While the focus of the HONOR Magic V6 is really more on the ultra-slim form factor and flagship-level optics, we couldn’t help but try the unit out for gaming. I mean, it’s the first foldable that houses Qualcomm Snapdragon’s strongest chipset that’s commercially available, the 3nm Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite 8 Gen 5 along with 16GB RAM so we already expect the phone to run most, if not all, of today’s popular mobile games with absolute ease.
But what if we started playing the same games on an unfolded HONOR Magic V6 with just 4.0mm of thickness? Arguably the HONOR Magic V6 is the thinnest foldable in the market to date (at 8.75mm thin for the white variant) yet was able to cram 6660mAh battery and an advanced vapor-cooling chamber system at the same time. I don’t know what spell the technical wizards at HONOR did but on paper, at least, that’s as impressive as it gets!
Now, before we proceed, this is not a gaming review of the advanced unit that was lent to us by HONOR Philippines. The device that we got to tinker while we were stuck in Karachi is still not the final commercial model that could appear in the local market should HONOR Philippines decide to bring it here. We couldn’t do any benchmarking as well, so this is just a hands-on experience of playing a couple of mobile games on the famed foldable.
Mobile Gaming Unfolded
Playing games on an unfolded HONOR Magic V6 is a novel experience for me. As someone who’s used to playing mobile games the more traditional way, having a larger screen is, in a way, freeing.
You have a bigger visual canvas, and some games automatically adjust to make the experience more enjoyable. Take the new Overwatch Mobile Game as example.
Instead of filling the entire 7.95” 120Hz refresh rate supported LTPO2.0 Screen, the game optimizes it by just expanding the game space by putting all the controls below it, giving you unhindered visual landscape.
The gaming form-factor is pretty efficient without sacrificing visual display and immersion.
For games like Genshin Impact and Mobile Legends: Bang-Bang, the game occupies the entire space visual space. This is where the Game Space comes into play. Best to turn on options that will allow you to prevent unwanted key presses as the controls are baked into the game’s visual area itself.
For Genshin Impact, this works pretty well and it feels like you’re playing on a small tablet. It does become a challenge for Mobile Legends: Bang-Bang though so we recommend playing it with the device folded.
The item purchase button is placed all the way on the right-hand corner making it harder for you to quickly purchase items and/or swap items out on MLBB.
Sure, you’ll be playing it on a smaller 6.52” screen, but you’ll be much more efficient to do that as the item purchase button is spaced quite a bit away from where you hand naturally rests if you opt to play the game unfolded.
Despite that, gaming on either folded or unfolded will yield you excellent visual immersion as both internal and external screens have up to 120Hz refresh rate support and have all the Eye Care features that we came to expect from HONOR (including a 4320Hz PWM Dimming feature to reduce eye strain).
As for heat, we were surprised that the HONOR Magic V6 didn’t run as hot as we expected it to be even when playing unfolded. I’d even warrant to say that the phone tends to run hotter if you decide to shoot photos and videos for a prolonged period when the unit is unfolded than during gaming. But again, as we couldn’t benchmark the device, this is just a quick hands-on experience.
We only had a few weeks with the HONOR Magic V6 and we can’t wait to spend more time with it if and when the brand does decide to bring it to the Philippines. I hope they do, though, as it’s a remarkable phone and truly crystalizes what a foldable should be able to do. For the first time, there has been almost zero compromises on a foldable device and if you’ve ever considered getting yourself one, 2026 is the year to do that.