Remember when HONOR claimed its new Magic V5 foldable smartphone as the world’s thinnest to date? The Chinese smartphone maker claimed 8.8mm of thickness, but this figure had some caveats – made even worse by third-party tests confirming that Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 is the real winner here.
World’s Thinnest Foldable: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7
There are two sets of numbers from different parties confirming this fact. The first one, reported by Business Korea, comes from Korean Consumer-centered Enterprise Association (KCEA), showing the thickness figure from five foldable smartphones: HONOR Magic V5, Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7, vivo X Fold5, Xiaomi Mix Fold 4, and HUAWEI Mate X6. Of all five models, only Samsung overreported its foldable’s thickness at 8.9mm, which was measured 8.82mm during the test. The remaining four all underreported with actual thickness ranging from 9.34 to 10.47mm.
The second source of numbers comes courtesy of SamMobile, measuring four models with factory-installed screen protectors taken into account; these are Galaxy Z Fold7, Oppo Find N5, Magic V5, and X Fold5. Once again, the Galaxy Z Fold7 is thinner than claimed (8.66mm), while the other three are not. Oppo’s candidate did manage to come on top when the camera bump thickness gets included in measurements (at 13.61mm), however.
HONOR in particular has pushed its thickness claim quite more aggressively than other brands mentioned here. That said, if you pay attention to the footnotes found in Magic V5’s product page or news releases, it mentions the 8.8mm figure only applies to the Ivory White variant (which is the variant tested by KCEA), and “does not include the inner and outer screen protective films and the raised part of the camera.”
Still, Samsung is not exactly worrying too much about how far it ranks among the thickness leaderboard, as the Korea smartphone giant has clearly pivoted towards marketing its AI features via its “Galaxy AI” messaging. While the thickness figure gets mentioned from time to time, it’s only in the context of comparing against past Galaxy Z Fold models – so it only took third-party testers until recently to find out Samsung did claim the world’s thinnest title after all.
Pokdepinion: Practically speaking, these numbers won’t make too much of a difference – but I’m not liking the rule-bending stuff going on here.