Foldable telephones are nonetheless a great distance off from being thought of as mainstream smartphones, and for good purpose — they’re both too costly or there is a notion that these handsets aren’t sturdy sufficient to final greater than a few years. However, the high quality of folding screens has improved significantly over the previous few years, whereas foldable telephones are slowly changing into extra accessible by way of pricing. Earlier this yr, Motorola launched the Razr 40 that was priced below the Rs. 60,000 mark, and Tecno adopted swimsuit with the Phantom V Flip. I’ve spent the final couple of weeks utilizing the Tecno Phantom V Flip and listed here are my ideas on the firm’s newest clamshell-style folding telephone.
Tecno Phantom V Flip value in India
Tecno has set the value of the Phantom V Flip in India at Rs. 54,999 — the early chicken pricing was just for a month after the telephone was launched — and also you get 8GB of RAM and 256GB of inbuilt storage. It’s out there in Iconic Black and Mystic Dawn colourways.
Tecno Phantom V Flip design
The Tecno Phantom V Flip is a skinny smartphone when unfolded, and that is a superb factor as a result of it ends in a compact type issue if you fold it shut. It has a vegan leather-based exterior that provides a superb grip. The inside display screen has a crease that is barely seen on darkish wallpapers and when the display screen is off, nevertheless it’s barely perceptible if you’re utilizing the telephone. If you maintain the telephone at particular angles when the display screen is on, you would possibly discover the crease, and you may undoubtedly really feel it if you’re scrolling inside apps.
Tecno says that its drop-shaped hinge used for the foldable show mechanism has a ‘Hoverlock’ design that permits you to preserve the telephone open between 30 levels and 150 levels. There’s no hole between the two halves of the show when it’s closed. The Phantom V Flip has a round cowl show that’s harking back to a smartwatch show, and it’s surrounded by two cameras.
The Tecno Phantom V Flip sports activities a 6.9-inch versatile AMOLED display screen
There’s a fingerprint scanner that is positioned on the proper facet of the telephone and it is simple to achieve with one hand. There’s a little bit of resistance when attempting to open the telephone — no complaints right here as a result of it appears to let the telephone stay regular when bent at completely different angles — I ended up utilizing each arms to unfold the telephone. There’s no IP ranking right here, so you will have to be cautious of splashes and mud round the smartphone.
Tecno Phantom V Flip specs and options
The Phantom V Flip is powered by MediaTek’s Dimensity 8050 chip paired with an Arm Mali-G77 GPU, together with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM. This is a succesful cellular processor, and there is loads of reminiscence to run a number of purposes at the similar time. If you need to, the telephone can utilise a few of the unused 256GB of UFS 2.1 inbuilt storage (as much as 16GB) for much more demanding duties.
It ships with HiOS 13.5 — Tecno’s customized interface that runs on prime of Android 13 — out of the field. The firm has promised to supply two years of OS updates and three years of safety updates for the Tecno Phantom V Flip. The telephone ships with a number of preinstalled apps together with WPS Office, Phone Master, Facebook, Mobile Cloner, Visha Player, Spotify, Carlcare, and Instagram. It additionally comes with a ‘Sharp News‘ that curates information tales and hyperlinks to content material from the Internet.
In day-to-day utilization, HiOS is sort of easy and multitasking between apps is sort of simple — resulting from its slender width, I discovered it simpler to swipe and navigate throughout the interface. You can uninstall most of the bloatware listed above, besides the Phone Master app. The fast settings menu took a short time to get used to, however gives sufficient toggles and settings that I did not need to open the Settings app to make modifications. Its a little bit tough to search out some choices in the Settings app, as they’re tucked away in sub-menus. For occasion, if you wish to take a look at per-app battery utilization, you must faucet on Battery Lab > Battery Setting > Battery Usage.
Apps adapt when the inside show of the Phantom V Flip is partially folded
Tecno has geared up the telephone with some multitasking gestures that allows you to come out a window from full display screen mode and use it in floating window type. It additionally gives an app cloning function should you want two copies of particular social media apps, some sport mode enhancements, and different software program optimisations sprinkled all through the working system.
Tecno Phantom V Flip efficiency
In the artificial benchmarks checks, the Tecno Phantom V Flip managed respectable scores, suggesting the Dimensity 8050 chip has sufficient efficiency overhead to stay easy and aggressive for the subsequent couple of years. The telephone scored 706,648 factors in AnTuTu’s benchmark take a look at, whereas its Geekbench 6 single-core and multi-core scores had been 1,106 and three,220 factors, respectively. In the PCMark Work 3.0 take a look at, the telephone scored 14,392 factors.
The Phantom V Flip is able to dealing with most graphics intensive video games, together with Fortnite and Genshin Impact. I turned on the greater decision “HD textures” function on Fortnite and toggled the highest settings — half-hour in, the telephone was barely heat round the digital camera module, nevertheless it did not seem to have a serious impact on gameplay. In Genshin Impact, I used to be in a position to play the sport on ‘Medium’ settings with none points — even in very hectic domains.
The handset packs a 4,000mAh battery that may be charged at 45W with the included charging brick. Within half-hour, the telephone was charged from zero to 63 %, whereas it was almost full at 95 % after one other half-hour. It gives dependable battery life — 14 hours and 27 minutes in our video loop take a look at. I used to be in a position to get by way of the day with about 30 % of battery, with about half-hour of gaming and a common mixture of watching movies on YouTube, texting on WhatsApp, and scrolling by way of X (previously often known as Twitter) and Threads.
The inside show on the Phantom V Flip gives respectable visibility in vivid daylight
On the inside, the Phantom V Flip sports activities a 6.9-inch versatile AMOLED inside show with a full-HD+ decision and as much as 120Hz refresh price. It’s very easy and will get vivid, particularly if you’re outdoor — should you allow the High Brightness Mode in the show settings. Content seems good on the inside show in a number of apps and the telephone helps HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG codecs. Apps work fairly nicely in split-screen mode, and the built-in digital camera and YouTube.
There’s a round 1.32-inch cowl panel on the outdoors that appears much like a spherical smartwatch display screen. It’s undoubtedly not as vivid as the inside display screen and you should use it to entry apps that you just obtain from the Play Store. What you do get is entry to your occasions, a preview of the rear cameras (which are situated round the round show), health monitoring data, upcoming alarms, the climate, sound recorder, a timer, and a stopwatch. Swiping down exhibits you a number of fast toggles, whereas swiping up enables you to see an inventory of your notifications.
Tecno Phantom V Flip cameras
The Phantom V Flip is provided with a 64-megapixel main digital camera and a 13-megapixel ultra-wide-angle digital camera. You may also take selfies with a front-facing (when unfolded) 32-megapixel digital camera housed in a centre-aligned hole-punch cutout.
Tecno Phantom V Flip primary and wide-angle digital camera samples (faucet to see full measurement)
Images captured utilizing the main digital camera are crisp and sharp, particularly if you allow the “64MP” mode that permits pixel-binning for pictures — and takes a break up second longer to avoid wasting the picture. During the day, you get plenty of element and hues had been correct. When you turn to the wide-angle digital camera throughout the day, there is a noticeable drop in high quality, particularly in relation to publicity and color accuracy.
The smartphone additionally takes good photographs at nightfall when lighting circumstances are much less beneficial, capturing ample element with out including an excessive amount of noise. I discovered myself disabling the AI options on the digital camera for higher outcomes, however your mileage might fluctuate. In darkish situations, the Super Night mode works very nicely on the main digital camera and captured sufficient element inside seconds.
While you’ll be able to take selfies with the 32-megapixel digital camera on the inside show, the dual-display design of the Phantom V Flip permits you to click on a photograph of your self utilizing the 64-megapixel rear digital camera whereas utilizing the cowl show to preview your shot. The outer digital camera captures sharper photos and you too can use options like Super Night mode when clicking photographs of your self in locations with out sufficient lighting.
Tecno Phantom V Flip primary and wide-angle digital camera samples (faucet to see full measurement)
You can shoot as much as 4K movies at 30fps with the main digital camera on the Tecno Phantom V Flip — and that is the solely digital camera value recording movies with. However, when taking pictures in low-light circumstances, it’s higher to modify to 1080p at 60fps, however it’ll nonetheless seem darkish and noisy — a far cry from the efficiency of the Super Night mode for nonetheless photographs.
Verdict
The Tecno Phantom V Flip brings foldable telephones to a extra inexpensive value level, nevertheless it makes some compromises alongside the means. For instance, in contrast to its costlier counterparts, you do not get a bigger exterior show that may run apps and even video games, like the Moto Razr 40 Ultra — this telephone’s outer display screen is comparable in measurement to the Moto Razr 40, which can be priced equally. Similarly, the main digital camera is the just one I loved utilizing on the Phantom V Flip, to the level the place I used to be additionally utilizing it to seize selfies.
The show on the Tecno Phantom V Flip is fluid and responsive and apps load easily due to the succesful MediaTek processor and the 120Hz refresh price. Battery life can be fairly dependable and the 45W wired charging is beneficial to have — it’s sooner than the Galaxy Z Flip 5 which helps 25W charging through a PPS charger. If you do not thoughts a few of the caveats talked about above, you’ll be able to contemplate the Phantom V Flip should you’re on the lookout for a foldable telephone below the Rs. 60,000 mark.
