Honor’s Magic VS foldable will get a global release starting at €1599

We finally have global pricing for the Honor Magic VS, which is the first foldable from the company that it’ll sell outside of China. During its presentation at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the company said it’ll be available to buy in global markets starting at €1,599 (around $1,690) for a model with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. It’ll be available in the UK in June, but release dates in other global markets are yet to be announced. For reference, at €1,799 (£1,649 / $1,799), Samsung’s competing Galaxy Z Fold 4 cost a little more at launch last year.

Alongside it, the company announced a more traditional flagship smartphone series headed up by the Honor Magic5 Pro, which will cost €1,199 (around $1,267) for a model with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage and which will be available in the UK in May and in the second quarter of this year in other global markets. There’s also a non-Pro Magic5, which will start at €899 (around $950) for a model with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

Given the Honor Magic VS was released in China last year, there aren’t many hardware surprises. In fact, I had a chance to try out the Chinese version of the handset, and you can read my hands-on impressions of it right here.

But here are the highlights. Much like Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 4, the Honor Magic VS is a small tablet that can be folded in half to resemble a more traditional smartphone. Its internal screen is 7.9 inches in size with an almost square 10.3:9 aspect ratio and a 90Hz refresh rate, while its external cover display is 6.45 inches with a 21:9 aspect ratio and a 120Hz refresh rate.

Honor thinks its Magic VS has a couple of key advantages over Samsung’s comparable foldable. First is that, at 12.9mm thick while folded, it’s a hair thinner than the Z Fold 4, even at the latter’s thinnest point of 14.2mm. Second is that the Magic VS “folds tightly” with less of a perceived gap than the Z Fold 4, Honor says. And finally, Honor’s foldable is rated for 400,000 folds, double what Samsung has advertised for its devices. Honor says that’s enough folds to survive 10 years of use, even if you’re opening and closing the phone 100 times a day (assuming you’re the kind of early adopter who would actually hold onto a phone for that long).

In terms of more traditional phone specs, the Magic VS is powered by last year’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 processor with a 5,000mAh battery that can be fast-charged at up to 66W. There are three rear cameras (a 54-megapixel main, a 50-megapixel ultrawide, and an eight-megapixel telephoto) and a 16-megapixel front-facing camera. There’s no mention of an IP rating in Honor’s press materials, which would be a disadvantage compared to the Samsung Z Fold 4’s IPX8 rating for dust and water resistance.

Alongside its foldable, Honor is also announcing the Magic5 Pro today. The successor to last year’s Magic4 Pro, the phone has a similarly large circular rear camera bump. This year’s phone ships with a trio of rear cameras, all 50 megapixels in resolution. There’s a main, an ultrawide, and a periscope telephoto with a 3.5x optical zoom. For comparison, last year’s phone had similar rear cameras but a slightly higher resolution 64-megapixel periscope telephoto. Software features include an “AI Motion sensing capture” tool that’s designed to automatically take a photo when your subject is at the highest point in a jump.

There’s a 6.81-inch display with a resolution of 1312 x 2848 and a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz around front, and internally, the phone is powered by Qualcomm’s latest flagship processor, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. It’s got a big 5,100mAh battery that can be fast-charged at 66W with a cable or 50W wirelessly. It has an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance and is available in five colors: black, blue, green, purple, and orange.

Stay tuned for our full review of the Magic VS as it approaches release.

Photography by Jon Porter / The Verge

Update February 27th, 9:15AM ET: Updated with UK-specific release dates.