Tecno Phantom V Flip

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.

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.