A review of the Honor Magic V5, the world's thinnest foldable phone at 8.8mm when folded, as it launches in Europe for €1,999, following a July launch in China
Honor's Magic V5 is the thinnest book-style foldable in the world, but you probably couldn't tell.
Context & Ripple Effects
Honor has made slimness the through-line of its foldable line: the Magic V2 reached 9.9mm when closed, and the later Magic V3 was already positioned as thinner than Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold6. The Magic V5 extends that progression into another European retail cycle.
The launch also follows Oppo's 8.93mm Find N5, showing that the closed-phone profile has become a live competitive benchmark among Chinese foldable makers rather than a one-off design claim.
First-order effects
- Honor gains a Europe-wide flagship selling point—an 8.8mm folded body—while holding its €1,999 price at the premium end of the category.
- European buyers choosing between book-style foldables get a model aimed at reducing the bulk penalty associated with the form factor.
Second-order effects
- Oppo and other foldable vendors face a tighter hardware benchmark: thinness when closed is increasingly comparable across products, so durability, software, cameras, and availability become more consequential ways to differentiate.
- A €1,999 European launch preserves premium pricing despite the thinner chassis, testing whether engineering-led refinement can support foldable margins without a price cut.
Third-order effects
- If successive generations keep narrowing the thickness gap with conventional phones, foldables may compete less as a visibly distinct niche and more on the usual flagship trade-offs of software, reliability, and price.
- The sequence suggests the foldable market's competition is shifting from simply proving the form factor to incremental industrial-design leadership; whether that broadens demand depends on factors the coverage does not establish, including software quality and long-term durability.
The trend: Book-style foldables are entering a refinement race in which closed-device thinness is becoming a baseline premium feature rather than a singular differentiator.