Honor Magic V4 and Magic V Flip 2 Incoming: A Deep Dive into Honor's 2024 Foldable Phone Strategy

Honor Magic V4 and Magic V Flip 2 Incoming: A Deep Dive into Honor's 2024 Foldable Phone StrategyHonor Magic V3, launched last July, serves as a crucial benchmark. Its starting price of 8999 yuan (approximately $1200 USD) and advanced technologies showcased Honor's ambition in the high-end foldable market

Honor Magic V4 and Magic V Flip 2 Incoming: A Deep Dive into Honor's 2024 Foldable Phone Strategy

Recent reports indicate that Honor will launch two new foldable phones in 2024: the Honor Magic V4 and the Honor Magic V Flip 2. These releases will undoubtedly solidify Honor's position in the foldable phone market and offer consumers more choices. Let's delve into Honor's previously released models and explore the potential features and specifications of the upcoming Magic V4 and Magic V Flip 2, as well as Honor's overall foldable phone strategy.

Honor Magic V3, launched last July, serves as a crucial benchmark. Its starting price of 8999 yuan (approximately $1200 USD) and advanced technologies showcased Honor's ambition in the high-end foldable market. Its thin design was particularly impressive: a folded thickness of just 9.2mm, unfolded thickness of 4.35mm, and a weight of only 226g. This represented a significant advancement in the lightweight design of foldable phones at the time.

The Magic V3 boasts a 6.43-inch, 23761060 resolution BOE OLED outer screen and a 7.92-inch, 23442156 resolution BOE OLED inner screen, both offering excellent display quality. Importantly, the inner screen utilizes Honor's "Diamond Rigid Flexible Armor," while the outer screen features Honor's "Diamond Rhino Glass," both certified with SGS five-star gold standard, ensuring durability and reliability. Furthermore, the Magic V3 supports wet-hand touch functionality, enhancing user experience.

In terms of imaging, the Magic V3 features a powerful triple-camera system: a 50MP periscope telephoto main camera, a 40MP wide-angle macro main camera, and a 50MP Honor Hawkeye main camera. The main camera utilizes an SMA memory metal motor, supporting hover auto-capture for enhanced shooting capabilities. Both the inner and outer screens feature a 20MP front-facing camera for selfies.

Performance-wise, the Magic V3 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform and incorporates innovative pure titanium VC cooling technology to effectively manage temperature and ensure smooth, long-lasting operation. In terms of battery life, the Magic V3 debuted the third-generation Qinghai Lake battery, boasting over 10% silicon content and a 5150mAh capacity, significantly increasing battery life. Additionally, the Magic V3 supports dual-satellite communication, enabling two-way voice calls and text messaging, further enhancing its practicality.

Honor Magic V Flip, Honor's first clamshell foldable phone, released last June, offered a more competitive price point starting at 4999 yuan (approximately $670 USD). Weighing only 193g, with a folded thickness of 14.89mm and an unfolded thickness of 7.15mm, it prioritizes portability. It features a 4.0-inch OLED outer screen and a 6.8-inch OLED "Honor Oasis" eye-protection inner screen for comfortable viewing. Its imaging system includes a 50MP Sony IMX816 front camera (1/2.93-inch) and a 50MP Sony IMX906 rear main camera (1/1.56-inch, OIS) along with a 12MP ultra-wide-angle lens (2.5cm macro, 112), delivering excellent image quality.

Beyond its regular foldable phone release plans, Honor is actively exploring more innovative folding solutions. Last October, the State Intellectual Property Office of China published an Honor patent for a "foldable electronic device," showcasing a novel cross-folding design. Combining vertical and horizontal folding methods, the screen is divided into four sections and connected with appropriate hinges, allowing for multiple folding modes. This patent demonstrates Honor's continued innovation and exploration in foldable screen technology.

Honor CEO Zhao Ming publicly stated, "Honor has completed the technological development of a tri-foldable screen. The commercialization timeline will depend on consumer demand. For us, a tri-foldable phone is not a technological challenge, but a business decision." This indicates Honor's readiness for mass production of tri-foldable phones, but the release date hinges on market demand.

However, recent leaks from the blogger @DigitalChatStation suggest that the development of the industry's second tri-foldable phone has been paused, with the focus shifting to the normal updates of horizontal large-fold and vertical small-fold models in 2025. This suggests a potential saturation of the domestic foldable phone market with limited growth potential. The Android camp is becoming more conservative, reducing the large-scale rollout of multiple foldable phone models, with manufacturers preferring to concentrate resources on a single all-around foldable phone. This means Honor's tri-foldable, or even quad-foldable, phone plans might be adjusted, with the specific release dates uncertain.

In conclusion, Honor continues its strong push in the foldable phone market. The upcoming releases of the Magic V4 and Magic V Flip 2 demonstrate Honor's dual-pronged strategy targeting both high-end and mass markets. Although the launch of tri-foldable or even quad-foldable phones remains uncertain, Honor's technological innovation and product development capabilities remain impressive. The future foldable phone market will be even more competitive, and whether Honor can maintain its competitiveness through its technological advantages and market strategies remains to be seen. Honor will continue to focus on consumer needs, continually innovating and striving to deliver superior foldable phone products. This is reflected not only in upgraded hardware but also in ongoing user experience optimization and accurate grasp of future market trends. We have reason to believe that Honor will play an even more significant role in the future foldable phone market.