Phantom V Fold Review: Not an Ordinary Tecno Phone

This is one of the newest contenders in the foldable called the Tecno Phantom V fold and here are features of the Phantom V fold Review. Samsung isn’t the only one with these foldable phones – but does Tecno have what it takes to compete with them?

Phantom V Fold is Tecno’s first foldable phone and is also one of the first Rivals to Galaxy Z Fold 4 to appear in global markets. An advantage of Tecno is its much lower price and launch about the same as a typical flagship. There is a great flagship device from tecno called Phantom X2 Pro

Tecno Phantom V Fold Review

Tecno Phantom V Fold Review: Design

The Phone has a similar design to Samsung, with a screen on the front and a large folding display inside. The back panel is made of polycarbonate fiber texture and feels almost like cloth. The multi-camera setup has a bump that lends a unique aesthetic otherwise it looks like your typical foldable phone.

It weighs 300 grams which is on the heavy side. There is no hinge Protection which Samsung’s foldable do have. The folding mechanism feels pretty sturdy. The hinge folds flat with no Gap, unlike the galaxy z-fold force hinge. The V Fold doesn’t stay open half folded either which limits some of the extra utility of the folding form factor.

Screen

The front display is a 6.42-inch curved 1080p AMOLED with a 120-hertz refresh rate. The aspect ratio is wider than the galaxy, which makes the Phantom feel more natural to use in one hand. When the device is unfolded, you get a larger 7.85-inch AMOLED with a 2296 x 2000 resolution and a 120-hertz refresh rate.

The crease on the folding display is relatively smooth and unobtrusive. The inner screen and the cover screen use LTPO tech with smooth 120 hertz while you’re swiping. The screen will dial down as low as 10Hz when you stop interacting with the display to save energy.

The displays look nice, sharp and contrast maybe not be the most color accurate and there’s no HDR10 video support.

It has a maximum brightness of 500nits with manual brightness and auto mode – the phone isn’t as comfy to use Outdoors on a sunny day.

Other Features

For audio, the V-fold has a pair of stereo speakers. The loudness is very good and the sound quality is okay could be better. You get a nice treble and some bass.

For Security, you can wake up and unlock the phone with a side-mounted fingerprint reader built into the power button.

Storage comes with 256 or 512gigs of storage and that isn’t expandable.

Tecno Phantom V Fold Review: Performance and OS

The interface of the phone is HiOS 13 running on top of Android 13. There are plenty of options when it comes to multitasking as it should be on affordable devices:

1. Every app has a button within its status bar that gives you a split screen and pop-up options. Alternatively, hold that button and pull down on it, and move the current app to the side while opening the app drawer to choose a second app.
2. App pairs: are located near the top of the task switcher. These shortcuts will launch a split screen you’ve already saved.
3. The smart Edge panel helps enable multitasking. Tap on an app icon on the panel, opens it in a pop-up window, and drag it to either side of the screen to take it into a split screen.
4. You can also minimize an app into a pop-up window:

• By swiping up from the bottom of the screen and dragging the app to the side.
• The pinch gesture: Pinch in with four or five fingers will shrink a full-screen app into a pop-up window.

There are a couple of limitations to the split screen. You can’t resize the windows when a split screen,  it’s locked at 50/50.

Operating System

The chipset on it is Mediatek Dimensity 9000+, a flagship-grade chipset in the same class as Snapdragon 8 plus Gen 1. The phone does a great job demonstrating performance on par with Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 4. The thermal management is decent.

Battery

This comes with a 5000mAh battery larger than Galaxy Z-fold 4. The battery life performance was decent. The device supports 45-watt charging with the charger in the Box, you charge from 0 to 62% in half an hour. There is no support for wireless charging.

Tecno Phantom V Fold Review: Camera

The main camera is a 50 megapixel, 50MP two-time zoom camera and a 13 megapixel Ultra wide cam which has autofocus. The main Cam’s photos are pretty good with excellent sharpness, detail and balanced rendition. For the zoom camera’s two times photos are nice with a bit lively colors and plenty of detail.

Shooting a distant subject with the ultra-wide cam, the resulting shot is actually get softer detail around the edges, the effect looks good though. The ultra-wide has autofocus so you can use it to take close-ups to look good with sharp and detailed subjects.

For selfies, you actually get two different selfie cams:

• 16 megapixel one on the inside.
• 32megapixel one on the cover screen.

The photos in the cover screen selfie & internal selfie cam have plenty of detail and good exposure. The colors could use some more saturation and the dynamic range isn’t the widest.

Video

The Phantom v fold records video in up to 4K at 60fps with the Main and zoom cameras. from the main cam has nice looking colors and plenty of detail.  The electronic stabilization is available on all of the cameras.

Conclusion

Overall, it’s impressive and it offers a full-fledged foldable phone for so much cheaper than the competition. There are a couple of missing features like waterproofing and wireless charging. The displays are in some ways inferior to the more expensive options. If you’re new to affordable phones and want to save money,  the phantom v-fold is worth considering.