Honor Magic V5 vs Galaxy Z Fold 7: there can be only one!
The Honor Magic V5 is going international! Oops, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is already here. Well... this is going to be awkward!
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Foldable smartphone fans are spoiled for choice this summer! The screens are growing, the bodies are thinning and the major complaints and cons of having a foldable are slowly getting dropped. They very much function and feel like a "normal" smartphone nowadays, when folded. No more brick in your pocket, no awkward small cover screen. And then, when they open up, they reveal beautiful, big internal screens.
When I say these words, the two most recent phones that come to mind are the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Honor Magic V5. Each notable for their own thing. Honor marketed the Magic V5 as the "thinnest foldable phone" when it launched in July. Packed to the brim with top-tier hardware, including a thin but dense Si/C battery, it takes steady aim at the flagships and big brands out there.
The Galaxy Z Fold 7 went through a transformation of its own. Thus far, Samsung insisted on Z Fold models to be super narrow when folded, and to have S Pen support. As a result, they kind of felt like tiny bricks with awkward cover screens in a world where the competitors were making these super-thin and wide phones like the Magic V5. So, Samsung bit the bullet and made its own super-thin and wide Galaxy Z Fold 7, which looks stunning. And also stunned long time fans by removing support for the S Pen — can't have a digitizer and thinness in the same sentence, I guess.
It goes without saying is that both of these are very similar in specs, experience on offer, and price. So, we dove in for a deep comparison:
Honor Magic V5 vs Galaxy Z Fold 7 differences explained:
| Honor Magic V5 | Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 |
|---|---|
| 8.8 mm folded, 4.1 mm unfolded, 217 g | 8.9 mm folded, 4.2 mm unfolded, 215 gr |
| 6.4" cover screen, 21:9 ratio | 6.5" cover screen, 21:9 ratio |
| 5,000 nits peak brightness | 2,600 nits peak brightness |
| Triple rear camera (50 MP / 50 MP / 64 MP) Two 20 MP selfie cameras | Triple rear camera (200 MP / 12 MP / 10 MP) Two 10 MP selfie cameras |
| Snapdragon 8 Elite 3 nm, 4.32 GHz | Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy 3 nm, 4.47 GHz |
| 16 GB / 512 GB | 12 GB / 256 GB 12 GB / 512 GB 16 GB / 1 TB |
| 5,820 mAh Si/C battery | 4,400 mAh LiPo battery |
| IP58 and IP59 Dust-protected, splash-proof, water-protected | IP48 Particle protection, water-protected |
Table of Contents:
Design and Display Quality
8 inches to digital heaven
Side by side, these are very similar in dimensions. The Magic V5 does look and feel a little softer with its more rounded corners, while the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is all-business with right angles and stark, edge-to-edge lines. But you get about the same size device and display to work with:
| Honor Magic V5 | Galaxy Z Fold 7 |
|---|---|
| Thickness 8.8 mm / 4.1 mm | Thickness 8.9 mm / 4.2 mm |
| Dimensions 156.8 x 145.9 | Dimensions 158.4 x 143.2 |
| Weight 217 g | Weight 215 g |
Let's address the thinness controversy. The official Honor Magic V5 specs say it's only 8.8 mm thin. Take the caliper to it, and you may find that reality is slightly different — maybe 0.15 mm thicker, for example. Unfolded, it also doesn't get down exactly to 4.1 mm. The official answer to this thinness-gate is firstly that the white Honor magic V5 is the thinnest version of the phone, presumably due to finish thickness. And secondly, it comes with screen protectors pre-installed on the inside and outside panel, which also add a few micrometers.
So, while the specs say that the Honor Magic V5 is slightly slimmer, you may find that, fresh out of the box, the Z Fold 7 is actually the very, very slightly thinner phone. It doesn't matter, really — we are talking miniscule differences. But when numbers are being thrown around, and then challenged by real-life measurements, we do have to address the causes and concerns.
So, while the specs say that the Honor Magic V5 is slightly slimmer, you may find that, fresh out of the box, the Z Fold 7 is actually the very, very slightly thinner phone. It doesn't matter, really — we are talking miniscule differences. But when numbers are being thrown around, and then challenged by real-life measurements, we do have to address the causes and concerns.
Back to business, though — both of these phones feel excellent in their own way. The Honor Magic V5 not only has soft corners, but a very soft folding mechanism. The click at the close is a very satisfying and muffled "flub", which just sounds like high-grade materials are gently bumping into each other.
The Galaxy Z Fold 7, on the other hand, feels a bit more jabby in the palm, but that also makes it a little bit more grippy. Its mechanism feels solid, with even resistance all the way to the full open and full close. It clicks with a more pronounced sound, which feels satisfying in its own way.
The side buttons on both are not excellent. They are not wobbly or anything, but they do have short travel times and not a lot of tactile feel behind them. That's generally what we get on most of these super-thin foldables, probably due to space constraints.
The Honor Magic V5 has the slightly higher ingress protection with two separate IP58 and IP59 ratings. This means it should be generally protected against dust and splashes of water, maybe short-term immersion. But Honor itself is pretty adamant to point out that there's still risk of dust and water getting into the device if you push it beyond reasonable limits — just don't take it to the beach and chuck it in the sand. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is falling behind here, with IP48 rating. Again, it should resist accidental meet-ups with bodies of water, but is more prone to take in debris that are less than 1 mm in diameter.
Both of these are available in multiple colors, some of which are exclusive to regions or stores. For example, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 can be bought in Mint only from Samsung.com. Conversely, that Reddish Brown option on the Magic V5 also seems to be available in select markets.
With similar dimensions come similar screens. The cover displays here are 6.4" and 6.5" on the Honor and Samsung respectively. Same 21:9 aspect ratio as your contemporary chocobar style smartphone. Their resolutions are also similar — 1060 x 2376 and 1080 x 2520. Inside, they both have 8-inch, almost square-ish screens, with the bezel of the Honor Magic V5 being a bit thicker. But its resolution is a bit more dense, with 403 pixels per inch, where the Galaxy Z Fold 7 has 367 PPI.
With similar dimensions come similar screens. The cover displays here are 6.4" and 6.5" on the Honor and Samsung respectively. Same 21:9 aspect ratio as your contemporary chocobar style smartphone. Their resolutions are also similar — 1060 x 2376 and 1080 x 2520. Inside, they both have 8-inch, almost square-ish screens, with the bezel of the Honor Magic V5 being a bit thicker. But its resolution is a bit more dense, with 403 pixels per inch, where the Galaxy Z Fold 7 has 367 PPI.
Display Measurements:
While Honor claims 5,000 nits peak brightness for the Magic V5, that's a measurement of a small portion of the screen for a limited amount of time. 20% APL measurements sort of simulate real-life use a bit better (20% of the screen is engaged at max brightness), and we also measure a fullscreen brightness. At full screen, these phones are comparable. At 20% APL, the Honor Magic V5 refused to give us more brightness, which usually does happen (as seen in the Fold 7 measurements). None the less, we did use both phones and found their brightness to be perfectly adequate during these sunny August days.
For minimum brightness, the Z Fold 7 wins, dropping below 1 nit. The Honor Magic V5 is still not bad for bedside viewing with 1.6 nits.
Both have similar color calibration, drifting a bit into the greens or teals. That's an inherent move due to the pentile matrix of modern OLED screens. But both phones also have a plethora of eye care options in their settings, warming up the screens and attempting to show colors as accurately as possible with consistent tuning, based on your ambient light conditions.
However, if you do wish to go for that old school OLED look, with cold blues and super-vivid reds, both phones offer a saturated mode, too.
For biometrics, both have fingerprint scanners embedded in their power buttons, which work pretty quickly and consistently. And face unlock via the selfie camera, which is not considered secure enough to work for banking apps.
Performance and Software
Oh, you're overclocked? That's cute.
Both of these phones come with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite, but put an asterisk on that. The Z Fold 7 has a special "Made for Galaxy" version in it, which is essentially slightly overclocked. Samsung has had a tight partnership with Qualcomm for a while now and it's alleged that the thermals and software of the Z Fold 7 have been optimised to handle such tuning. But what is the reality?
| Honor Magic V5 | Galaxy Z Fold 7 |
|---|---|
| Chip Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite | Chip Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy |
| Process 3nm | Process 3nm |
| RAM, Storage 16/512GB | RAM, Storage 12/256GB 12/512GB 12/1TB |
In CPU benchmarks, these perform neck-in-neck. In fact, as we can see here, we managed to squeeze out a bit more single-core speed from the Honor Magic V5, which is supposedly not overclocked.
In reality, both of these phones fly. Scrolling, launching, and switching through apps is responsive and satisfyingly fast. Quickly engaging split-screen mode is smooth. At the moment, it feels like nothing can get them to stutter.
The GPU benchmark is a bit more interesting. Yes, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 did get a higher top score. For the first couple of cycles of the test. From then, the phone slowly throttles down to a sub-3000 score. The Magic V5, on the other hand, starts off a bit lower but barely displays throttling behavior, maintaining a 4,400 minimum score, which is still very respectable.
Now, it's possible that Honor's thermal management is amazing. It is also possible that Honor has tuned its software to recognize benchmark tests and disable a guard rail here or there. Which is why we don't take benchmarks at face value.
But the good news is that both of these phones perform amazing for gaming. They are smooth and responsive, and modern titles like Delta Force, Arena Breakout run great on them, with some but not excessive heating along the body of the device.
For software, these have MagicOS 9 and One UI 7 on board — both heavy reskins of Android. The Magic V5 comes with Android 15, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 has Android 16 already. The good news is that both phones come with 7 year update commitments. Hopefully — timely ones.
The Honor software comes with a full suite of bells and whistles — an upgraded multi-tasking mode that lets you juggle three fullscreen apps and quickly switch through them can put One UI's old splitscreen style to shame. MagicOS also has a plethora of AI features for image editing and even automatic video compilations, plus a full-blown video editor to make your hard-hitting social media clips without needing to download another app.
There's an innovative AI feature for video calls, which can scan for deepfakes, essentially revealing if the video caller is a fraud. Pretty forward-thinking and definitely something we will need to worry about in the near future.
Also, big folders to fit more app icons within one homescreen — that's always such a welcome feature.
The Galaxy, as we know, has all the Galaxy AI features, the Edge panel for mode multi-tasking and DeX. The latter is still persistent and slowly gaining popularity — plug a monitor to your Z Fold 7 and you get a desktop computer experience to work in! Great for light work for reasearch or documents or emails. It also helps when all your files and notes are always with you, in your pocket. Word is, Samsung is also working on an AI anti-phishing feature, so cudos to that!
In general, both interfaces will throw a lot at you. They have learning curves, but they feel like they make the most out of the hardware for sure.
Camera
The AI camera taketh over
Samsung put a lot of eggs in the main camera basket of the Z Fold 7. Now, it has the same 200 MP sensor that the flagship Galaxy S25 Ultra had. However, the 12 MP ultra-wide and 10 MP 3x telephoto camera still feel like a bit of a compromise. At least on paper.
Again, on paper, the Honor Magic V5 looks like it's offering a more powerful camera module, with a 50 MP main camera, 50 MP ultra-wide camera, and 64 MP 3x telephoto camera. Honor also utilizes AI to offer 100x zoom photos, with some clearing up and some image generation to make them sort of appear sharper. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 taps out at 30x digital zoom.
PhoneArena Camera Score:
And our benchmark score shows that these camera systems are pretty close. The Galaxy does have slightly better dynamics at lower light and more consistent exposure from one shot to the next. The Magic V5 shows a bit more oversharpening artifacts but has the slightly better zoom performance. In video, the Galaxy is notably more stable, but the Magic V5 has slightly better exposure and details. We put more importance on the details, of course, but since the stabilization of the Galaxy is notably better, while its detail difference is minimal, it does pull ahead in overall points.
Main Camera
The Magic V5's photos come out more "HDR-y", with more visible auras around dark objects against the sky backdrop, some more sharpening, and whites tuned up to the point they may look teal-ish. In isolation, they don't look bad at all, but compared against the Galaxy's more realistic 200 MP camera, you can definitely spot that the algorithms on the Honor have been working overtime.
In lower light, the Honor Magic V5 displays a narrower dynamic range, some flattening of the details probably due to noise reduction, and a yellow tint creeping in for skintones.
Zoom Quality
At 10x zoom, the details are comparable, maybe a bit in favor of the Magic V5. But the colors of the Honor are also a bit more realistic where the Galaxy Z Fold 7 got a bit darker and bluish.
Ultra-wide Camera
Selfies
The 20 MP selfie camera of the Magic V5 smooths out details a bit more than it should, and also goes a bit bright, losing out on some contrast. The Z Fold 7 10 MP selfie camera is a bit more honest with your wrinkles and has a more engaging contrast.
More Camera Samples
Video Quality
And here, we can see that the Magic V5 starts off with a better constrast, skintone, and dynamics. The Z Fold 7 has slightly better stabilization when walking, but a narrower dynamic range where we get into the room with the huge lit windows in the back. But when we go into a darker area, the Samsung gives us a more realistic, detailed, and pleasing image. Which, again, is why the scores above are close as each phone excels in some samples, and doesn't in others.
Battery Life and Charging
Silicon-Carbon future?
These are both incredibly thin phones, yet the Honor Magic V5 somehow has a 5,820 mAh cell inside, where the Z Fold 7 has 4,400 mAh. Honor has been at the forefront of battery development and utilizes new Silicon-Carbon tech, which allows it to make batteries denser, not bigger. That said, it's still impressive how Samsung managed to make such a thin cell with Lo-Po tech and still have a 4,400 mAh capacity.
At the end of the day, two things matter — do these batteries take you through the day and will they be effective in the long run after a few hundred charging cycles? Still to early to report on the latter, but here are our battery life tests:
PhoneArena Battery and Charging Test Results:
Interestingly enough, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 held its own quite well, even beating the Magic V5 in our web browsing test. For YouTube binging and gaming, it does offer less screen time. Notably, Samsung phones always drop faster on our YouTube test for some reason. But only 1 hour of difference for gaming? That's impressive.
The Magic V5 does charge much faster with a 66 W charger where the Z Fold 7 only takes 25 W. For wireless top-ups, you can use the Honor charging puck for 50 W, the Galaxy plays it safe again with 15 W Qi standard charging.
Audio Quality and Haptics
Both of these phones have rather big sounds in them, with wide stereo, surprising detail in the bass, good mids, and sweet highs. Well, the Z Fold 7 wins out with a bit more balanced sound, where the Magic V5 has some midrange honk in there, which teeters on the edge of being grating.
But speaker positioning is also better on the Galaxy — both speakers are on one flap, opposite to each other. So there's definitely a way to hold the device horizontally without blocking them. The Magic V5's speakers are positioned diagonally, each sitting on one flap of the phone. So, when you turn it in "horizontal" orientation, your hands will be blocking either the left or right speaker, as there's no way to hold it without your palm being over at least one of them.
Their haptics are predictably great. Quick, clicky, and responsive.
Specs Comparison
Here are the core specs, but you can view the entire sheets on our Honor Magic V5 vs Galaxy Z Fold 7 specs comparison page.
| Honor Magic V5 | Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 |
|---|---|
| Size and Weight Unfolded: 156.8 x 145.9 x 4.1 mm Folded: 156.8 x 74.3 x 8.8 mm 217.0 g | Size and Weight Unfolded: 158.4 x 143.2 x 4.2 mm Folded: 158.4 x 72.8 x 8.9 mm 215 g |
| Display 6.4" external, 21:9 ratio OLED, 120 Hz, 5,000 nits peak 8" internal, 4:3.7 ratio OLED, 120 Hz, 5,000 nits peak | Display 6.5" external, 21:9 ratio AMOLED, 120 Hz, 2,600 nits peak 8" internal, 4:3.6 ratio AMOLED, 120 Hz, 2,600 nits peak |
| Processor Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite 3 nm, 4.32 GHz | Processor Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite 3 nm, 4.47 GHz, for Galaxy |
| Software Android 15, MagicOS 9 | Software Android 16, One UI 7 |
| Cameras Main: 50 MP, F1.6 Ultra-wide: 50 MP, F2.0 Zoom: 64 MP 3.0x, F2.5 Front external: 20 MP Front internal: 20 MP | Cameras Main: 200 MP, F1.7 Ultra-wide: 12 MP, F2.2 Zoom: 10 MP 3.0x, F2.4 Front external: 10 MP Front internal: 10 MP |
| Battery Size 5,820 mAh Si/C | Battery Size 4,400 mAh LiPo |
| Charging Speeds Wired: 66 W Wireless: 50 W | Charging Speeds Wired: 25 W Wireless: 15 W |
| Prices ~$1,600 (not officially available in US) €2,000 | Prices $1,999.99 €2,099 |
Which one should you buy?
These are both super-thin, powerful, feature-rich smartphones with 7 years of updates incoming, and price-tags in that $2,000 range. By all means, they are comparable, even interchangeable. The Magic V5 camera may fall behind here and there by our standards. But at least it supports a Honor stylus, where the Galaxy Z Fold 7 dropped the S Pen!
However, depending on where you live, the Samsung may just be the "safer" purchase. Just for the infrastructure and market presence. For example, if you really, really want an Honor Magic V5 in the US — there's no official model for that region. You have to go through 3rd party resellers, hope it works on your carrier, and hope you never need warranty support.
Also, Samsung's latest Galaxy Watch 8 series may also be looking tempting to you. Well, those unlock their full features and capabilities only when paired with a Samsung phone.
But yes, do note that our recommendation is not based on the device itself, but the surrounding ecosystems and considerations. These two phones are actually beasts. The Honor challenges the Samsung in more than a few categories, the Z Fold 7 responds in kind. Which one draws you in?
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