Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 vs Honor Magic V5: What’s the difference?

Pricing and availability

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 is available for pre-order now ahead of release on 25 July 2025, and starts at £1,799/$1,999 for the 256GB model, though 512GB and 1TB models are also available at additional cost.

The Honor Magic V5 has been revealed, but exclusively for its Chinese audience. Honor has confirmed that the foldable will go global at some point, but it’s not saying when – or how much it might cost.

For reference, the Magic V3 cost £1,699 at launch in 2024, so we could see something similar this time around, but we’ll have to wait and see for now. 

The Honor Magic V5 is thinner – but it depends on the colour you go for

What felt like just minutes after Samsung’s announcement of the Galaxy Z Fold 7, Honor proudly proclaimed that its Magic V5 was thinner, making it the thinnest foldable on the market in 2025. That is true, but it’ll depend entirely on the colour option you choose.

The Z Fold 7 measures in at an impressive 4.2mm when unfolded and 8.9mm folded, which is a massive reduction on the Z Fold 6’s 5.6mm and 12.1mm, and allows it to compete with some of the best foldables around. Honor’s Magic V3 was already impressively thin at 4.4mm, but the Magic V5 takes that a step further.

Honor claims that the Magic V5 measures in at 4.1mm unfolded and 8.8mm folded – 0.1mm thinner than Samsung’s option in both regards. How much this is apparent in real life is up for debate – there really isn’t that much in it. It’s more just for Honor’s bragging rights.

Case in point: only the Ivory White version of the Magic V5 is that thin. The other colours – Black, Dawn Gold, and Reddish Brown – are slightly thicker than the Z Fold 7 at 4.2mm and 9mm. 

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 is lighter

That said, while the Honor Magic V5 is technically the thinner of the two foldables, Samsung takes the win when it comes to weight – and that’s just as, if not more important, than overall thickness. Nobody wants to use a heavy brick one-handed, after all!

Thankfully, neither foldable falls into that category, with both foldables measuring in at the same – or even lighter – than some candybar phones. The Honor Magic V5 measures in at an impressive 218g that, had Samsung’s Z Fold 7 not appeared, would’ve been miles ahead of the competition. The Oppo Find N5 is 229g, for example.

However, the Z Fold 7’s 215g makes it the lightest of the two, and even lighter than Samsung’s top-end Galaxy S25 Ultra. Again, there really isn’t that much in it, but when the foldables are all super thin, you need every edge you can get. 

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 offers slightly larger screens

Despite being the lighter of the two foldables, it’s the Z Fold 7 that boasts the larger screens of the two foldables – though, once again, there really isn’t that much of a difference here.

Samsung has finally ditched the long and narrow cover screen design with the Fold 7, instead sporting a regular 21:9 aspect ratio that should make typing easier, at the very least. It’s also larger at 6.5 inches, and boasts the same tech as the internal foldable screen.

That main foldable screen, by the way, clocks in at 8 inches and features all the bells and whistles you’d expect from a high-end phone screen including an LTPO-enabled 120Hz refresh rate, HDT10+ support and a 2600nit peak brightness. 

The Honor Magic V5, on the other hand, comes with a slightly smaller 6.4-inch cover screen, and an ever-so-slightly smaller 7.95-inch foldable screen. It offers the same LTPO-enabled 120Hz refresh rate as Samsung on both panels, though it bests the Fold with a peak brightness of 5000nits. 

It’s also higher-res than Samsung’s option, with a 403ppi pixel density compared to the Z Fold 7’s 368ppi. 

Both offer a high-end – yet slightly different – camera experience

Both the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Magic V5 are premium foldables with a camera spec to match – but the brands take different approaches to camera technology.

For Samsung, it’s seemingly all about the main camera. It features the same high-resolution 200MP main camera as the Galaxy S25 Ultra, equipped with a 1/1.3-inch sensor and an f/1.7 aperture. Paired with 16-in-1 pixel binning, this should result in a significant increase in detail and light capture, particularly in low-light situations.

However, the accompanying telephoto and ultrawide lenses aren’t quite as exciting, as they feature the same 10MP 3x telephoto and 12MP ultrawide lenses used by the Fold for years at this point. 

That’s the area where the Honor Magic V5 really looks to excel. Alongside the main 50MP f/1.6 lens, the V5 packs a high-res 64MP 3x periscope lens that could really boost zoom shots, while an equally high-res 50MP ultrawide should provide high-quality shots – especially with autofocus capabilities, which should allow it to double up as a fairly decent macro lens.

While both phones also offer 4K@60fps video capture with 10-bit HDR support, Samsung is alone in offering higher-res 8K@30fps capture. 

The Honor Magic V5 has a bigger battery and faster charging

One of the biggest differences between the two top-end foldables is apparent in the battery department. Samsung surprised consumers (this writer included) by including the exact same 4400mAh battery as last year’s Galaxy Z Fold 6 – a phone that already had a smaller battery than much of the book-style foldable competition, including Honor’s Magic V3.

Well, with Samsung’s reluctance to up the battery capacity, the gap between this year’s Fold 7 and Magic V5 is bigger than ever. The Honor Magic V5’s 5820mAh silicon-carbon battery is a whopping 1420mAh larger than Samsung’s alternative, and that should translate to a big boost to overall battery life – but we’ll have to wait and see for now.

It’s a similar story in the charging department, with Honor’s 66W wired and 50W wireless charging leaving the Fold 7’s 25W and 15W in the dust – though you’ll need a Honor-branded charger to achieve those top speeds. 

Early thoughts

Though Honor’s Magic V5 is the thinner foldable of the two, there really isn’t that much in it – and it’s only true if you get the white colourway anyway. In most respects, the Z Fold 7 and Magic V5 seem to be fairly evenly matched – Samsung has larger screens but Honor’s get brighter, while Samsung’s main camera is more advanced but falls behind in secondary lenses where Honor excels.

The biggest difference for many, I expect, will be battery life. There’s a huge difference in capacity between the two, and that should translate to better battery longevity from Honor’s foldable.

That said, we’ll reserve our final verdict until Honor’s Magic V5 is officially released in the UK and we’ve spent more time with it.