.honor.com/my/phones/honor-magic-v6/buy/
HONOR Magic V6 Specifications at a Glance
- Display: 7.95-inch inner (5000 nits, 2352×2172) / 6.52-inch external (6000 nits, 2420×1080)
- Processor: Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (Adreno 840 GPU, 3nm)
- RAM / Storage: 16GB LPDDR5X / 512GB UFS 4.1 (+ 16GB HONOR RAM Turbo)
- Battery: 6,660mAh Silicon-Carbon
- Charging: 80W wired / 66W wireless / Wireless reverse charging
- Rear cameras: 50MP (f/1.6, OIS) + 64MP periscope telephoto (f/2.5, 3x OIS) + 50MP ultrawide (f/2.2)
- Front cameras: Dual 20MP (f/2.2)
- OS: MagicOS 10 / Android 16
- IP Rating: IP68 + IP69
- Dimensions: 156.7 x 145.6 x 4.0mm (unfolded) / 156.7 x 74.5 x 8.75mm (folded) – Ivory White
- Weight: 219g (Ivory White) / 224g (other colors)
- Colors: Ferghana Red, Ivory White, Sunrise Gold, Classic Black