It’s well known that Samsung single-handedly pioneered the mainstream foldable smartphone market, carving out a niche for itself with models like theGalaxy Z Fold 4andFlip 4. However, other players are hard at work, too, making sure their foldable phones are fun, powerful, good-looking, reparable, and durable. Honor is the latest OEM to try its hand at creating the perfect foldable phone recipe with theMagic Vs. Thanks to popular YouTuber and phone durability testing strongman Zack Nelson a.k.a. JerryRigEverything, we get our first look at the Honor Magic Vs’s internals.
He emphasizes how Samsung’s super-complex hinge mechanism uses 92 components, including gears. On paper, Honor seems to have outdone its Korean rival with a four-component hinge. The Honor Vs also has a much more prominent crease which allows the phone to fold flat, unlike the Galaxy foldables, where the halves of the inner display don’t touch each other.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 hinge gap(left); Honor Magic Vs hinge gap(right)
Nonetheless, the display is rather rigid, supported by thin, vertically aligned strips of titanium. Their placement allows sharp folding but prevents deformation. In fact, Honor claims the Magic Vs can be folded and unfolded up to 400,000 times, twice as much as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4. Visually, Honor’s hinge design appears as complex as its Korean counterpart’s, but digging deeper reveals the complete lack of gears for stiffness.
Instead, all the stiffness comes from the metal components cast into the aerospace-grade plastic. The fewer components mean the phone is cheaper to assemble and lighter as well. Durability concerns aside, we have to hand it to Honor for innovating at so many levels with its new hinge design.
During the teardown, it’s evident Honor has been paying attention to JRE’s videos. For instance, there’s just the right amount of adhesive holding the dual-cell batteries in place, and the display adhesive comes undone easily as well (with the right tools, of course). There are red ingress protection seals all around, even though the phone isn’t IP certified, something we’ve seen brands like OnePlus do in the past. There’s also an ungodly number of tiny little screws, but temporary fasteners are certainly better than adhesive from a reparability standpoint.
The Honor Magic Vs official unveiling will happen at the Mobile World Conference (MWC) 2023. Until then, Samsung engineers likely have a lot to learn and replicate to stay competitive with the next-generation of foldables. We are also looking forward toGoogle’s Pixel Foldsoon.
