Review Summary
Expert Rating
Tecno holds the distinction of offering the most affordable book-style foldable phone on the market. But offering this complex form factor at such a lucrative price point came at a cost. In comparison with the other premium foldable phones, the first-gen Tecno Phantom V Fold lacked certain finesse. Be it the prominent display crease, average camera quality, or some design-related issues, the flagship foldable phone from the brand came with some drawbacks. However, it seems the company went back to the drawing board after getting feedback from reviewers and users, and we finally have a much-improved result in our hands – Phantom V Fold 2.
Before I jump into the detailed review and tell you if this handset is worth your hard-earned money, let me share that it is an improvement over its predecessor in every imaginable way. To be very clear, this handset does not aim to compete with flagship foldable phones from the likes of Samsung, OnePlus, and Vivo, which are priced almost double that of this phone and operate on a different playing field. What we will discuss here is whether buying this handset at its current retail price of Rs 79,999 would make sense for you or not.
Verdict
For its selling price, the Phantom V Fold 2 is a great option. The handset shows improvement in almost every single way over its predecessor and while it might not have the horsepower that some other foldable phones in the market possess, it delivers in a big way at a much affordable price point. While the phone falls behind in the camera department, thanks to its capable 120Hz LTPO displays, good design, and impressive user interface, this is the best entry-level notebook-style folding phone you can buy right now.
Design and display
The Phantom V Fold 2 has a horizontally folding design but looks quite different from its predecessor, thanks to its rectangular camera setup. The phone still features a curved cover display, which makes it easy to hold in the hand. Having mentioned the in-hand feel, I’ll add that the V Fold 2 feels quite compact compared to some of the other foldable phones on the market.
The handset sits firmly in the hand with its vegan leather back and doesn’t feel slippery. The power and volume buttons, located on the right spine of the phone, are easily accessible even when you’re using the phone with one hand. One thing to note is that you might struggle to find the power button without looking for it as it does not protrude as prominently as the volume rocker. To me, this felt like a fair tradeoff because it was done to offer an embedded fingerprint sensor. I have long believed that the best place for a fingerprint sensor is embedded within the power button, not under the display. So it is good to see it here.
The curved sides of the phone will remind you of the Galaxy Z Fold series from Samsung but the similarity pretty much starts and ends there. Tecno says that the Phantom V Fold 2 has been designed in collaboration with Spain-based luxury fashion house LOEWE and its signature minimalist elegance. The ‘Designed by LOEWE’ branding on the hinge does add an elegant touch to the phone. The same branding is also present on the rectangular camera setup at the back, which is less elegant in comparison.
While the camera setup does introduce a bump to the phone, it is not uneven. This means that the phone doesn’t wobble when it’s lying on a flat surface. Most phones these days feature massive bumps for their camera modules, so I think this is still one of the better implementations. The “aerospace-grade” proprietary hinge design has a crease of less than 0.1mm and offers a free-stand from 30-120 degrees. The brand says that the phone offers high durability of over 4,00,000 folds, which is always a good reassurance to have.
| Smartphone | Display size (inches) | Peak brightness |
| Tecno Phantom V Fold 2 | 6.42 / 7.85 AMOLED | 1600 nits |
| OnePlus Open | 6.31 / 7.82 AMOLED | 2800 nits |
Let’s now talk about the displays. The main draw here is the 7.85-inch AMOLED LTPO display with support for up to 120Hz refresh rate. This primary panel comes with a screen resolution of 2,000 x 2,296 pixels and a pixel density of 388ppi.
The cover display, on the other hand, features a 6.42-inch AMOLED panel, also with support for up to 120Hz refresh rate. Thanks to a smaller size, the pixel density here sits at 431ppi.
I’ll first address the question that comes to everyone’s mind when they think about buying a foldable phone – how prominent is the display crease when the phone is in its unfolded form? The truth here is that from the front, the crease is not visible at all. I even used this phone to read documents where the background was predominantly white, and even then the crease was not visible. From certain side angles, the crease is visible, but not to a point where it hinders your viewing experience in a major way. We’ve clearly come a long way from the early foldable phones and now, the crease is not as big an issue as it used to be.
| Smartphone | Thickness (unfolded) | Weight | IP Rating |
| Tecno Phantom V Fold 2 | 5.7mm | 249 grams | IP54 |
| OnePlus Open | 5.8mm | 239 grams | IPX4 |
Unfortunately, the review unit I received made a crackling sound while folding and unfolding the primary display. I reached out to the brand and I was provided a replacement unit, which again showcased the same problem. Fortunately, this doesn’t seem to be a widespread issue as other people have not reported this issue with their units. These are early units and this issue shouldn’t be there on the units sold commercially, so we’re willing to give Tecno the benefit of doubt in this case.
Cameras
The Phantom V Fold 2 comes with OmniVision’s OV50H 1/1.3-inch 50MP camera sensor as its primary shooter. This camera sensor comes with OIS support and offers a 1.2um pixel size. The secondary camera at the back of the phone is a 50MP portrait shooter with up to 2x optical zoom and 20x digital zoom. These cameras are assisted by a tertiary 50MP ultrawide shooter with a field-of-view of 115 degrees.
Broadly speaking, I was happy with the camera performance offered by the V Fold 2. Whether you consider the details captured by the phone, colour accuracy, or the dynamic range, the phone was decent on all fronts. The main issue I faced with the camera performance was in low-light scenarios. The handset produced shots in these conditions that showcased noise and grain. Despite using the night mode, the phone struggled with clicking images in low-light situations.
I compared the phone with the OnePlus Open to find out how it fares against the other popular foldable options in terms of optics. Check out the results below.
Daylight
In this comparison, I found that the Tecno handset managed to capture details better and even the colour accuracy was better than the OnePlus Open. However, the images clicked via the OnePlus Open were aesthetically pleasing and would likely look better on social media platforms.
Ultrawide
In this comparison, the OnePlus Open managed to capture details better, especially around the edges. While I found the image to be more colour-accurate in the case of the Phantom V Fold 2, there is no denying the fact that the picture clicked by OnePlus Open was superior overall.
Portrait
In this comparison, the Tecno handset managed to capture details much better than the OnePlus Open but the latter managed to capture colours better and also offered better edge detection. Overall, I liked the look of the picture clicked by OnePlus Open more as it looked more natural.
Selfies
This was one of the trickier comparisons as the OnePlus Open failed to capture the skin tone as well as the Tecno handset. It also struggled with edge detection and showcased focus issues too. On the other hand, the Tecno handset showed better colour accuracy.
Low-light
As I mentioned earlier, this is a weak point for the Phantom V Fold 2. As you can see, the OnePlus Open outperforms the Tecno handset on all fronts. Whether you consider the details, contrast ratio, or dynamic range, the OnePlus handset produced a much better picture than the Phantom V Fold 2.
Night Mode
Much like the low-light shots, here too, the OnePlus Open clicked a better picture. The Tecno handset showed a lot of noise, and although the night mode improved the overall image, it was not comparable in terms of quality with the picture clicked via the OnePlus Open.
Performance and Software
At the core of Phantom V Fold 2, you’ll find the MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ chipset. This is a chipset that was launched more than 2 years ago and although it is quite capable, it is outperformed by some of the recent chipsets from both MediaTek and Qualcomm. This is not to say that the Phantom V Fold 2 shows any major performance issues, but it doesn’t achieve the best scores in our benchmarks.
The handset comes with 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM (further 9GB of expandable RAM), and 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage. Much like other flagship handsets, you don’t get an option to expand the storage here.
As no other handset offers a similar form factor in the same price range as the Phantom V Fold 2, we decided to pit it against the OnePlus Open (review), which is still priced higher but with discounts over time, can be considered for purchase. Despite being an older phone, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset ensures that the OnePlus Open performs better than its Tecno counterpart in the benchmark tests.
As you can see above, in the Burnout benchmark, where we figure out how the handset performs under high load, the Tecno handset could only achieve 39.90 percent of its peak performance. Under a similar load, the OnePlus Open managed to achieve 68.40 percent of its peak performance.
Let’s put aside the benchmarks for some time and discuss how the phone fares in regular usage. In my time with the Phantom V Fold 2, I didn’t experience any sort of major issues with the phone. While multitasking, the phone handled apps with ease and the overall experience was pretty much seamless. What helped the phone most here was its software.
The handset runs HiOS 14.5.0, based on Android 14, and has been optimised to take full advantage of its massive primary display. Most people currently buy foldables to perform tasks such as taking notes, making and editing Excel files, or watching videos while doing casual browsing on the side. While multitasking doesn’t always feel intuitive on all foldable phones, it was a sheer delight in this case. You can either swipe two fingers from the left side of the display to have a top-bottom view of two apps or you can simply drag and drop an app from the bottom bar to have a side-by-side view of two apps. I found that I learned these actions almost instantly and was constantly using it to make the most out of the phone.
One of the best aspects of this user interface is that it provides you with tips to help you use the phone in a more efficient way. Even if you don’t know how to multitask in a side-by-side or a top-down view, but you keep switching between two apps, the UI will present you with a pop-up window that will show how you can do this via animations. It will teach you how to save the multi-window setup as well. This is a great way to encourage the user to make the most of their foldable phone.
The handset also supports Phantom V Pen, the brand’s own stylus. This stylus allows you to take lockscreen notes, quick screenshots, handwrite, translate, take photo cutouts, and more. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to test this stylus out in our review, so I can’t give you a fair assessment of its performance. However, it seems like a useful tool for both professionals and students.
As far as AI integration goes, you get the brand’s digital assistant Ella. You can use it to do anything from setting alarms, switching on the flashlight, or translating, to writing poems or even writing code in multiple programming languages. It can also do data interpretation and task automation as well. In my use, I found it to be pretty decent but I didn’t use this assistant extensively or compared it to other AI-powered assistants in the market.
| Smartphones | Pre-installed apps | OS updates |
| Tecno Phantom V Fold 2 | 42 | 2 years major + 3 years security |
| OnePlus Open | 40 | 4 years major + 5 years security |
Battery and charging
With a sizeable battery capacity of 5,750mAh, the Phantom V Fold 2 looks promising on paper. However, in the PCMark battery test, the handset could only manage to offer a backup of 6 hours and 29 minutes. While this duration looks average, in general usage, the phone fares better. Usually, I got a battery backup of more than a day of moderate usage on a single charge. For a foldable smartphone, this is a pretty decent backup.
As far as charging speeds are concerned, the handset supports 70W wired fast charging and supports 15W wireless charging too. As the phone refuels quite quickly, I never felt like charging it overnight, which is great for the longevity of the battery too.
| Smartphones | Charging speeds | Charging time (20-100 percent) |
| Tecno Phantom V Fold 2 | 70W | 45 minutes |
| OnePlus Open | 67W | 34 minutes |
Final verdict
Tecno Phantom V Fold 2 is an interesting offering as you can’t get another notebook-style foldable phone under Rs 80,000. You will either have to opt for an older foldable phone from another brand to get this experience at this price point or simply go for another form factor. If we consider the phone’s improvements over its predecessor, we are now looking at a far more finished product.
Better design, less prominent crease, improved cameras, 120Hz LTPO displays, and AI tools that enhance user experience in every possible way make this a compelling handset. One of my main gripes with the phone is that the handset features a chipset that is not at par with the competition in this price range. For example, if the phone packed the Dimensity 9400 SoC, I would not think twice before recommending this phone. All things said, Phantom V Fold 2 shows that Tecno is on the right track with this phone and the brand could give other foldable phones a run for their money pretty soon.
Editor’s rating: 7.5 / 10
Reasons to buy:
- The phone features a slim and attractive design with barely visible crease.
- Both primary and cover displays are 120Hz LTPO panels that look vibrant.
- The phone offers an intuitive user interface.
- The handset comes at a mouth-watering price for a new foldable phone.
Reasons not to buy:
- The processor is more than two years old, hurting long-term potential.
- The phone struggles with low-light camera performance.
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