- This, my friends, is a device
that I have wanted to get my hands on for months.
Look at how thin that is.
When Honor reached out and asked to sponsor a video
on their brand new Magic V2
that hasn't even seen a global release, I couldn't say no.
So, I did the video on the predecessor to this device,
the Honor Magic Vs, last year,
and I was really impressed
with a lot of what Honor had done with that.
But this time around,
they've taken it to an entirely different level.
So I've been using the Magic for a little bit
and I have some thoughts.
One of the things
that is legitimately cool is Parallel Space.
So it shows up as an app and essentially,
oh, don't look at my PIN.
All right, it's my secret PIN.
(dramatic music)
One, two, three, four, five, six.
So inside Parallel Space, essentially what you can do
is you can run a separate copy of most apps on your phone.
One of the cool things I've found you can do
is you can play two games at the same time.
Why you'd wanna do that?
Well, that's up to you.
So with my game open,
if I wanna open up the split screen option,
so I'm gonna load up a second copy of the exact same game.
Now, this one is logged into a different account
I can play at the same time.
Graphically this is quite impressive
to be able to run two copies of the game,
especially because this phone is so thin
that you would consider that pushing this many pixels
in two full, complete copies is is quite difficult.
So as you can see, I have two accounts
and two copies of the game running at the same time.
This is I would say mentally difficult
because it's a lot of work to
use your brain this much,
but technically this is fully functional.
Do you want top or bottom?
- I'm normally on top.
- Don't, okay. (laughs)
So let's play side-by-side.
So, this actually works surprisingly well, though, honestly.
Even though this is technically supported,
it's not really meant to be used by two people I think,
but the fact that I can do this fairly easily,
and, I mean, it took like, what, two minutes to set up?
Now, the only problem is this is not supported
on like all apps and all games,
and it's definitely a little bit more optimized
for running two copies of WhatsApp or whatever the case is,
but Parallel Space allows you
to essentially have an entire private little window
into your apps, your games, whatever you want
that can be separate from the outer sort of software.
I'm legitimately impressed.
Both copies of the game are running at 60 FPS,
and it even rotates smoothly too,
so you can use it in either orientation.
I wonder what happens if I close it?
I don't think that's gonna work, right?
Oh my god, it, what?
Okay, that's kind of wild.
It just shrinks everything down.
I dunno why you'd wanna do this on the outer display,
but technically it works and I can just open it up.
Dude, that is so smooth at how that handles that.
That's legitimately impressive.
I didn't think that was gonna work.
Boy oh boy, that's some
(chimes tinkle)
magic right there.
I'm a big fan of foldables.
I've been using a foldable as my primary device
for over three years now, and I love it
even though there are certainly some downsides,
and really what Honor have done here
is try to eliminate as many of those as possible.
Essentially it is a fairly standard looking device,
both front and back, but when you open it up,
you have the massive internal display.
And because it is so thin
and because it is incredibly light,
it really does feel like when you have it closed up,
you're just using a standard sized smartphone.
It is using the latest version
of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform,
which is quite powerful.
So I'm gonna put this side-by-side
with a Z Fold as well as an iPhone.
Look how much thinner it is than something like the Z Fold.
And also if I flip them over,
look at how much wider the display is.
While I do typically like a slightly more narrow device,
this is too narrow.
I mean, obviously everyone is different,
and if you like something that's like this,
but just having both these phones in my hand,
not only just the width of this feels nice,
but like this is significantly lighter.
It feels incredibly easy to hold.
Like, I mean obviously this is a very large outer display,
but like I can balance it
with a couple of fingers quite easily.
So let me fold it up and let's get some weights on this.
Now, Honor are claiming that this is going to be roughly
as sort of thin as well as roughly the weight
of like a traditional flagship device.
So let's start off by putting the Magic V2 on the scale,
and we're gonna get 236 grams.
So for context, the Z Fold is
256, so substantially lighter.
How about we try the iPhone 14 Pro Max.
250.
So this is lighter than an iPhone.
Mind you, this is the big boy iPhone, but still,
I mean, it makes a significant difference,
especially when you open it up.
Like, the weight is distributed across
in a really nice sort of way, so it's nicely balanced,
which is not necessarily a huge surprise,
but you've got a fairly substantial camera here
and yet it doesn't feel
like it's kind of like rotated or tilting.
I gotta say that's actually might be
one of these smallest creases I've ever seen.
If you get in the light just right, you can see it.
But, I mean, again, especially comparing
to like what Samsung do, it is really, really minimal,
and that's impressive because this hinge is very simple.
So, from my understanding,
the hinge is only a handful of pieces,
but with that, it still will stay.
So if I wanna set it up like this, right?
Yeah, so it needs to be about, yeah, about 90 degrees or so
and it'll stay in some of the smaller spots.
When you put the Honor side-by-side with the Z Fold,
one of the things that does stand out is the battery specs.
So the Honor has a larger battery.
So this is a 5,000 milliampere-hour battery
as opposed to 4,400 on the Z Fold 5,
but it goes farther than that.
The Z Fold only charges at 25 watts,
whereas the Honor charges at 66 watts,
and a big reason for that is that the Honor
has a silicon carbon battery.
That's a newer technology
which essentially is more energy dense,
meaning that even though the Honor is thinner and lighter
and has a larger capacity battery,
it is physically smaller and charges faster.
Now, one of the benefits of this device
is the fact that it's got pretty much flagship level
hardware in the camera.
So there are five cameras in total.
So on the inner display we have a selfie camera.
We also have that exact same camera on the outer display,
and then we have three cameras around back,
wide, ultra wide and telephoto.
So by default you can use it
just like a standard smartphone.
However, where it really shines
is when you open up the device.
So now you have a much larger window to capture your images,
and on top of that, you can turn on the actual cover screen.
So, if I want to switch over to video mode and hit record,
I now have a very large preview
to see myself on the display
so I can make sure I'm framing myself up.
I don't have too much headroom or not enough headroom,
and it's really quite nice for this
to be able to easily use it
for something like vlogging or what have you.
Now, the only thing I will say
is that in this current version of the software,
which I will say, again, is not final,
I don't have a lot of controls on this outer display.
So for a lot of that, I actually do need to come back around
and control it from this side.
So if I wanna go to the ultra wide,
I would need to pick it up and then use the ultra wide here.
So, don't totally judge the image quality
based on this early software,
but the ability for me to have a device
which is this thin and this light
for something like vlogging is nice,
especially because this cover display
is absolutely massive to get my framing just right.
Like, I mean, this looks nice.
Now, if you're not just going to vlog with the device,
it does of course function essentially as a little tripod.
So what's nice is, is when I have it in flex mode here,
I have all of like my gallery and stuff on the bottom
and my controls, and on top of that,
I have a nice little preview here
so I can adjust the camera just right.
And if I wanna flip over to photo mode,
I can take a photo of Ken
on the telephoto.
Look at that.
Boom.
It's also nice too 'cause I can immediately see down here
a full screen shot of Ken,
or as I'm taking a bunch of photos,
so say if I take a burst or whatever,
boom,
boom, and it shows up right down here.
It's a really clever implementation
of having all of this additional sort of hardware space
when it comes to the screen real estate that you've got.
So I have a lot of thoughts about this device,
but to sum it up, this hardware is absolutely terrific.
I like the outer display and the aspect ratio.
I like the inner display.
I like the performance.
The cameras are decent, and especially considering
that this is a larger format device
that is legitimately thinner and lighter
than some of the big boy flagships out there
is incredibly impressive.
The amount of engineering that went into things
like the hinge with it's made out of titanium,
and you think about the batteries,
that they've entirely designed a new battery
to actually fit in here to still have good capacity,
there's a lot of stuff that they've done well here.
Now, I will say that as of right now,
this device is only available in the Chinese market.
So they have not announced a global launch,
and to me, I think that they really should.
Like, I very much hope
that there is a global version of this phone
because this hardware is terrific.
Now, software-wise, it is very difficult for me to evaluate,
because again, this is not remotely final software.
So if they had significant improvements on that front,
if they really finished the software, 'cause again,
it's not the final, it's very, very much a prototype,
then I legitimately would probably switch to this.
Like, if the software is improved enough,
like this hardware is the first time
that I have been legitimately tempted
to move away from the Z Flip
when it comes to that form factor.
I love how small that device is,
but considering that this is quite thin, quite light,
quite easy to carry in your pocket,
unlike all these other giant foldable devices,
if they nail the software,
man, this thing is an absolute home run.
So again, thank you very much to Honor
for sponsoring this video.
I know you guys are watching this thing,
so please, get this software in a good sort of spot
and give me a global launch.
Like, I think that's all you need to do,
because man, this might be the best engineered hardware
of any smartphone I've ever seen.