Honor V Purse: Fashion-focused concept phone unveiled at IFA 2023

Trade shows are fertile ground for launching crazy new or ground breaking products and, at IFA 2023 in Berlin, Honor is stepping out with its catwalk ready V Purse.

Oddly, this a concept device rather than something that you will actually be able to buy, but it’s certainly an approach I can see appealing to a certain type of consumer.

The Honor V Purse is a folding phone with a screen that wraps around the outside the phone chassis instead of folding up on the inside — a bit like the Huawei Mate Xs range of smartphones. The difference is how that screen is implemented.

Instead of simply displaying notifications and lock screen graphics when not in use, the Honor V Purse shows textures and fabrics on its always-on-display: the aim is to  simulate the look of a clutch purse. Honor calls this its “phone-to-purse” concept, although as I’m sure you’ll be disappointed to hear, you can’t actually use it as a purse – you’ll have to carry another bag to store you credit card and keys in.

In keeping with the fashion focused approach, Honor has worked with a series of creative designers to come up with these screens, including the creative director of Burberry menswear, Bram Van Diepen, artist Yunuene Esparza, and professor of the China Academy of Art, Yuan Youmin.

This way, the phone becomes a fashion accessory — there are even attachment points on two of the corners so the prospective purchaser can hang the phone around their neck. And, of course, in the imaginary world where this smartphone is available to consumers, there’s a selection of different interchangeable straps and chains to choose from so you can match the phone to your outfit of choice.

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And because it’s a display, some of these fashion screens animate, moving as the phone moves. One example the company showed off was a charm bracelet strung across the outside of the screen.

Not exactly my cup of tea but you get the idea. You’ll also be able to have different screens on each side of the phone.

Detailed specifications are, alas, somewhat thin on the ground, beyond a promise that the phone will be 9.9mm thin; Honor has no plan to bring this to market at all. All of which begs the question as to why bother announcing it at all.

I suspect it’s a bit of a toe in the water to see what the reaction to it is, to see how it’s received amongst smartphone fans. Maybe, just maybe, at a technology trade show at some point in the future, we’ll actually see one of these launched that’s available to buy.