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The Tecno Phantom V Flip is an affordable foldable smartphone that is a mixed bag when it comes to performance. The design is unique, it has good battery life, and decent performance, and the fast charging is a big plus. But on the other side, the core aspects like display, camera, and even overall performance leave a lot to desire. Especially when the price point by itself is still in the premium smartphone segment. For Rs. 54,999, I expected more from the Tecno Phantom V Flip.
After Samsung, Motorola, and Oppo, Tecno has now also rolled out its first clamshell foldable smartphone. The brand launched the Tecno Phantom V Flip in India in October. The smartphone is the most affordable new generation foldable smartphone after the Moto Razr 40. One major thing that makes the Phantom V Flip’s design different from other foldable smartphones is the outer display. Until now, we have seen squarish cover displays, rectangular cover displays, and even folder-shaped cover displays (from Samsung Galaxy Z Flip). Tecno, on the other hand, has featured a circular display in its foldable smartphone.
In this review, we will go through every component of the Tecno Phantom V Flip, which aims to make this form factor more accessible and hopefully give buyers something different to look at, if they are looking for a flip phone. So, here’s my review of the Tecno Phantom V Flip.
The Phantom V Flip comes in two colour options: Mystic Dawn and Iconic Black. I have used the Mystic Dawn variant and let me tell you this colour looks sweet. Mystic Dawn is basically a darker version of lilac, which is a new trend in smartphones. We have seen similar colours on the iPhone 14, then on the Galaxy Z Flip 5, and now on the Phantom V Flip.
Speaking of the design, it features a vegan leather back and a hole-punch foldable display, paired with an aluminium frame. Furthermore, the hinge is made of steel. The volume rockers and power buttons with fingerprint sensors are placed on the right side of the frame. It features two microphones, one at the bottom and one at the top. Next, the smartphone also comes with a stereo-speaker configuration.
Now coming to the main part, the outer display aka ‘The Planet’. Do you know why Tecno calls it ‘The Planet’? Well, it’s because of its shape. The Tecno Phantom V Flip 5 features a circular display on the back, placed inside the circular bezel, which also is the camera module. However, I believe the bezel takes up a lot of unnecessary space, and it would have looked much better if it was slightly thinner. The outer display is a small 1.32-inch display and along with it, there are two cameras and an LED flashlight placed in the bezel.
The next major thing is the hinge and its functionalities. The closing sound of the smartphone is very satisfying. However, the hinge is a little loose. By “loose”, I meant the smartphone is a little shaky. The next big drawback of the hinge is it does not open to a complete 180 degrees. In simple words, when you open it, you will see a very minor bend on the smartphone. Furthermore, you can hear or feel a minor movement in the hinge. Simply put, it is not as sturdy as it is supposed to be.
The grip is good, however, the inconvenience here is that the camera module has very thick bezels. So while grabbing the smartphone, you will always rest a finger or two on the module, leaving lots of smudges.
Also read: Moto razr 40 Ultra Review : Doing the outer display right
The Tecno Phantom V Flip is equipped with a 6.9-inch foldable AMOLED display that comes with a 1080 x 2640 pixels resolution. This display supports up to 120Hz refresh rate. However, in terms of vibrancy, it felt a little dull. We tested the brightness using a Lux Meter and the Tecno Phantom V Flip showed 803 nits of peak brightness. The screen viewability under direct sunlight is surely not ideal.
In comparison, even mid-range smartphones offer brighter and more vivid displays.
Coming to the outer display, it features a total of 10 widgets that you can use by swiping right. For example, I have set Weather Information, Time, Calendar, Camera, My Health App, and Alarm on the cover display. Moreover, it also offers four more widgets except for the ones I have mentioned. You can switch these apps with the existing ones. These four widgets are a Weather Alert, Timer, Stopwatch, and Sound Recorder. Apart from that, swiping right will take you to the media controls.
Further, you can also access quick settings by swiping down. Swiping up shows you fresh notifications, and you can also respond to them with emojis and basic replies like, “Okay, Hello, Thank You, etc”. Lastly, you will also get to choose plenty of clock faces from Tecno’s collection, pretty much like a smartwatch.
In conclusion, both the displays of the Tecno Phantom V Flip do pretty much all the things that its competition, the Moto Razr 40 can. However, the fun fact here is that you can also do all these things on a ₹3000 smartwatch.
This is where it gets more interesting. Why? Because the Tecno Phantom V Flip is powered by the Mediatek Dimensity 8050 processor. Now this processor is used mostly for mid-range smartphones and the asking price for this smartphone is over ₹50k. The Dimensity 8050 processor works fine but if you are running heavy performance operations, you will notice heating on the Phantom V Flip. Had it been the normal ₹50,000 smartphone, you would have easily gotten the flagship processor. But because of its foldable nature and cost-cutting, we get the Mediatek Dimensity 8050 in the Phantom V Flip. The same problem occurred with the Moto Razr 40 as it featured the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, which also is a mid-range chip from last year.
The upper half of the smartphone heats up while doing performance runs such as gaming or benchmarks. It heated up in just 15 minutes of Call of Duty: Mobile. However, the battery drain is fine while gaming. We’ll get back to the battery part later.
I ran the benchmark tests on the smartphone and here are the scores:
Check out this graph to know how it competes with its competition, Moto Razr 40:
It went perfectly fine through all the benchmark tests except for the GFXBench, where it heated a lot. I measured the temperature and it came out to be somewhere around 45 degrees Celsius. Sad but true, the Tecno Phantom V Flip has heating issues which causes minor lags, but only when you are running performance-centric operations or charging it.
Now if we talk about its operating system, which is HiOS 13.5 based on Android 13, it worked fine for me. I didn’t come across any ads, however, the OS has some bloatware. You can uninstall those unnecessary apps to get a cleaner experience. Moreover, the HiOS 13.5 comes with some super cool features such as you can use it half-bended, the multi-tasking is very easy, and it features Ella, which is a chatbot connected to ChatGPT. You can access Ella by holding the power button.
Also read: Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 Review : Best flip phone of 2023
The Tecno Phantom V Flip is equipped with a dual camera setup, holding a 64-megapixel main camera with f/1.7 aperture and a 16-megapixel Ultrawide lens with f/2.2 aperture. You can also record 4K videos at 30FPS on this foldable smartphone.
In my opinion, the camera works fine and the details are sharp. However, I felt that the colours were a bit dull. Further, the portrait mode works fine on 1x but the moment you switch it to 2x, the results are underwhelming, to say the least. Had there been a depth sensor, the portraits could have been much better.
For night photography, the Tecno Phantom V Flip should not be your go-to smartphone. I played with the camera in low light and the results were disappointing. However, as you can see in the samples below, the Phantom V Flip captured a good low-light photo when there’s some light in the frame but in low-light conditions, the camera won’t work well. Why would I use the ‘Super Night Mode’ if there’s light in my frame? That would induce artificial illumination and spoil the shot anyway!
Further, you’ll get plenty of modes to play with on the camera such as Sky Shop, Dual Video, and more.
Coming to the front camera, here also, faced the same problem. The pictures are a little unrealistic. The camera is adding unnecessary colors and smoothening things for no reason, but the details are nice. The portrait mode is not much of a use. The portrait shots don’t focus on you particularly and the background stays visible.
The battery is one element of this smartphone that has impressed me the most. The Tecno Phantom V Flip is packed with a 4000mAh battery, which supports up to 45-watt fast charging. You will get a 44-watt adapter and a USB Type-C cable out of the box. I charged it from 0-100 percent and it took only 41 minutes to charge it. And on a full charge, I was able to use the Phantom V Flip for a full day while constantly using the smartphone.
I played Call of Duty: Mobile for 15 minutes on this smartphone, and the game consumed only 6 percent of its battery. After that, I ran Google Maps on my smartphone for one hour. I started the Maps at 66 percent and after one hour it dropped to just 58 percent. So an hour of GPS navigation consumed 8 percent of its battery.
One drawback of the battery I saw is that it doesn’t last long in standby mode. So if you are not using it, the battery would still drain, and it would drain fast.
Lastly, talking about its price and availability. The Tecno Phantom V Flip is available on Amazon at a price of ₹54,999. This is ₹5000 cheaper than the Moto Razr 40, despite being similar in every aspect.
The Tecno Phantom V Flip is an affordable foldable smartphone that is a mixed bag when it comes to performance. The design is unique, it has good battery life, and decent performance, and the fast charging is a big plus. But on the other side, the core aspects like display, camera, and even overall performance leave a lot to desire. Especially when the price point by itself is still in the premium smartphone segment. For Rs. 54,999, I expected more from the Tecno Phantom V Flip.
