Equipped with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and 12GB of RAM, it delivers smooth performance and also comes with a massive 512GB of storage. Kingdom Rush: Alliance The Magic V3 had no stuttering and no overheating. The large screen is great for gaming and videos, but I also enjoyed reading books on the Kindle app. I prefer a laptop for work, but the Honor Magic V3 was a great second screen replacement when I missed my dual monitor setup.
Battery life is excellent. Honor’s third-generation Silicon Carbon battery has a 5,150mAh capacity, and I was surprised it lasted two days without a charge. When you need to charge, you can charge wirelessly at up to 50 watts, or plug it in at up to 66 watts. You can fully charge the Magic V3 in under an hour. You’ll be alerted to open the phone to charge the dual batteries at maximum speed.
The final hurdle
Photo: Simon Hill
The Honor Magic V3 is a great device. Honor’s hardware is very impressive, but it does have its flaws. As I felt with the Honor Magic 6 Pro (7/10, WIRED review), the software just isn’t up to the same standard. I’m happy to say that the Magic V3 feels much more polished, but there were still a few things that annoyed me a bit.
Switching between the front and inner screens sometimes didn’t work well, causing the screens to appear stretched or shrunk. Once, the inner screen became completely unresponsive, but closing and opening it fixed the issue. I was tired of the battery warning in the Oura app, but couldn’t find a way to stop it. Certain apps, like the Play Store, kept showing me a little red icon to show me something new long after there was nothing new left.
Photo: Simon Hill
The Honor Magic V3 runs Android 14 with MagicOS 8 on top, but it’s easy to customize and comes with very little bloatware. In the settings, you can also decide how you want to take advantage of the dual screens with multiple windows and different layouts. You can expect four years of OS updates and five years of security patches (not quite the seven years promised by Google and Samsung, but still 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 common trade-off: sleek software or better 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 the better choice for most people. Despite its small flaws, this is a really good foldable smartphone, and maybe the best foldable smartphone you can buy right now. That said, need Folding mobile phone.
