Honor, the Chinese language smartphone maker spun off from Huawei Applied sciences, has unveiled what it touted because the world’s “thinnest and lightest” foldable smartphone, boasting built-in agentic synthetic intelligence (AI) as competitors heats up amongst Chinese language handset manufacturers.
The Magic V5 smartphone, with costs beginning at 8,999 yuan (US$1,256), measures simply 8.8 millimetres thick when folded and weighs 217 grams, the corporate stated throughout its Wednesday launch occasion. The system is Honor’s first flagship system because it introduced a strategic shift in direction of changing into an AI {hardware} firm, CEO James Li Jian stated.
A key function of the Magic V5 is Yoyo, an AI agent that Honor stated can generate presentation decks from shared articles. It could actually additionally coordinate ride-hailing orders throughout a number of apps, cancelling different orders as soon as a trip is booked, which works by speaking with AI brokers in different apps, in line with the corporate.
China’s foldable smartphone market has continued to develop regardless of an absence of serious enchancment in shopper demand for such gadgets, market intelligence agency IDC stated in a report in April. Chinese language distributors shipped 2.84 million foldable smartphones within the first quarter, up 53.1 per cent 12 months on 12 months, in line with the report.
Huawei led the section in China by a big margin, capturing 76.6 per cent of the home foldable smartphone market within the first quarter, in line with IDC knowledge. Honor was a distant second with 9.1 per cent of the market. Huawei launched its Mate XT, the world’s first “trifold” smartphone with two hinges, in September 2024 for home sale earlier than rolling it out globally in February.