Honor's Magic V6 is a book style phone that opens to a tablet screen. A week long test finds its bigger battery is the only real upgrade, while software problems hold it back.
Honor markets the Magic V6 as the thinnest foldable phone, the one with the biggest battery, and the most water-resistant model in its class. After a week with the device, only one of those three claims actually holds up, and it tells a broader story about where the foldable category stands in mid-2026.
The Magic V6 is a book-style Android foldable, the kind that opens like a book to reveal a tablet-sized inner screen. On paper, it sets records in three places. Its body is the slimmest of any current foldable, its battery is the largest, and it carries the top-tier IP69 dust- and water-resistance rating, the same one used on heavy-duty industrial gear. Honor is also promising seven years of software updates, a real commitment for a category that has historically lagged behind flat phones on long-term support (The Verge review of the Honor Magic V6).
In practice, the gap between the marketing frame and the lived experience is large. The bigger battery is the one upgrade that genuinely matters. The Magic V6 lasts a full two days on a charge in normal use, a real jump over the one-day endurance that defined the first generation of book-style foldables. The thinner body, by contrast, is fractionally slimmer than last year's models, a difference the eye can barely see when the phone is closed. The improved water resistance is a similar story: meaningful on paper, hard to notice in daily use. Both fit a pattern reviewer Dominic Preston describes clearly. The foldable category has matured, and the easy hardware wins are running out (The Verge).
The foldable crease, the visible line where the inner screen folds, is improved but still not class-leading. Oppo's latest book-style foldable remains the phone with the almost-invisible crease, and the Magic V6 has closed the gap without passing it. That detail matters because the crease is the single hardware complaint that has followed foldables since the first Galaxy Z Fold, and the category is now several generations into refining it.
The harder problem is software. Honor's MagicOS, the company's version of Android, is the load-bearing complaint in Preston's review. It treats the large inner screen as a stretched-out phone screen rather than a productivity surface, and the result is friction every time the device is opened. That complaint is not new to Honor. The previous Magic V foldable drew the same criticism, and the company has not closed the gap with this release.
That gap is the real story. Hardware in the book-style foldable category has caught up to flagship flat phones. Thinner bodies, larger batteries, and stronger water resistance are now table stakes. The bottleneck has moved to software, and the next meaningful upgrade for foldables is not on the spec sheet.
The competitive picture is also moving. Huawei's Pura X Max has already broken out of the standard book-style aspect ratio with a wider, more square inner screen, and reviewers expect Samsung and Apple to follow that form factor later in 2026. If they do, the hardware story for 2026 will not be thinner or longer-lasting. It will be a different shape (The Verge).
The Magic V6 launched at Mobile World Congress in February, sold first in China, and starts at RM 7,699 in Malaysia, roughly $1,930. The UK and European rollout is scheduled for later in June, with other markets to follow. Pricing in the United States has not been announced, and Honor's foldables remain a calculated, market-by-market expansion rather than a global flagship push.
For anyone weighing a foldable in mid-2026, the takeaway is simpler than the spec sheet. The hardware race is settling. The software race is just starting, and the phone that wins the next two years will be the one that treats the open screen as a real second device, not a stretched phone. Honor's V6 sets three records. None of them solve that problem.