Back in February we wrote that HONOR had teased a foldable built to be used rather than babied, and that local availability was still a question mark.
Well that question mark is getting answered today.
HONOR is launching the Magic V6 in South Africa at an invite-only event at The Venue in Melrose Arch, and Geekhub will be in attendance. Pricing, availability and the local retail story all get confirmed this afternoon, and we will follow this piece up the moment we have them.
Pricing Now Confirmed: Read Here
For now, here is everything the rest of the world already knows, because the Magic V6 has been out in the wild for a while.
This phone has been on a long tour before reaching us
The Magic V6 was unveiled at MWC in Barcelona in early March, launched in China shortly after, and then began its global rollout in June out of Malaysia and Singapore, with HONOR promising Europe, the Middle East and Africa would follow through that month.
So South Africa is arriving a few months late to the party, which is automatically a bad thing.
Late arrivals usually mean the software has had a few update cycles, the early bugs have been found by someone else, and the launch pricing has had time to settle against the competition.
It also means HONOR has a slighlty harder pitch today because the spec sheet is not news anymore and Samsung has just released their foldable range locally. It’s going to be interesting to see how HONOR plans to get Saffa’s excited.
The spec sheet, since it is already public
Start with the thing HONOR cares most about. The Magic V6 folds down to 8.75mm and opens out to 4.0mm, weighs around 219g, and still carries a 6,660mAh silicon-carbon battery with 80W charging. Thin and long-lasting have historically been a trade-off in foldables, but HONOR is claiming that’s no longer the case.
Inside is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, paired with LPDDR5X memory and UFS 4.1 storage, in configurations that have run up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB internally depending on the market.
The cover screen is 6.52 inches and the inner display is 7.95 inches, both LTPO AMOLED at 120Hz, with the outer panel pushing a claimed 6,000 nits of peak brightness.
Cameras are a 50MP main, a 64MP periscope telephoto and a 50MP ultra-wide, with a 20MP selfie camera on the cover.
And then the durability story which we covered in February. The Magic V6 carries both IP68 and IP69 ratings, which no other foldable has managed, built around a 2,800MPa Super Steel hinge that HONOR was confident enough to hang a human being off during a zipline stunt.
Globally it ships in red, gold, white and black. Which of those we actually get locally is one of the many things we find out today.
What we are actually going to ask
Specs are the easy part. The interesting part is always the local translation.
What does it cost. Malaysia launched it at RM7,699, which converts to somewhere near 1,900 US dollars. Direct conversions are a terrible predictor of South African pricing once duty, VAT and channel margin have their turn, so we are not going to pretend that number tells you anything useful. What it does tell you is which shelf HONOR is aiming for, and that shelf is the same one the Galaxy Z Fold sits on.
Which variant. HONOR has history here. The Magic V5 landed locally in a single 512GB configuration rather than the full global range, and knowing whether we get one variant or three changes the price conversation completely.
When can you actually buy one. Launch date and on-shelf date are frequently not the same day in this market.
What comes with it. Every other market got a pre-order bundle built around a two-year quality assurance plan and a year of screen protection. On a device with a folding screen that is a load-bearing part of the value proposition, and its absence locally would be worth noticing.
And who is selling it. Whether this lands through and operator exclusive, or across all channels, determines what you end up paying every month.
The honest advice before this afternoon
If you are shopping for a foldable this week, wait forty-eight hours.
The Magic V5 was our Foldable Phone of the Year in 2025, and it is still an excellent device that is about to get cheaper because its replacement just arrived. Depending on what HONOR prices the V6 at, the smart buy may turn out to be last year’s model at a discount rather than this year’s at full price.
We will know by tomorrow. Full pricing, availability and hands-on impressions from The Venue to follow.
