Technologies

I Tested Honor’s Rival to Samsung’s Z Fold 7 and It’s a Skinny Powerhouse

The Honor Magic V5 is incredibly slim but it’s got more to like than just its size. Shame you can’t buy it in the US.

At only 4.1mm thick at its thinnest unfolded point, the Honor Magic V5 is incredibly skinny. In fact, the company has said it’s the world’s thinnest foldable measuring in just 0.1mm skinnier than Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 7. That claim is debated — it depends whether you include the built-in screen protector or not — but we’re almost literally splitting hairs at this point. World’s thinnest or not, it’s mind-blowingly svelte.

Well, it blew my mind, anyway. The other foldables I’ve been using recently include Google’s Pixel 9 Pro Fold and the OnePlus Open, both of which feel positively bloated when held against the Magic V5. Getting my hands on Honor’s latest foldable made me realise just how far the technology has come in a few short years.

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But you’ll pay for that skinny design. Starting at £1,700, the Magic V5 is hardly what you’d consider cheap, although it’s around £100 cheaper than Samsung’s equivalent. Honor doesn’t sell its phones officially in the US, so for reference that UK price converts to $2,299.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks with the phone and here’s what I Iike about it.

Skinny design

It’s an obvious start, really. That thin body addresses my main concern about book-style foldables. It’s barely thicker than a regular phone when folded up, so it’s much easier to hold and easier to slide into a jeans pocket. Well, most of it is. While the phone’s body is only 8.8mm thick when shut, the camera unit protrudes an additional 7mm — almost doubling the overall thickness of the phone.

As a photographer I’ve never said this about a phone before but it’s almost a shame Honor didn’t really cut back on the cameras. I’d have loved to see what a foldable phone felt like that was so slender the whole way across.

While you’d probably imagine such a thin phone would be incredibly delicate, Honor actually boasted that it holds a Guinness World Record for the heaviest weight (104 kilograms) lifted by a foldable phone. How that actually translates to real-world durability over time remains to be seen, but the phone certainly felt sturdy in my hands-on time.

Its IP59 dust and water resistance will also help keep it safe from spilled drinks and other debris, but Google’s latest Pixel 10 Pro Fold takes the crown as the first foldable to offer IP68 resistance, giving it greater protection against dust or other particles getting inside and potentially harming the hinge.

The inner screen measures 7.95 inches and provides loads of room for videos or games. Like most book foldables, it has an almost square aspect ratio, so widescreen movies will still play as a strip through the middle. The crease isn’t especially noticeable under mixed lighting conditions. The outer 6.43-inch display fills the front of the phone and it’s bright and vibrant.

Powerful processor and Android software

The Magic V5 runs on the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chip and it put in some great results on our suite of benchmark tests. Navigating around the interface is swift and games like Genshin Impact and PUBG play well, even at max settings. They also look great when played on the massive inner display.

It runs Android 15 at launch although an update to Android 16 is expected later in the year. Honor has customized the interface with its own UI which makes various changes to the layout, apps and text, although it’s still easy to get to grips with.

It comes with various Honor AI tools built in, including an image editor that does things like object removal or expanding the canvas — the latter giving me the infinitely long arms I always dreamed of. It also includes the image-to-video generative AI tool that rocked my world previously by bringing my dad back to life. It works just the same here.

You’ll also find the usual array of Google AI tools including Gemini Live and Circle to Search. Honor says the phone will receive a total of seven years of software and security updates.

The phone has a 5,820-mAh battery, which should be good for at least a full day of mixed use, depending on what you get up to with it. Spend the whole morning streaming video on the massive inner screen and you’ll probably need to give it a top up later in the day. Doing so is quick, though: It supports 66W wired charging, as long as you have a compatible charger.

Solid cameras for a foldable

That massive rear bump houses three cameras: a 50-megapixel wide camera, a 50-megapixel ultrawide and a 64-megapixel telephoto camera providing 3x optical zoom. I’ve not spent much time testing the cameras, but from my early use I’d say they’re decent. But they can’t quite challenge today’s top camera phones like the iPhone 16 Pro or Galaxy S25 Ultra.

This is pretty much par for the course for foldable phones. Most companies tend to outfit their foldables with more midrange camera hardware in order to try and keep the already high price from going any higher. While the cameras on the V5 are certainly decent (especially for a foldable), if photography is your main consideration when buying a phone then it may not be the handset for you.

Is the Honor Magic V5 a good phone to buy?

Its slim design alone makes it one of the more impressive foldable phones I’ve held. It feels like a totally different level of device from earlier book-folding foldables like the OnePlus Open and it’s absolutely worth taking a look for that reason alone. Add in the powerful Qualcomm processor, the promised durability and the solid camera performance and the Honor Magic V5 has a lot to offer.

And it does it at a price that slightly undercuts Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 7. Sadly, I haven’t had my hands on the Z Fold 7 so I can’t say how the two phones compare, but on paper it seems like it’s a close battle.

The main reason for those of you in the US to buy the Samsung over the Honor is simple; You can’t buy the Honor in the US. Everyone else, you’ll have a tougher time deciding.

Technologies

Google Discover Gains Follow Button and Expands Content Sources

Google’s personalized news feed will feature a wider variety of content in the coming weeks.

Google Discover, Google’s personalized news feed, has largely remained the same since its introduction in 2018, but it’s now receiving some new and helpful features.

On Wednesday, Google announced that Discover will soon expand the type of content found within the feed and allow you to follow publications and creators. You can find Google Discover in the Google app, and it will be built into the home screens of some Android phones.

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Instead of just seeing a list of web pages to visit on your feed, you’ll soon see a mix of web articles, YouTube videos and social media posts from X and Instagram, effectively widening the net of content shown in Discover.

Along with expanding content from more sources, Google Discover is allowing users to follow specific publishers and content creators using a «follow» button at the top right of each content card.

Google says that tapping the publication’s or creator’s name will open a new page previewing the content that’s typically shared before you choose to follow the outlet. From our testing across multiple phones so far, it appears the feature is still rolling out.

Your Google Discover feed should now allow you to follow content creators. A more diversified mix of content will roll out over the coming weeks.

Technologies

New Bill Aims to Block Both Online Adult Content and VPNs: How Your VPN Could Be Affected

A proposed bill in Michigan has a broad reach that covers everything from adult AI content to manga and even depictions of transgender people. It includes a VPN ban to avoid workarounds.

If you live in Michigan, you might not be able to legally use a VPN soon if a new bill is passed into law. On Sept. 11, Michigan Republican representatives proposed far-reaching legislation banning adult internet content.

The bill, called the Anticorruption of Public Morals Act and advanced by six Republican representatives, would ban a wide variety of adult content online, ranging from ASMR and adult manga to AI content and any depiction of transgender people. It also seeks to ban all use of VPNs, foreign or US-produced.

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VPNs, or virtual private networks, are software suites often used as workarounds to avoid similar content bans that have passed in states like Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and the UK. VPNs can be purchased with subscriptions or downloaded and are also built into some browsers and Wi-Fi routers.

But Michigan’s bill would charge internet service providers with detecting and blocking VPN use, as well as banning the sale of VPNs in the state. Associated fines would be up to $500,000.

What the ban could mean for VPNs

Unlike some laws banning access to adult content, this Michigan bill is comprehensive. It applies to all residents of Michigan, adults or children, targets an extensive range of content and includes language that could ban not only VPNs but any method of bypassing internet filters or restrictions.

That could spell trouble for VPN owners and other internet users who leverage these tools to improve their privacy, protect their identities online, prevent ISPs from gathering data about them or increase their device safety when browsing on public Wi-Fi.

Read more: CNET Survey: 47% of Americans Use VPNs for Privacy. That Number Could Rise. Here’s Why

Bills like these could have unintended side effects. John Perrino, Senior Policy and Advocacy Expert for the nonprofit Internet Society, mentioned to CNET that adult content laws like this could interfere with what kind of music people can stream, the sexual health forums and articles they can access and even important news involving sexual topics that they may want to read.

«Additionally, state age verification laws are difficult for smaller services to comply with, hurting competition and an open internet,» Perrino said.

The Anticorruption of Public Morals Act has not passed the Michigan House of Representatives committee or been voted on by the Michigan Senate, and it’s not clear how much support the bill has beyond the six Republican representatives who have proposed it. As we’ve seen with state legislation in the past, sometimes bills like these can serve as templates for other representatives who may want to propose similar laws in their own states.

Could VPNs still get around bans like these?

Could VPNs still get around this type of ban? That’s a complex question that this bill doesn’t really address.

«From a technical standpoint, ISPs can attempt to distinguish VPN traffic using deep packet inspection, or they can block known VPN IP addresses,» said NordVPN privacy advocate Laura Tyrylyte. «However, deploying them effectively requires big investments and ongoing maintenance, making large-scale VPN blocking both costly and complex.»

Also, VPNs have ways around deep packet inspection and other methods.

«Some VPNs offer obfuscation — which tries to disguise VPN traffic as standard web traffic — using dedicated servers or custom VPN protocols, like NordVPN’s NordWhisper or Proton VPN’s Stealth,» said CNET senior editor Moe Long. «But note that obfuscation isn’t foolproof.»

There are also no-log features offered by many VPNs to guarantee they don’t keep a record of your activity, and no-log audits from third parties like Deloitte that — well, try to guarantee the guarantee. VPNs can even use server tricks, such as RAM-only servers that automatically reboot to erase data after every browsing session.

If you’re seriously concerned about your data privacy, you can look for features like these in a VPN and see if they are right for you. Changes like these, even on the state level, are one reason we pay close attention to how specific VPNs work during our testing, and recommend the right VPNs for the job, from speedy browsing to privacy while traveling.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Sept. 19 #565

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Sept. 19, No. 565.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Do you drink your coffee black? If so, today’s NYT Strands puzzle might be a puzzler. If you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Pour it on.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Wow, no cow.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

NONE, CONE, RICER, SHEW, FAIR, FAIRY, DRAY, YARD, MILK, CASH, DONE, DRAM, MADAM

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers: