Former Huawei sub-brand Honor has teased the release of its first foldable smartphone, the Honor Magic V, in a photograph released on its Weibo and Twitter accounts.
The image shows a telltale hinge between the device’s two halves. The “folding flagship is going to be released,” according to the Weibo post, but no specific launch date has been revealed and Honor has declined to comment.
Honor has long expressed a desire to release a foldable device. As early as 2019, Honor CEO George Zhao told CNET that he was interested in developing a foldable under the Honor brand, but that the smartphone would be too pricey for Honor’s younger target market. In June of this year, it was revealed that the company was working on such a device, with foldable display panels supplied by BOE and Visionox.
There isn’t much information on the actual shape of the Honor Magic V, but according to The Elec, it could sport an 8.03-inch folding inner display paired with a 6.45-inch exterior screen. This points to a device similar to Samsung’s Z Fold devices (which unfurl from a phone form factor into a tablet) rather than its Z Flip devices (a phone that folds to become more compact). That’s also the form factor employed by Honor’s former parent firm, Huawei, with the Mate X2, but it’s unknown how similar Honor’s future products will be now that it’s been independent for a year.
Honor joins a growing list of businesses that have developed or plan to introduce their own foldables. Samsung and Huawei were early entrants, but foldables from Xiaomi, Motorola, and Oppo, which formally introduced its Find N phone earlier this month, have lately appeared. In addition to Honor, Google is reported to be aiming to launch up to two foldables of its own in the near future.
