The foldable smartphone race just got hotter. 
Honor’s newly launched Magic V5, a direct challenger to Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 7, is making waves in Europe with an AI trick that even Google hasn’t delivered yet: on-device, real-time call translation.
Unlike most translation services that rely heavily on the cloud, Honor’s AI Call Translation works entirely on the phone itself. That means faster translations, no reliance on internet access, and stronger privacy since your conversations don’t leave the device. The feature runs on what Honor calls the industry’s first on-device large speech model, taking up just 800MB of storage while supporting six languages – Chinese, English, Spanish, French, German, and Italian.
The translation happens as you speak, with results generated on the fly rather than waiting for complete sentences. According to Honor, the model delivers a 38% speed boost, 16% better accuracy, and requires 75% less memory compared to older approaches. It’s based on an optimized version of the open-source Whisper model, tuned for efficiency and real-time performance, developed in collaboration with Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
This makes the Magic V5 not only one of the thinnest foldables on the market but also a pioneer in AI-driven phone features. Whether it can handle the complexities of dialects and nuanced conversations remains to be seen, but for travelers, students, and business users, Honor’s solution could mark a major step toward seamless multilingual communication on the go.
2 comments
wow this is insane, no internet needed?? 🤯
foldables still too expensive for me