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Best Foldable Phone For 2026?
So far 2026 may have been about as much fun as trapping one of your more tender fleshy parts in a car door, but at least as far as foldable phones go, it's been a bit of a banger. Oppo impressed us all as usual with its excellent Find 6, Motorola released its first full-sized Razor and it was proper decent, while Honor has finally got around to rolling out this lovely weed bendy bugger right across Europe.
The Honor Magic V6 boasts a pair of gorgeous screens, some serious grunt, and one of the biggest batteries of any foldable despite sporting an impressively slender design. Here's my Honor Magic V6 review.
Honor Magic V6 Design, Thickness, and Colors
Now as usual, Honor has sped out this flexible sword in a variety of different designs. You got a bit of white and black action as well as red, and this here gorgeous gold number. That white model is still the slimmest of the bunch, just 8.75 mm thick when folded up. That's a mosquito's man sausage thinner than the white edition of the Honor Magic V5 from last year, which was 8.8 mm. All of the other colors, including this gold version, are 9 mm thick when folded up, so to be fair only a termite's toddler thicker.
Although that isn't counting the who grade camera bump of course. So the Magic V6 is approximately the same thickness as many recent foldable rivals, including Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 7, and approximately the same weight as well, just 220 g, which is pretty lightweight certainly for a full-sized foldable like this.
The Honor Magic V6 does sport a slightly more rounded finish compared with that Galaxy Z Fold 7, so it's reasonably comfortable to clutch. That whooping great camera bump actually works quite well as a finger shelf if you're desperately trying to use this thing one-handed.
Durability and IP68 and IP69 Water Resistance
Now up front you've got upgraded nano crystal shield display tech which is tougher than ever apparently, drop resistant and scratch resistant. Well, somehow I've managed to not fumble and drop this thing these past few months. Although as far as scratch resistance goes, certainly good news there; it doesn't have a pre-installed screen protector on it and yet only a couple of tiny wee nicks on that screen despite the fact I've generally treated it like utter garbage.
The materials for the back end actually change depending on what color you go for. So for instance, apparently the red has quite a soft touch finish whereas here you've got a multi-layer composite design. I think I prefer that soft touch jobby because this gold model is rather smooth which doesn't really help as far as grips concerned. It can occasionally get a wee bit mucky as well, you just need to give it a good buffing up every now and then.
The Honor Magic V6 is pretty much the only full-sized foldable phone to sport an IP68 and IP69 dust and water resistance rating. It can be temporarily immersed in liquid and can also tolerate a full-on spurt if that's what you're into. But it's a dust resistance that's particularly impressive, can handle all kinds of small particles and grot and bits of you know pocket.
Honor Magic V6 Outer Screen and Display Features
Now up front you've got a slightly larger 6.52 inch external OLED screen, marginally skinnier bezels than the previous generation, and this is the perfect size and pretty much the perfect aspect ratio for enjoying some movies or games on the go. You got a 2420x1080 pixel resolution, Full HD, so not quite as sharp as many flagship phones, but I certainly didn't notice a lack of fine detailing when I was checking out my photos or watching telly shows.
You got HDR10 and Dolby Vision streaming support in services like Netflix, natural look and contrast, gorgeous looking colors. That's on that vivid display setting; you can trick it down to the normal mode if you don't want them quite as poppy.
I really do adore the anti-reflective coating Honor has slapped on here, which is reminiscent of the Gorilla Glass Armor finish on the S26 Ultra. As you can see that anti-glare, so you've actually got a powerful studio light reflecting directly off that panel right now and you can barely even tell. This is on quite a low brightness as well. If I actually boosted that up then it would absolutely kill any sunlight dead. So yeah, if you live in a sunnier, brighter climb than Blighty at the moment, that's for damn sure then you'll be absolutely fine.
It's LTPO tech peaking at 120 hertz, so nice and silky smooth when you're flipping through all your various apps, browsing the web, whatever else. Also, if you are sensitive to that OLED flicker, you got 3840 Hz PWM dimming and that is on top of a variety of other eye comfort modes as well to help keep your peepers nice and safe.
Stereo Speakers and Bluetooth Connectivity Issues
Naturally the Honor Magic V6 sports a stereo speaker setup and it's pretty bloody good. Nice and loud but no distortion when you hit those peak volumes. I think the bass could be a bit bassier but, you know, it's perfectly decent for a bit of YouTube or Netflix or whatever. Of course, if you want to enjoy some music I'd say as always connect to some Bluetooth headphones or speakers, which the Honor Magic V6 usually does just fine when it can actually be bored.
Occasionally I'll go into the Bluetooth menu, try tapping on a speaker or whatever and the Magic V6 is like, "Nope, can't be asked for that, sorry mate." And even rebooting Bluetooth seems to do sod all in those cases; you have to reboot the entire phone to get it working again. But hey, when it does work, it works flawlessly.
Honor Magic V6 Inner Folding Screen and Crease
As for that whooping great internal screen, well this is the same size as the Magic V5, a 7.95 inch, a wee bit smaller than many rivals but still a good size for playing with multiple apps and also an ideal aspect ratio for web browsing, reading comics or whatever. Obviously not quite as well suited to movies and telly shows unless you love a bit of letterboxing or you just fancy huge chunks of the action being cropped right out.
It's similar if not identical OLED tech as the previous generation. You've got the same 2352x2172 pixel resolution, so again perfectly sharp whatever you need it for. That central crease is fairly obvious if you're not viewing the screen head-on, but in regular use it's practically invisible and there's only the subtlest of dips when you run your finger over it.
Again, the reflections from that internal screen actually aren't too bad at all compared with some rivals like the Galaxy Z Fold 7. As you can see, a lot less obvious, a lot less glare here on the Honor on the right compared with that Z Fold 7. That's why if you want a foldable you can actually use outdoors quite comfortably, well the Honor Magic V6 certainly gets my spurt of approval. Just like that front display, it's LTPO tech, 120 Hz, PWM dimming, yada yada yada.
Magic OS 10 Software and AI Features
Now on the software side, of course as you'd expect from an Honor blower, it's Honor's very own Magic OS launcher slapped on here, version 10, complete with 7 years of OS updates and monthly security patching. What an absolute smasher.
Now you got a similar vibe to other Chinese launchers like Color OS. You've still got your Google Discover feed, but if you drag down, pull down the notifications panel and then swipe to the side, you've got your control center. Very little crapware, although Honor does offer up its very own app market and oh yes, an absolute shagload of obligatory AI shenanigans including all the usual stuff; bit of AI subtitling, translation.
Though certainly some worthy entries including a bit of AI deep fake and voice cloning detection which mercifully I haven't had to use myself yet. That's supported in a small variety of apps where you might possibly get one of these scammy gits popping up pretending to be your mom or whatever.
Multitasking and App Compatibility
Of course, one of the joys of these massive foldable gits has been able to launch several apps in quick succession and Honor does allow you to open up three apps side by side using them pretty much full screen, so a similar sort of vibe to what you'll get on many other full-sized foldables. However, I have found it's not quite as smooth and satisfying doing the old multitasking here on the Honor Magic V6 compared with some rivals like the Oppo Find N6 for instance.
For one, some apps such as Google Chrome for instance simply do not support split screen multitasking; you have to open it in a floating window like so. Yes, that's even the case if you jump on into the settings, go to foldable phones, go to force multi-window. If you select all, this does force quite a few apps to open in split screen mode, but you'll see that Google Chrome is not among their number.
Otherwise it works fine, you can swap apps in and out quite easily just by replacing them like so. There is the odd bit of buggy behavior here and there from Magic OS as well, like I told you before occasionally just can't be asked to connect to Bluetooth devices, sometimes an app will go a bit shony or whatever, but you know, fairly standard stuff. Bugger all complaints on the storage because you got 512 gigs of the stuff as standard here, not expandable via micro SD, but it'll take you bloody ages to fill that up unless you're shooting a lot of 4K video or downloading several massive great games like Wuthering Waves—50 freaking gigs that is now. I get the feeling I'm probably only going to see about one or two gigs worth of the actual bloody world; I still have no idea what I'm doing in that game.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Performance and Gaming
Speaking of Wuthering Waves, I should probably bang on about the performance for a bit, and what we got stuffed in here is the Snapdragon 8 Elite, the proper full-on core version that's backed by a whopping great 16 gigs of RAM. So perhaps unsurprisingly, running several apps at once is absolutely a breeze for the Honor Magic V6.
Yes, if you do want to do gaming on this thing, well no worries there either. With a beefy bugger like the Snapdragon 8 Elite in charge, even proper hardcore mobile games like Wuthering Waves play absolutely beautifully. That is when you max out the graphical settings, flip everything up to 11, it handles it all very nicely indeed. The frame rate stays nice and stable in the high 50s quite often, and that's even if you're gaming for a good wee while because Honor has managed to cram a decent size vapor chamber in here.
While the outside bits of the phone, especially around the camera area, do get rather toasty when you are gaming for a while, there is absolutely no performance throttling whatsoever. As usual, you got that Magic OS gaming mode which you can lean on as well and cancel out notifications, you can record all of that hot anime action.
Battery Life and 80W Fast Charging
Even though this here Honor Magic V6 is just as stupidly slim as the previous generation, Honor has actually managed to enlarge the battery capacity for this generation to 6,600 milliamp hours—good old silicon carbon tech, got to love it. So that's happily beaten all of its foldable rivals, including the likes of the Oppo Find 6 and the Motorola Razer Fold which sport a sort of 6,000-ish mAh battery, still pretty impressive.
It's certainly a damn sight better than Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 7 as well with its mega 4,400 mAh battery. So if you can't keep off your blower, certainly the Magic V6 will suffice. That battery life just trickles down with regular use even when you're using that massive great internal screen. For instance, reading comics or browsing the web with a 100% battery charge and that screen brightness set to around two-thirds, you'll still enjoy about 14 to 15 hours of comics action before that battery is finally depleted.
However, do bear in mind that gaming wipes that battery considerably faster. You'll get just over 3 and a half hours of playing on Wuthering Waves on the maxed out graphics settings, mostly on the outer screen, before a fully charged battery is completely drained. That's actually pretty poor compared with a lot of just like regular flagship smartphones.
The good news is if you do find yourself running low on juice, well no worries, just bung a cable in it. You've got 80 watt wired charging on here so nice and nippy. If you frankly think that USB cables are for plebs, well no worries, you've also got 66W wireless charging support.
Honor Magic V6 Camera Specs and Photo Quality
One aspect of the Honor Magic V6 that hasn't really been upgraded versus the old V5 is that camera hardware; it's only slightly different. You've still got a 50 megapixel main sensor, you also got a 64 megapixel telephoto shooter that's now a larger 1/2 inch sensor, and finally a 50 megapixel ultra-wide angle shooter.
You know what, that camera hardware didn't really need much tinkering with anyway because it's pretty bloody good stuff for a foldable smartphone. Certainly that telephoto shooter is excellent for getting a bit closer to your subject when they're, yeah, pretty far away, but also if they're a wee bit timid. Certainly one of the best zoom setups on any foldable that I've tested, right up there with the Oppo Find 6.
As usual, Honor does tend to follow the iPhone school of bright and bold pictures, although not quite to the same degree with quite as much saturation unless you are shooting against a powerfully bright backdrop. The colors are generally fairly poppy, but if you would prefer a more authentic finish you can always swap to the natural mode instead. Even in quite soft light, the Magic V6 tends to capture a crisp image, only a slight loss in color details and none of that yellowy, warmy tint that you get with many rivals.
Of course, if you're dexterous enough to handle it, you can take selfies using that rear camera setup as well. Annoyingly, I can't get the hand gestures to work with the rear camera—that only seems to work with the selfie cameras—but you can push in the volume down button to take a selfie instead.
4K Video Recording Capabilities
As for your video type shenanigans, well you can record it up to 4K resolution with that rear camera at up to 60 frames per second. You can shoot a bit of vlogging action this way using that cover screen as a sort of preview. At that peak resolution, the stabilization remains beautifully smooth, visuals are nice and crisp, the focus is rarely fooled, and you can swap between all three sensors on the fly even with HDR video switched on. The audio is clearly snatched from all directions as well, so certainly a wee smasher for all your home movie shenanigans.
Then finally you've got yourself a pair of 20 megapixel selfie cameras here on the Honor Magic V6—one on the whopping great internal display, one on that external display. You can record up to 4K resolution video at 30 frames per second this time. It's fine for your bit of online video chatting or whatever, not the best picture quality ever, but again the audio pickup is absolutely fine.
Honor Magic V6 Global Review Verdict
All right, there you have it then. In a tasty nutshell is the Honor Magic V6 finally rolling out globally, and what a splendid wee bendy blower it is. Battery life is absolutely a highlight here, that camera tech is dependable as always, and you get slick performance as well. Just a few quirky bits here and there mostly to do with Magic OS, which is pretty much my only qualm.