Tecno Phantom V Flip review: a value-for-money foldable?

Name: Tecno Phantom V Flip
Item: Tecno Phantom V Flip
Rating: 8
Author: Shekhar Thakran

Published On: October 17, 2023

Review Summary

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2023 can easily be described as the year in which foldable phones started to become mainstream. On one hand, we got to see the first foldable phones from certain brands (OnePlus and Google), and on the other, we witnessed some massive improvements in the latest generation of foldable phones from incumbents like Samsung and OPPO. In this market with several foldable options available for buyers to choose from, it’s hard for a new phone to stand out. However, Tecno has achieved this with its Phantom V Flip. The brand managed to do this by keeping its price at almost half of most other flip phones in the market (barring the Motorola razr 40). With the early bird pricing of Rs 49,999, the Phantom V Flip managed to grab a lot of headlines as one of the first truly affordable foldable phones at launch. However, with a low price tag come along concerns regarding the handset’s build quality, performance, camera quality, and everything that might come in the domain of cutting corners. To find out if Phantom V Flip comes with some of these drawbacks or simply offers the best value-for-money package in this product category, read my detailed review below.

Verdict

Phantom V Flip is an affordable option for anyone who wants to try out this new form factor. It offers a surprisingly good build quality, a foldable display with a subtle crease, and decent cameras. For its price, the novelty factor of this phone’s design definitely makes it easy to recommend, but the phone’s underwhelming battery life could prove to be an issue for those who travel frequently and its processor could have been better too. In most other aspects, the phone definitely proves its mettle and shows that the brand hasn’t cut corners.

Design and display

It goes without saying that the most striking aspect of the Phantom V Flip is its vertically foldable design. The handset comes with a 6.9-inch primary display and a circular 1.32-inch outer display. I’ll come to the display quality and features later, so let’s talk first about the build quality on offer here. The back panel of the phone features a premium lychee-pattern classic leather finish that ensures the phone doesn’t slip out of your hand time and again. This is a great touch from the brand as most other premium foldable phones come with a slippery finish and with a leather finish, the Phantom V Flip gets a unique aesthetic.

As we are talking about a foldable phone, it is necessary to talk about the most important component that facilitates this form factor – the hinge. The metallic hinge on offer here feels robust in terms of build quality and ensures that there is a very small gap between the upper and lower part of the display once the phone is folded. However, as this is a first-generation product, the implementation isn’t quite at the same level as some other brands that have now achieved a gap-less design with their foldable phones. As a result, even in unfolded form, the phone’s display isn’t at quite 180 degrees and there is a very slight bend that is noticeable at first. After using the phone for some time, this bend didn’t bother me much and I got used to it, but if you’re someone who gets bothered by these small things, you will have to keep this aspect in mind.

Now, let’s talk about the displays. The primary display is an LTPO FHD+ AMOLED panel that is 6.9-inch in size and features a 120Hz refresh rate. I really liked the display quality on this handset. While the panel type and and the display specifications pretty much give it away on paper, in real-world usage as well, I found the phone’s primary display to be vibrant and great for multimedia consumption. I enjoyed binge-watching videos on Netflix and YouTube through the Phantom V Flip. The high refresh rate further makes it great for gaming and for those of you who like to indulge in long sessions of FPS gaming, you’d be glad that the phone’s display holds up really well. However, the only area where I found the display to be lacking was in peak brightness. While the display manages to offer great legibility indoors, the 800 nits of peak brightness makes it less-than-ideal for usage under direct sunlight. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like you won’t be able to see anything on the display outdoors but in this price range, or even lower price range for that matter, you can now get phones that offer much better display visibility outdoors.

Time to talk about the cover display. The circular cover display on the Tecno Phantom V Flip definitely catches attention right away. That’s because, at first look, you might think it is larger than it actually is. This is thanks to a wide circular strip around the display that features the rear cameras of the phone. The circular cover display is also an AMOLED panel and despite a slightly smaller size of 1.32 inches, its functionality is not reduced and the brand has incorporated quite a few functions that are supported right from the cover display by simply swiping left. From the cover display, you can get access to weather info, a calendar, Vitality Rings, alarms, a sound recorder, a timer, a stopwatch, and even the camera. The camera access is interesting as you get a preview on the display and you can either tap the display (doesn’t work as you’ll constantly end up covering the camera with your hand while trying to tap) or the volume rocker to click an image. You can also switch to portrait mode or video from the cover display itself by swiping left or right.

Third-party apps are not supported as of now by the cover display, but you do get notifications on it and when you tap on them, you are instructed to open the display to continue. Cover screen personalisation options include multiple clock designs and a collection of 3D pets that look adorable. While there are premium flip phones now that offer larger displays with more functionality, in its first generation flip phone, Tecno has actually done an impressive job here.

Cameras

The Phantom V Flip comes with a 64MP RGBW primary camera, which is the high-resolution sensor you can find on a flip phone right now in the market, along with the Motorola razr 40. The company claims that due to its innovative RGBW pixel format, the primary camera benefits from 60 percent greater light intake, as well as reduced noise and improved colour accuracy. The phone also utilises the brand’s Dual-camera Fusion technology, which allows the 64MP primary camera to work in tandem with its 13MP Ultra-Wide Angle Camera to let you enlarge and crop ultra wide-angle shots while retaining detail. In my experience, I was mostly happy with the camera performance in terms of details but I think the dynamic range could have been better. Also, in the portrait shots, I think the background blurring was a tad bit more aggressive than I would have preferred.

In the low-light scenarios, the handset didn’t produce equally detailed images, unfortunately. The colours also seemed washed out. Despite taking AI into account, the phone managed to click average images in low-light conditions.

For selfies, the phone ships with a 32MP dual-flash autofocus camera at the front. In Tecno’s own words, “The integrated Micro-slit Dual-flash is the industry’s first front-facing flashlight in a flip phone.” In addition to this, the phone also utilises the brand’s Super Flashlight algorithm to ensure that the subject gets ideal lighting and exposure. The selfie camera also uses ‘Automatic Eye-focus’ to ensure more precise subject tracking. I found the selfie camera to be particularly capable and the dual-flash at the front is actually a great addition as it helps the phone to click some great selfies even in the absence of good lighting.

Since this is a flip phone, the FreeCam arrangement (or flex mode) lets you arrange the phone in any angle from 30-150 degrees. This means you can simply place the device on a surface in front of you with the rear camera facing you, and get the image preview on the cover display to click a high-resolution shot with the primary camera setup. You can use the phone this way to shoot better group shots, detailed rear camera selfies, low-angle shots, FreeCam Time-lapses, and more. What makes this even better is that you don’t necessarily need to set the timer each time and can click the shot using gestures like palm recognition, and even voice controls (you can say cheese, shoot, or capture).

As far as video recording is concerned, the phone is capable of recording up to 4K 30fps videos from the rear camera and up to 2K 30fps videos from the front camera. While the video quality is pretty decent, the lack of stabilisation hardware and software means that if you’re on the move, the videos can turn out shaky. The inclusion of the brand’s film mode in the video section means you can record small clips and then get a great output depending on the kind of short video you want to make. With preset templates that are designed with social media in mind, this feature is great for anyone who doesn’t like spending time on editing but still wants great video content for social media.

Performance and battery life

The Phantom V Flip comes with a Mediatek Dimensity 8050 chipset, coupled with up to 8GB of RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage. While this is a great chipset for mid-range smartphones, at V Flip’s asking price, the chipset choice feels a bit lacklustre. Especially because in this price range, most other phones offer more capable and efficient SoCs. However, these phones do not offer you the head-turning foldable form factor and compact size option as well, so you’ll have to make a trade-off in this department or the design. The Mediatek Dimensity 8050 managed to handle most tasks with relative ease and even the UI navigation felt smooth for me at all times. I didn’t face any stutter issues or app crashes but when I was playing Battlegrounds Mobile India, I did notice the phone heating up slightly.

In the AnTuTu benchmark, the phone scored 666056, which is expected for the chipset but as I mentioned earlier, lower by the standards of other phones in this price bracket. Similarly, on the Geekbench benchmark, the phone scored 1108 in the single-core test and 3366 in the multi-core test.

As far as battery life is concerned, the phone managed to last 9 hours and 59 minutes in the PCMark Work 3.0 battery test, which shows that it can easily last you a day on moderate usage but if you’re a heavy user, you might have to plug it in for charging by evening. Even in my experience with the phone, I felt the same. On some days I ran out of battery rather quickly, but on some other days, the phone managed to offer decent backup. Notably, the battery life improved considerably when I set the theme to dark mode. As we are talking about a phone with AMOLED displays, dark mode does impact the battery life positively.

Tecno Phantom V Flip offers support for 45W fast charging, which happens to be the fastest charging speed offered by a flip phone right now. This means you can refuel your phone fully in just over an hour, which is indeed a convenient feature to have.

Final verdict

The Tecno Phantom V Flip is perfect for those who want a phone that stands out from the crowd and offers a unique user experience at a reasonable price. The phone offers a large immersive display, decent cameras, and above all – a great compact design. Two aspects where the phone falls somewhat short in from of competition are battery life and raw horsepower. However, as I clarified above, the phone is not competing with other handsets with standard candy bar designs in this price range. Its primary competitor at the price would be the Motorola razr 40, which comes with a better processor but a somewhat less impressive cover display. If you have the budget to go a bit higher, you can choose to go for a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4, which is now available at a discounted price.