Honor teases its first foldable, the Magic V

Former Huawei sub-brand Honor has teased the launch of its first foldable smartphone, the Honor V. An image shared on its Weibo and Twitter accounts teases the design of the device, showing a telltale hinge between the two halves of the device. The Weibo post says the “folding flagship is about to be released,” though no exact launch date has been announced and Honor declined to comment.

Honor has been open about its desire to release a foldable for some time. As early as 2019, the company’s CEO George Zhao told CNET that he was interested in producing a foldable under the Honor brand, but expressed concerns that the device would be too expensive for Honor’s younger target market. In June this year, reports emerged that development of such a device was underway at the company, and that its folding display panels were being provided by BOE and Visionox.

There aren’t many details on the exact form the Magic V could take, but a report from The Elec suggests it could have an 8.03-inch folding inner display paired with a 6.45-inch outer screen. That suggests a device that resembles Samsung’s Z Fold devices (which unfold from a phone form factor into a tablet) rather than its Z Flip (a phone that folds to become more compact). That’s also the form factor used by Honor’s former parent company Huawei with its Mate X2, though now that Honor has been independent for a year it’s unclear how similar its upcoming device might be.

Honor joins an expanding list of companies that have either released, or are planning to launch their own foldables. Samsung and Huawei were two early entrants, but more recently we’ve seen foldables from Xiaomi, Motorola, and Oppo, which officially announced its Find N phone earlier this month. As well as Honor, Google is also rumored to be planning to announce as many as two foldables of its own in the near future.