While book-style folding phones remain prohibitively expensive, modern flip phones are slowly making their way into the budget phone market. This couldn’t be more true for Tecno’s new flip-style phone, a roughly $600 inexpensive flip foldable that wants to takethe best foldables of 2023head-on. However, the Tecno Phantom V Flip isn’t the only affordable foldable in town anymore, and that paints a very different picture of what to expect from one of these devices. Let’s dive into how Tecno wants to set its Phantom V Flip apart from the competition like theSamsung Galaxy Z Flip 5.
Tecno Phantom V Flip
The Tecno Phantom V Flip wants to undercut the competition in price, all while being a fashionable and competitive flip-style folding phone in its own right. The circular front display may not be the most useful compared to the bigger screens other foldables have, but it’s a design option no one else matches.
Availability and network
Not available everywhere
Like so many other foldables, the Tecno Phantom V Flip isn’t officially available in the US. Instead, Tecno focuses on Asian markets for now, with India being a big destination for its phones and foldables. Here, the company released the Phantom V Flip at a special price of roughly $600 for a limited time. By now, we’ve learned that the MSRP is INR 71,000, which is roughly equivalent to $870. It’s clear that the company wasn’t able to bring the price down as much compared to the competition as it was with its book-stylePhantom V Fold.
The Phantom V Flip supports some of the relevant 5G bands you need in the US, but overall, it may not work great in the country. This is particularly true when you consider that some carriers block devices that haven’t been certified with them beforehand.
Design and display
A top-heavy foldable
Tecno’s Phantom V Flip puts its own spin on the flip form factor with a smart pocket watch style. When closed, the Flip’s circular 1.32-inch front display takes the stage, embedded in a considerably elevated section. That’s because two cameras and a flash surround the sizable bezels of the display, which likely need that extra vertical space to work with. The rest of the phone’s front and back is clad in a faux leather that does a good job of hiding fingerprints. It also feels a lot more premium than the faux leather material Tecno opted for with the Phantom V Fold.
Open up the Phantom V Flip. and you’re presented with a 6.9-inch 1080x2640 OLED with a slightly elongated 22:9 form factor. It can go up to 120Hz and 1,000 nits, which doesn’t make it the brightest and best display out there, but it definitely nothing to sneeze at, either. In the middle, you can definitely see and feel the crease. It’s more pronounced than on theOppo Find N2 Flip, but thanks to its teardrop folding design, the crease is smoother and less noticeable to the touch than on the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5. I’m also happy to report that the V Flip supports half-folded positions. The book-style Phantom V Fold is dearly missing this option.
My biggest point of contention with the V Flip is its top-heavy design thanks to that protruding outer display. This routinely gets in the way of using the phone confidently, always afraid that it might slip out of my hand. It also doesn’t help that I naturally want to rest my index finger on the outer display when the phone is unfolded, with years of muscle memory telling me not to touch protruding pieces on the back of a phone as to not smudge the lenses. Since the cameras themselves are further at the top on the Phantom V Flip, this isn’t an issue, but it still feels weird to hold the phone like that.
Another problem that deserves attention is the creaking hinge. When you fold the V Flip and move its two parts independently, you’ll feel and hear an ugly grinding sensation, something I haven’t been able to reproduce on any other foldable in my possession.
The rest of the phone is fairly mid-range. Its centerpiece is the MediaTek Dimensity 8050, a 2023 processor that’s essentially a rehashed Dimensity 1300 or 1200 from 2022. It’s accompanied by 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB of UFS3.1 storage. There are no ports other than USB-C on the bottom, and the device doesn’t have any IP certification for water or dust resistance.
In the box, you’ll find a 45W fast charger, a USB-C cable, and a case with a loop ring along with the usual suspects like the SIM card removal tool, the warranty card, and some stickers.
Software and performance
Bringing the heat, but not in a good way
The Tecno Phantom V Flip runs Android 13 with HiOS 13.5 on top of it. In practice, this gets you an experience that feels like a mishmash of MIUI and Huawei’s EMUI. The notifications and quick settings are separated into two different panels, there is a quick access bar for often-used apps that you can get to with a swipe from the top right of the phone, and some poorly translated strings in the settings app. Thankfully, I haven’t experienced any terribly overbearing battery optimizations. Notifications are coming through without little to no additional waiting, and even if you have problems, you can turn off some of the custom optimizations for individual apps.
Tecno confirmed to me that the Phantom V Flip will get two years of Android updates and three years of security patches. It’s likely that it will be updated up to Android 15 in the long term, given its launch date shortly before the stable Android 14 release. While three years of security patches are better than what we used to have in the Android world, many competitors have long surpassed Tecno with promises of up to five years of patches. TheGoogle Pixel 8will even promises seven years of software updates, something previously unheard of.
The outer screen of the V Flip functions like a mostly separate part of the experience that’s more akin to a smartwatch. Given the round format, it would be difficult to run full apps on it in any case, like you’re able to with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5. On the V Flip, you can swipe down to reveal quick settings toggles, up for notifications, and to the left and right to swipe through a collection of customizable widgets, like calendar, weather, fitness, alarms, camera, and music controls. With notifications, you can only reply with predefined quick answers. To access the screen in the first place, you need to double-tap it. A single tap just reveals an AOD-style watch. However, it’s not possible to actually turn on an always-on display mode for the outer screen.
Under some circumstances, the Tecno Phantom V Flip gets concerningly warm. I took a hiatus from this phone for another review, and upon turning it back on, the top part of the foldable got hot while updating multiple apps and acquiring multiple Google Play System updates. It went as far as being uncomfortable to touch the left edge and left side of the display. At least the bottom half of the phone, which you will more regularly touch during regular usage, stayed relatively cool.
At the same time, the phone experienced intense throttling translating to anything but smooth animations. This was particularly noticeable with the camera app, which gave me warnings that the phone was too hot and that the app would be forced to shut down automatically if the device didn’t cool down.
Snapshot ready
Ultrawide, primary, 3x zoom, 10x zoom
The cameras are fine, by and large. The 64MP primary camera makes decent images in daylight, and the 12MP ultrawide helps you out when you want to take in more of the scenery around you. I’m happy to see that there are no useless extra sensors just to up the count. On the inside, you get a 32MP selfie camera. Given the foldable form factor, you can use the outer screen to make selfies with the main camera, though.
In daylight, the Phantom V Flip has a tendency to unnaturally brighten up even the darkest parts of an image. This is particularly noticeable when you take pictures of people. While this behavior helps keep faces clearly visible, it gives off an unnatural look. For quick snapshots and social media, the phone is definitely more than good enough.
To shoot in low light, you have to manually turn on Super Night mode to get the best results. The camera will then capture the scene for a longer time. However, the processing is very delicate and prone to blurring when you don’t hold perfectly still. When you’re patient, you’re able to get decent low-light photos, but don’t expect that you’ll be able to capture portraits without a ton of effort.
Battery life and charging
Decent battery life
Tecno’s Phantom V Flip doesn’t disappoint when it comes to battery life. I haven’t been able to run down the battery in a single day during testing. During most days, I reached about three to four hours of screen-on time with more than 30 to 40 percent battery life left. This makes me confident that I could go up to five to six hours on days with more demanding workloads. Battery life is often an issue on flip-style foldables, so this is very promising. At the same time, Tecno managed to fit a 4,000mAh battery into the V Flip, which is bigger than the 3,700mAh battery in the Galaxy Z Flip 5. Compared to regular phones with 5,000mAh batteries and bigger, it’s still relatively small, though.
When it comes to charging, the V Flip can reach up to 45W with its included cable and charger. This should translate into a full charge from zero to 100 in about 45 minutes. My tests skewed closer to a full hour while the phone is turned on and running a few background tasks, but that’s still plenty fast.
Competition
Considering other options
Compared to its sister model, the Tecno Phantom V Flip has a harder time competing in the market. What makes the Tecno Phantom V Fold special is its unbeatable price of around $1,100, something no other manufacturer has managed to do for book-style foldables, typically beyond the $1,500 mark. It’s a different story for flip phone foldables. When the Phantom V Flip was just introduced, its introductory price of about $600 might have been special, but now there are comparable offerings readily available in the US. While offers are still available at around this price, its MSRP has been revealed to be 55,000 Indian rupees, which is about $870.
There’s theMotorola Razr 2023, which comes in a similar vegan leather material, has good battery life, and a great interior display. All of this is available in the US for the price of $700. The Razr 2023 is already on sale and doesn’t have to be imported like the Tecno Phantom V Flip. Its lower price and the fact that it is readily available for purchase make its smaller outer display and the comparatively poor camera forgivable misses.
While the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 is definitely more expensive at $1,000 than the Phantom V Flip, Samsung routinely offers its flagship flip phone for less than that. you may lower the price by trading in your old phone, and it’s also likely that Samsung will have some enticing offers once Black Friday rolls around. The Z Flip 5 also offers a lot more than the Phantom V Flip. It has the top-of-the-line Snapdragon processor, a fully-featured outer display, and all of Samsung’s intricate foldable smarts that make its phones better suited for the form factor. Samsung’s foldable is also a fourth-generation product, and it shows due to more polished hardware and software.
Even when you look at the market that Tecno is focusing on right now, things are looking rather hard for the company. The Motorola Razr 40 (the international name of the Razr 2023) is on sale for INR 40,000 for India’s annual festivities, bringing it to a pricelowerthan the Phantom V Flip’s INR 55,000 offer.
Should you buy it?
The Phantom V Flip was released a year too late in my opinion. Tecno wanted to swoop in and capture the low-cost flip foldable market, but other actors like Motorola were just as fast. As it stands, the Phantom V Flip doesn’t offer anything special compared to better-known brands like Motorola. It’s outer screen is just as useless all while it compromises much more on build quality thanks to its creaky hinge. The lack of an IP rating and the heating issues I’ve experienced only add to this.
As it stands, I think the Phantom V Flip could be a great choice if you can score it for a significantly reduced price, but as long as other foldables like the Moto Razr 2023 are in the same ballpark, there is no reason to not go for the better-known brand.
The Tecno Phantom V Flip may be a good buy when it’s on sale. You have to keep in mind which compromises are attached to this phone, though.
