Honor Magic V3 review - "A record-breaking leader in the battle of the foldables"

• The Honor Magic V3 is even lighter and thinner than the V2
• The eye comfort tech and upgraded battery life aim to help you play longer sessions
• Some AI features might not be relevant to mobile gamers

I'd hate to sound like an oldie armed with a "back in my day" quip readily aimed at passers-by at a moment's notice, but back in my day, you would've been ridiculed for imagining a phone screen that you could actually fold in half. 

I never thought I'd see the day when the mobile phone market would no longer be a battle for pocket-sized supremacy. It's all about the battle of the foldables now - and Honor might just be at the forefront of it all.

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Table of contents:

• Honor Magic V3 design and hardware
• Gaming experience and performance
• What's the verdict?

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Honor Magic V3 Design And Hardware

Weighing in at a mere 226g, the Honor Magic V3 not only slips easily into my always-hefty tote bag, but it's also slim enough to get lost in the labyrinth inside. Just when I thought foldables couldn't get any slimmer, Honor once again proved me wrong with the V3's 9.2mm thickness when folded - and an impossible 4.35mm when unfolded. 

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It comes as no surprise that I'd feel like the phone would be the most fragile thing known to man given those kinds of dimensions, but even that isn't the least bit true. The V3 is backed by the Honor Super Steel Hinge that can take up to 500,000 folding cycles - a feat I don't think I'll ever get to even if I do nothing but fold and unfold the phone all day. In fact, Honor was so darn confident in the foldable's durability that it thrust the V3 through the wringer - literally and figuratively.

To top it all off, the V3 boasts something that the V2 didn't have - its IPX8 rating. It might not seem like such a big game-changer to some, but for me - whose sweaty palms get even sweatier when gaming for too long - it's a comforting reassurance that my phone won't die an untimely death with a little bit of moisture.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The look and feel alone make the V3 an absolute joy to have and to hold. The box comes with a 66w charger (50w for wireless) and a USB-A to USB-C cable, along with a SIM tray ejector pin and a dedicated Honor case.

This time around, there's a front case included in the package too; plus, the back case has a ring around the camera that you can use as a phone stand. It's not the most ingenious invention in all the land, as this kind of back casing is quite common nowadays, but to have it included in the package - and with the official Honor brand, at that - is a welcome addition.

There's no Honor Magic Pen out of the box here, but its internal and external screens are compatible with the peripheral nonetheless. And speaking of the display, the Honor Super Armored Inner Screen can take as much of a beating as the external Honor Anti-scratch NanoCrystal Shield Screen. Colours are unmistakably vivid, but thanks to Eye Comfort Display technology, you won't have to lament your poor eyesight when you're locked in an hour-long campaign with your mates.

Gaming Experience And Performance

Naturally, this brings us to the main focus of this review, since we're all about mobile gaming here at Pocket Gamer. For a non-gaming phone, how does the V3 hold up to dedicated gaming smartphones in the market today?

The answer, in a nutshell, is a resounding "very, very well". I can't even begin to describe how wonderful it feels to be gaming on a huge display but on a portable device that's not a tablet. It's not something you think you're missing out on when you're happy to chug along with your regular smartphone, but once you've experienced gaming on the Honor's unfolded interior display, you likely wouldn't want to go back.

That's not to say that spamming buttons on the unfolded phone is going to become second nature to you once you give it a go - jamming my thumbs onto the supposedly hardy touchscreen still makes me feel a little iffy, mainly because the foldable is just so thin. There's also absolutely no grip at all given the sleekness of the device, so if you're going to be playing more intense games on it, I'd say go for a controller instead.

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That said, Bluetooth peripherals can easily connect with the V3, which I'd suggest you do over the controllers that let you slot your phone in place like the GameSir G8+ (the V3 can fit, albeit a little wonky). There's also the semi-issue of the V3 running a little bit hotter than my own gaming smartphone, which is understandable given the V3 doesn't have a dedicated cooling system. During my testing, the V3 went as high as 42 degrees Celsius while playing and remained in that range throughout the rest of my gaming session.

The 5150mAh battery, however, stayed strong all the way through (still less than the Redmagic 9 Pro, but good enough). Twenty minutes of playing Zenless Zone Zero only cost me 4% battery life, and juicing up with Honor SuperCharge got me 20% power for only 16 minutes. There's no doubt the V3 will keep your campaigns powered long enough until you stop respawning, and with the AI Defocus Display, that might not even ever happen.

Now, the aforementioned defocus tech is supposed to reduce eye strain via the on-device AI coupled with Dynamic Dimming and Circadian Night Display. To be honest, I didn't really feel any of these taking shape, but is it because the tech does its job so well that I can't tell the difference? I suppose I'll just have to trust Honor's tech team when they say the display is good for my eyes - anything that keeps me gaming longer is always a plus.

What's The Verdict?

With the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 powering the V3 under the hood, plus the 12GB RAM and 512GB storage, it's not hard to see why anyone would want to switch over to this foldable marvel for all your gaming needs. It does the job not only as an everyday phone but also as a gaming phone, especially since it's got all these quality-of-life features that come as icing on the cake.

Case in point: you can tinker around with removing unwanted objects photobombing your precious shots with the AI Eraser powered by Google Cloud, or communicate seamlessly in work meetings with the Face-to-Face Translation. I gave this feature a go myself just to see what the fuss was about, speaking in my rusty Mandarin (no Tagalog language preset, unfortunately) to see if it would register in English on the other side. It did so really well, but honestly, I don't see how this particular feature could be useful to players in this particularly gaming-centred review.

On the topic of gaming-centred features, I was actually hoping the foldable screen would have some sort of advantage to me given the multi-tasking features the phone has.

I thought I could maybe open a YouTube video or a walkthrough on one half of the screen while gaming on the other, but to my disappointment, only Love and Deepspace was able to support the split screen. Devil May Cry: Peak of Combat, for instance, worked too, but only on portrait; while for Dadish, the screen just cropped itself into an unsightly mess.

The camera system is a strong point too (a 50MP Periscope Telephoto Camera, 50MP Main Camera and 40MP Ultra-wide Camera), but other features weren't too relevant for gaming, like the hit-or-miss air gestures I tried. There's also the lack of Type-C to Type-C wired projection, with only a wireless projection feature that suffers from a noticeable input delay. I also would've appreciated a zero-latency 3.5mm jack to eliminate any lag, but with the IPX8 rating now, I really can't complain.

Overall, the Honor Magic V3 builds upon its predecessor with a host of improvements, challenging itself to go beyond boundaries where no foldable has boldly gone before. If you're a hardcore gamer, you might not find exactly what you're looking for compared to dedicated gaming smartphones - but with the V3's large and gorgeous display that will bring any game to life in an entirely new way, you might not even want to.

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