Honor has also released what is effectively the nonfoldable equivalent of the Magic Vs, the Honor Magic 5 Pro. It’s here to test how much you value the fold because it costs hundreds less at £949 and is more advanced in a couple of important ways.

It has swish-curved front glass, which is a benefit to some, a bugbear to others. The Honor Magic 5 Pro’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is a generation ahead of the Magic Vs’ processor. Its 50-MP 3.5X zoom is dramatically better than the foldable’s 8-MP 3X one. At 10X zoom, the disparity between the two is truly stark. The Magic 5 Pro’s super-zoomed images make the Magic Vs’ appear very soft and light on detail.

The Honor Magic Vs puts on a good show of being a compromise-free foldable, but even a few generations into foldables, you pay an early-adopter tax in a number of areas—beyond just the price.

The Honor Magic Vs appears to fix some of the key problems of the foldable phone, at least on paper—but neither this phone nor the Magic 5 Pro will be sold in the US. It’s significantly thinner than others of this style, and getting rid of the hinge gap makes it much less likely you will ruin its inner display within the first few days of ownership.

However, Honor’s software offers precious few optimizations or features that specifically acknowledge the foldable form. And while feature-rich, its Honor Magic 5 Pro sibling proves that sticking with a flat form gives you more advanced functions for less, with fewer obvious compromises.