Porsche Design, that merchandise brand founded by the legendary designer of the 911, has given us such classic products as the Chronograph 1, the Adidas-Porsche Design Bounce shoes, with a sophisticated suspension built into the soles, and their classic aviator sunglasses. But perhaps the most compelling are their phones. Once upon a time, the brand was inextricably linked to Huawei, with their collaborations offering both compelling design and higher specs than the handsets they were built on. At a significantly higher price. No more.
Starting 2024, Porsche Design and Honor have started moving forward with an all-new brand collaboration. Sadly, they’re not officially available here, but we’ve gotten our hands on one. Yet at nearly double the price of the standard Honor Magic foldable, is the extra style worth the premium?
Styling
One thing’s for sure, the RSR certainly has style. The matte gray ridged rear panel feels like it was ripped straight off the side of a high-end sports car, and the asymmetric glass camera housing provides both great protection for the cameras and a nod to the hexagonal housing on PD’s previous Mate models. Where many other phones might have their specs printed on the bezel around the cameras, here, they’re etched into the metal surround. Nice.
A snap-on synth-leather case is offered with the phone to provide protection, with a magnetic side panel that slides over the exposed brushed-metal hinge. Even with the case on, this is not a very thick phone, at just 10.1mm. But it is a very tall one, equal in size to most flagships.
Both the outer and inner screen have nice and thin bezels, and are dressed up with RSR-specific wallpapers at rest. The outer screen has rounded edges, making it pleasant to use one-handed. And you could indeed use this folded up 100% of the time and not complain about it. But if you’re paying this much money for a foldable, why limit yourself?
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Hardware
The Porsche Design is based on the Chinese version of the V2, which is more powerful than the global one. This keeps it relatively current compared to newer foldables. It features a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Octa-Core processor with a peak single-core speed of 3.38GHz, and is mated to an Adreno 740 GPU. To keep things running smoothly, there’s 16GB of RAM and a terabyte of internal storage. Needless to say, this runs games buttery smooth, and is still reasonably competitive with newer foldables.
Input/output is your typical USB-C port, but it’s a 3.1 port with OTG and Display Port 1.2 compatibility—meaning you can attach this to an external display. Not that you will find much need to, thanks to the twin LTPO OLED displays, with 1080p display on the cover and a big 2k+ folding display featuring a quick 120Hz refresh rate, 16-bit color, HDR10+ compatibility, and a reasonably unobtrusive center crease. With 2,500 nits of brightness, it’s easy to read in any kind of light. The phone comes with screen protectors—a necessity on a foldable—that are relatively scratch-resistant and smooth to the touch.
Also on offer is a color-matched stylus, which makes writing and drawing on that big double-screen much easier. Though with no magnetic clamping to charge, you will need to remember to plug it in every now and then to keep it topped up.
Energy efficiency
Powering all of this is a 5,000mAh battery with the new silicone carbon chemistry that promises to be more sustainable and safer than lithium. In the real world, it provides decent-(though not impressive) life under moderate usage. Standby time, on the other hand, is excellent. No wireless charging, sadly, but the 66W wired charger can usually top it up in just over half an hour from near empty. There’s also modest 5W reverse charging, for when you have a secondary device that needs a little top-up.
Cameras
Honor has a good track record in terms of camera performance, and on the surface, the V2 has relatively good specs for a folder, or even for a standard brick camera. The main camera is a 50MP sensor mated to F1.9 25mm optics, which is wider than Honor’s typical setup. This is mated to a 50MP 13mm Ultrawide and a 20MP 62mm Telephoto lens. All three default to half the resolution in regular mode, at 12.5, 10, and 12.5. Sadly, to keep the phone slim, those cameras use smaller sensors than most flagships, with a 1/4” telephoto sensor and a 1/3” ultrawide. The main sensor is the biggest, at around 1/1.76.” While it’s decent enough, it lags behind the main sensors on many midrange phones.
Still, thanks to Honor’s software processing, output is typically clean and bright. The interface is a further development of the familiar Huawei/Honor app, with a neat rotary slider to zoom in and out. The 2.5x telephoto really stands out in daylight shots, the 62mm focal length perfect for portrait shots. It can focus relatively close, the camera switching seamlessly between that and the main camera if the subject is too close for the tele to focus on. The color matching is so good that it can be hard to tell the difference. The ultrawide is decent, though not anything to write home about. The main camera is good, as long as the lighting is good, with fast autofocus and quick buffering time, but suffers in low light compared to the main cameras on flagship slab phones.
There’s a high-resolution mode that boosts detail, but it needs good light to be effective, and in such conditions, there’s little issue with the standard pictures, anyway. You can take high resolution pro pics with all three rear cameras, though these are often not as good as the auto high-res pics. RAW images are only available on the main camera, and these are actually quite decent.
Beyond this, the RSR comes with a full array of Honor’s standard modes, like Night, Aperture—for photo bokeh, Story, Slow-motion, and Dual video camera. There’s also a Movie mode that applies computational background blur to video for a cinematic feel. It can detect and track multiple people inside a shot, allowing you to blur the background around them surprisingly well, though the more people you have in the shot, the less accurate it becomes.
Honor’s recent software updates have also brought AI editing to its camera system, with AI outpaint to extend your canvas, multipe beauty options that are surprisingly subtle, allowing you to remove blemishes and eyebags without erasing skin detail and texture, and an AI eraser with a detection algorithm that provides a much tighter cut than most, making it easier to erase photobombers from your photos. How this compares to Google or Samsung AI would take a more exhaustive comparison, but compared to more general AI-driven tools like Adobe Firefly, Honor’s system is pretty good.
Software and other features
While it’s a decent photography and videography platform, where the RSR really shines is in work and media consumption. When folded, it’s only a little thicker than a regular phone, and can be used as such with no problem. You can open it to take selfies with the rear cam and the outer screen, set it up in tent configuration to view content on the outer screen on a table, reverse it and stand it up as a miniature laptop, typing on the lower half of the folding screen while looking at the upper one, or simply use it as a miniature tablet.
Here, the stylus comes in handy, and is perfectly matched to the tablet-like display, allowing you fine line control and writing flexibility. It’s worth bearing in mind that while the crease isn’t always visible, it’s always there, and drawing across it with the stylus can leave jiggles and bumps in your linework. The extra space on that inner screen can make for great editing options if you’re using a video editor with reconfigurable windows. And even without, the extra space makes editing timeliness much easier than on a smaller phone!
For those craving that Huawei feel but still needing Google Services, Honor is a great choice. Many of the Magic OS features are familiar enough. And Honor Share is directly compatible with Huawei Share, allowing multi-gigabyte wireless file transfer in seconds, making the transition painless for those embedded in the Huawei ecosystem. Honor also has Android features like Wireless projection and Windows Link, which allows screen sharing and control right from your desktop or laptop. Honor specific features include audio aids that describe what’s on the screen, AI translation features, and a My Honor service app similar to the My Huawei app, which combines a storefront and access to services—including repair services—all in one easy-to-use app.
Verdict
But you can get many of these features on Honor’s local phones, as well. And while the Porsche Design does offer a big upgrade in style, the performance upgrade is a little tamer. You don’t even get China-exclusive camera hardware, like you sometimes did on Porsche Design phones of the past. Yes, this is a very good phone, but the locally sold V2 already has most of these goodies, at a much lower price. And the upcoming V3 is even better. Thinner, faster, sharper. With bigger camera sensors and wireless charging to boot!
Alas, the forbidden fruit is like your first taste of caviar. Yes, it’s delicious, but you’re left wondering what all the fuss is about. Still, can’t deny that having a phone that looks good paired with a three-piece suit or sitting on the console of your 911 is neat. Hopefully for the next generation of collabs, Honor, which has made great strides in bringing out budget-friendly high-performance phones, will finally bring their full suite of Porsche Design products to cater to the other end of the market. The end that does eat caviar on crackers and wears three-piece suits to dinner.
It’s about time the big boys got some serious competition.
SPECS: 2026 Porsche Design Honor Magic V2 RSR
Price: P170,000
Processor: Qualcomm SM8550-AC Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
Memory: 16GB Ram, 1TB Internal
Battery: 5,000mAh
Camera system: Triple-lens rear (50MP, 20MP, 50MP), Single-lens front (16MP)
Screen: Dual, 7.92-inch foldable
Operating system: Android 13
Score: 8.5/10
More photos from the Porsche Design Honor Magic V2 RSR:
