Honor’s Magic V5 is the thinnest foldable yet, but that’s not why it matters

Honor’s Magic V5 is the thinnest book-style foldable in the world, but you probably couldn’t tell.

It’s just 0.1mm thinner — that’s four-thousandths of an inch — than the Oppo Find N5 or Samsung’s recent Galaxy Z Fold 7. If that’s a difference you claim to perceive, then I’m afraid I simply don’t believe you. I’ve put the V5 side by side with the Find N5 and I can barely feel the difference, let alone see it.

Fortunately, the Magic V5 has one extra trick up its sleeve: better battery life than either of those phones, and quite substantially so when compared to the Samsung, solving one of the last concerns people have about switching to folding phones.

The Magic V5 was announced in China early last month, but today it was released in Europe too, where it costs £1,699.99 / €1,999 (around $2,300). That already gives it a leg up over the Oppo Find N5, which isn’t available outside Asia. Don’t expect it to officially release in the US, though.

I said when I reviewed that Oppo phone in February that it would mark the start of diminishing returns for thinner foldables, a point where things simply can’t get thinner, and here we are. The returns, they are diminished.

This may be the thinnest foldable in the world, but it’s by such a fractional amount that it simply doesn’t matter.