Honor’s New Foldable Phone Is The Forbidden Fruit Of A Very Frustrating Kind

A few things remain constant about Honor phones year after year. They will be powerful, they will be very thin, they will have amazing cameras, and they will not come to the United States. All these seem to be unchanged this year as well. The Honor Magic V6, unveiled at MWC 2026, is another version of that theme.

Lovely hardware and a long-lasting battery lead to this phone’s charge to make it one to consider if you’re in the market for a new, book-style foldable. There are also a few common themes from last year, including unusual thinness, a camera island with its own zip code, and a case with the same ring/stand for extra grip.

I’m a fan of Honor folders, and I appreciate the opportunity to play with one, even though most of my countrymen won’t have the same opportunity. It should be mentioned that this is not a full update (in the traditional sense) as the software on the phone is still not perfect. As such, we cannot include camera samples or performance metrics. But I’ve been using the phone for two weeks, and these are my thoughts so far.

The Honor Magic V5 sample I received last year was black and had a vegan leather backplate. It came with a case that covered the back, and a flap over hinge that was fun to play with, toy style, and added a ring stand that extends around the camera island and makes the phone easy to hold when open. I mainly used it when I was reading, or when I wanted to put the phone down to watch something.

This year’s phone case has all those same features which is great. My review sample is the gold color, which looks really nice – much preferred over black. There is also a red color with a marble pattern on it which looks good, although some reports indicate that it feels awkward to hold. I haven’t tried that one myself, but if you’re considering that version, you might want to try getting it in a store to try it on before you order it.

Both screens are AMOLED LTPO 2.0 with a dynamic refresh rate of 1-120Hz. Both are extremely bright, with the outer screen reaching 6,000 nits and the inner screen achieving 5,000 nits at peak brightness. Speaking of screens, the outer screen comes in at 6.52 inches while the inner screen is just shy of eight.

Foldable screens are already a little crazy, but Honor really succeeded with the hardware this time. To begin with, this phone has a 6,660 mAh silicon carbon battery which is as crazy as it sounds. I can’t speak to actual longevity numbers due to the beta software, but I found this to easily be a two-day phone without breaking a sweat. I’ll have to wait until the production software comes in, but this is pretty consistent.

The phone itself is 4mm thick when open (not including the camera bump, of course), and 8.57mm when closed, roughly the same size as the iPhone 17 Pro Max. And it’s a few grams lighter than Apple’s biggest handset.

The folding screen has a crease that looks like any other folding device on the market (although Samsung did show off a surprisingly flat folding screen at CES 2026). The hinge is rated for up to 500,000 folds, though it’s fully exposed – I didn’t test that actual metric.

Where this phone really shines is in its IP68 and IP69 water resistance ratings. This is a book-style foldable that achieves water and dust resistance ratings that were first achieved over a year ago by a bar-style phone – the OnePlus 13. Since then, a number of other phones have achieved those same levels of dust and water resistance, but not in a foldable device.

The closest we’ve found so far is the Pixel 10 Pro Fold with an IP68 water resistance rating. The difference between the two, is that IP69 is resistant to hot water jets. You can put this collapsible in the dishwasher. Just let that sink in – no pun intended.

Also, in the interest of disclosure I should point out that I didn’t actually test that ability. I like to test phones to their extremes, but even that is too far out of line for me. Also, I tested this phone in the winter, so no trips to the beach for me. That’s something I’d happily test when the mercury rises above Chicago.

One thing Honor is happy to talk about is how well its phones work with the Apple ecosystem. I feel like a broken record here, but in terms of the Apple ecosystem, I don’t own any Apple devices other than the iPhone 17, iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and the last-generation iPad mini, so my ability to test these features has been negligible.

I was able to, and did, test the ability to transfer files between the iPhone and the Honor Magic V6 and it worked… great. This is achieved through Honor Connect, an application that allows you to transfer files with a QR code. The app needs to be installed on the receiving iDevice, so this isn’t the seamless transfer you’d get with Airdrop, or even the Airdthe download function that Google built into Pixels.

Some Honor apps will let you connect an Apple Watch, or extend your MacBook’s screen to the phone, and transfer a file from the phone to the MacBook by touching it. Honor speaks directly to the fact that Apple doesn’t yet have a foldable phone, a gap that some people may want to take advantage of. The real question is how seamless it will feel in practice.

All in all, we are disappointed that we don’t have the final software yet. We’ll be sure to update this article if more facts come to light. We have no camera samples, no battery tests, and no benchmarks. I can tell you that historically, Honor’s cameras are usually top notch, and Honor still makes my favorite photo mode I’ve ever had on a phone.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, housed in the Magic V6, is still the undisputed king of phone processors. At last year’s Snapdragon conference, it beat leading processors from Apple and MediaTek. So, this phone is a beast in many ways.

We don’t know pricing yet, or general availability, except that it won’t be coming to the US. But we do know that this phone is great in many ways, and the US phone market is poor for not being able to hear it. When I went to CES 2026, the Magic V5 was my primary phone because of its camera and battery life, and it did not disappoint. When IFA and CES roll around next year, the V6 will likely take its place.