In a show-off Near Space flight: a phone makes it to over 16,000 ft in the air, gets back to Earth with 86% battery

Ads are getting out of hand. A phone was sent some 16,000 ft in the air and then parachuted back to Earth while playing a video through the 3-hour trip. At such heights, temperatures are a bit chilly -0.4°F (-18°C) and, as you know, cold is the battery’s enemy.

Somehow, this handset managed to start its “space” trip at 100% battery levels and then, upon landing, it was at 86% – very impressive, bravo!

The hero of the day is the Honor Magic 6 Pro. And the secret is its “2nd gen silicon-carbon battery”, as Honor puts it.

Honor’s flagship Magic 6 line (consisting of the Magic 6 and the Magic 6 Pro) will launch globally alongside the Honor Magic V2 and the Magic V2 RSR Porsche Design (a luxury version of the standard Magic V2) at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that’s scheduled for the end of February.

On a side note: the Honor Magic V2 is a bijou that addresses two of the foldables’ weak spots – the outer display and the thickness. The Magic V2 features a 6.4-inch AMOLED cover screen that can do 1-120 Hz and go up to 2,500 nits of brightness. When the phone is folded, it's just 9.9mm thick (that’s the slimmest foldable there is… currently), which means you can use it in a folded state just like a regular phone.

Back to the Magic 6 Pro and its crazy trip, though. Honor collaborated with ‘Sent into Space’, a company that’s in the commercial Near Space launches. They’re located in the UK and get paid to send all kinds of stuff (a bottle of vodka, Shakespeare’s portrait, a T-Rex toy, and more) thousands of feet in the air with balloons, film the thing that’s sent to the edge of space with the Earth as a background, and then safely get them back to the ground.

There’s a minute-long video over at Honor’s X/Twitter account that shows the Magic 6 Pro’s trip. Upon taking off, the phone is put on a bracket, then a video is being played on the device. Next, the phone is already up in the air, climbing to over 16,000 ft, where it’s -0.4°F, according to the data from the promotional video. The maximum altitude isn’t specified; probably Honor will disclose it at the MWC.

Here’s the video: