The best phones on sale today aren't the same around the world, which is why I like to use this time of year to look back at some amazing devices that don't get recognized due to their limited releases. By merit of living in the U.K., I get to try out a wider variety of phones than the typical American customer has access to, and some of these are so good I wish they were sold more widely.
This includes devices like the Oppo Find X8 Pro for its competitively-priced, ultra-grade specs. or the Sony Xperia 1 VI's creative potential, or the cheap,cheerful and foldable Nubia Flip 5G. But all things considered, the phone I've missed having in my pocket the most is the Honor Magic V3, a foldable that blends a tablet and a regular phone together better than any other.
What makes the Honor Magic V3 so good?
Since it launched, and to this day, the Magic V3 holds the title of world's thinnest foldable phone, both folded and unfolded, and weighs in as one of the lightest on the market too. That's an impressive design achievement, and also a practical one, since combined with the wide outer display, the foldable remains fully useable while folded. The big 8-inch inner display is there to use too, but only for when you want to go full foldable, rather than a requirement if you want to do anything serious.
Honor's approach to AI is pretty smart too. There's less focus on generating content and more on transforming or making existing material easier to interact with. The MagicPortal system makes it easy to grab a screenshot or piece of text from one app and pass it on to another, while AI-powered photo editing and audio/text translation and transcription assist with common creative and practical needs.
And the Magic V3 does all this while remaining well-priced. It's not quite as cheap as the OnePlus Open (which still sits at the top of the foldable phones stack), but it costs less than either the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold or Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6, two otherwise reliable choices.
There are good reasons why the Honor Magic V3 hasn't quite secured a spot on our best foldable phones guide though. There's no easy way to buy it in the U.S., for one, as is the case with all of Honor's products. The camera quality, despite the 50MP main, 40MP ultrawide and 50MP 3.5x telephoto combination on the back, and 20MP selfie cameras inside and on the outside of the phone, isn't quite up to par with its rivals either.
Perhaps the most unfortunate factor is that Honor's software update plan for three years of full updates and five years of security updates is way shorter than rival phones offer, meaning you'll run out of new software features faster than basically any other foldable you might buy this year. Not great for a premium product.
Despite those flaws, I still really like what Honor's achieved here. The Magic V3 has set the overall standard for building foldable phones, and hopefully other companies will follow its example going forward. And perhaps the coming year's assumed Magic V4 will be able to break boundaries once again.
Honorable mention — A foldable for the future?
While the Honor Magic V3 has been the phone I reviewed that I've liked the most this year, there's one I've spent more time thinking about, even though I didn't test it in full. And that's the Huawei Mate XT.
This cutting-edge foldable impressed me a lot during a brief hands-on session I had a couple of months ago. It doesn't feel first-generation, despite being the first production two-hinged foldable, or "triple foldable" as they're more popularly known. Whether you're using the phone fully open, partly open or fully folded, the interface easily adjusts to the size of display currently available. You just have to adapt to the fact that the two hinges move in opposite directions.
I'm still uncertain that a phone this delicate or expensive, especially one made by the embattled Huawei, is going to be a big seller for users outside of China. But I still have my fingers crossed that the rumored global release does come true, so we can fully test the potential of this phone, and see if the high demand for the phone domestically translates to genuine global popularity. At the very least, it'll give foldable manufacturers who do sell in the west, like Samsung, a motivation to finish off their own triple foldable projects. Let's just hope the approximate $3,000 price tag drops over the years.
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