Here’s a little bit of a mobile industry insider secret: of all the Chinese sub-brands that exist, Honor used to be the only one that behaved as if it was a standalone company, and even had a competitive streak against its then-parent company, Huawei. I remember an Honor marketing person asking me years ago not to mention Huawei in an article, which I found so odd because Huawei was writing her checks at the time (I rejected the request, by the way).
Other Chinese sub-brands, whether it’s Xiaomi’s Poco or Oppo’s Realme, do not have such rebellious attitudes against their parent companies. The point I’m making is that, even years ago before Honor actually became an independent company, it was already very aggressive at claiming superiority over every phone brand, including its parent company.
Now that Honor actually is an independent company, it is even more aggressive at outdoing the competition, and it’s succeeding. Last week, Honor launched the Magic V2 in China, the thinnest and lightest foldable phone in the world, dethroning the previous champion, a foldable from Huawei. And because Honor does not suffer from the same U.S.-imposed sanctions, its phones can run unrestricted software with full Google support, which makes the Honor Magic V2 a far more appealing device than Huawei’s Mate X3.
Here’s the thing: the Huawei Mate X3 was already an impressive feat of hardware engineering, because it too is significantly lighter and thinner than the newest foldables from Google and Samsung. So this means the Honor Magic V2’s gap over those two are even wider. In fact, it’s almost unbelievable how much thinner and lighter Honor’s foldable is compared to Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Google’s Pixel Fold, considering Samsung and Google are far more established companies with (likely) more resources at their disposal. The Honor Magic V2 is over 50g lighter than Google’s Pixel Fold and almost 50% thinner than Samsung’s Z Fold 4. Just look at the photo below, they almost look like products from different generations, like comparing an iPhone 7 with an iPhone 5.
The key to Honor’s magic (pun intended) is its factory, named “Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park.” It opened in November 2021, and is the company’s first self-funded manufacturing plant.
Located in Shenzhen, the Honor Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park is a sprawling multi-story building that handles the company’s R&D and manufacturing of its flagship products. As the name suggests, the factory’s production lines are 80% automated, and 100% digital, meaning every single machine inside is IoT-enabled.
I visited the plant last week and saw first hand the construction of the Honor Magic V2, as well as the company’s slab flagship, the Magic 5 Pro. While the production of the Magic 5 Pro was fast and efficient, it was the construction of the foldable that impressed me.
Making a foldable phone is a complicated process: there are far more moving parts than a conventional phone, the foldable display panels are much more fragile, and there are just more things that need to be done. I knew all this before going into the factory, because it’s common sense that a foldable phone with two screens would require more work. What I didn’t know was that companies need to invest in brand new machines for production lines to construct foldables.
According to Honor’s chief technology officer Samuel Deng, Honor spent “tens of millions [Chinese] yuan” on these machines that are capable of manufacturing and testing Honor’s foldable phones.
“The screen fitting accuracy has a smaller margin of error, if the assembly process goes wrong, the panel is wasted, it can’t be re-fitted like conventional slab phones,” Deng said. In other words, it costs more money and time to make a foldable, and there’s higher failure rate, too.
It helps that Honor has invested millions into R&D. The company constructed a “Display Module Lab” inside the factory whose sole job is to experiment with the optimal ways to laminate a display. It’s also in this same lab where Honor developed its ultra-thin titanium hinge, which is a breakthrough in the foldable space and a major reason why the Magic V2 is able to be so thin.
To build the hinge, Honor had to use all customized parts, including custom short screws because conventional screws were too long for the ultra-thin component.
To construct the display, Honor used self-developed six-axis robot arms with high precision cameras with machine algorithms to help reduce error.
Essentially, Honor had to build most of the parts that goes into the Magic V2 from scratch. Honor’s CEO George Zhao puts it another way: “We had to build the Magic V2 from a component level.”
During my visit I saw the machines in action, with a manned staff at various check points to ensure the process is going smoothly. I also saw the rigorous testing that went into testing the durability of the Magic V2. Honor claims the phone has been tested to withstand at least 400,000 folds, that’s twice the number promised by Samsung. While there’s no way I could have stayed and watched all 400,000 folds, I did witness a machine fold a unit at least several hundred times in rapid succession.
Another extremely impressive feat of hardware engineering are the ultra-thin batteries inside the Magic V2. Honor developed a silicon-carbon battery tech that significantly increases density, meaning more battery power can be stored in a smaller form.
One concern for the new battery form factory is safety, as phone batteries have been known to combust, most famously the ones in Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 phones back in 2018. Honor’s R&D head promises the company has done its due diligence and has conducted every safety measure possible, including passing third-party testing and gaining the required certifications. Of course, only time will tell if these ultra-thin batteries hold up. But Honor’s hardware track record up until this point has been impeccable.
What I learned from visiting Honor’s Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park is it takes a lot more work to make a foldable phone than a slab phone. And to make progress in making foldable phones thinner require constructing all new machines, components and parts. You can’t just expect a company to make a foldable device thinner on a whim.
Whatever the case, Honor’s Magic V2 is shaping up to be the most impressive piece of mobile hardware this year.
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