A new foldable phone just launched at Mobile World Congress 2023, and chances are you haven’t heard of the brand before. Tecno, a Chinese brand, has actually been making mobile phones since 2006, but up until two to three years ago, it focused almost exclusively on selling ultra-budget phones in Africa. It doesn’t even sell in its home country. Over the past few years, Tecno began expanding to other markets such as Latin America, Southeast Asia, India, and the Middle East.
Last December, the company ventured into flagship territory for the first time with a slab phone called the Phantom X2 Pro, which had a retractable portrait lens and a flagship MediaTek chip. I tested it and came away impressed by the hardware, especially considering Tecno’s lack of a proven track record in the flagship space — the retractable lens really did work.
Now we have this new foldable, the Phantom V Fold, which will first launch in India followed by Tecno’s usual markets in Middle East and parts of Europe and Asia. I’ve been testing a unit for about 24 hours, and just like the Phantom X2 Pro, I am surprised by how solid the hardware looks and feels and impressed with Tecno’s efforts.
Tecno Phantom V Fold
Tecno’s first foldable phone is a surprisingly polished piece of hardware with a virtually crease-less large screen and a sleek form factor when folded.
- Brand
- Tecno
- SoC
- MediaTek Dimensity 9000+
- Display
- 6.4-inch FHD AMOLED (outside); 7.8-inch FHD AMOLED (inside)
- RAM
- 12GB LPDDR5X
- Storage
- 256/512GB UFS 3.1
- Battery
- 5,000 mAh
- Ports
- USB-C
- Operating System
- Android 13
- Front camera
- 32MP; 16MP
- Rear cameras
- 50MP main; 50MP telephoto; 13MP ultra-wide
- Dimensions
- 59.4 × 140.4 x 6.8mm (unfolded); 159.4 × 72.0 x 14.5mm (Folded)
- Colors
- Black, White
- Weight
- n/a
- IP Rating
- n/a
Hardware: The usual Chinese foldable flourishes … and weaknesses
If you follow the Chinese foldable scene even remotely, what I’m about to say shouldn’t come as a surprise (or perhaps it’s still a surprise, given Tecno’s brand status). The Phantom V Fold’s folding screen doesn’t show a deep crease like Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 4. The phone also folds completely flat, without the gap left by Samsung’s foldable. We can debate about backplate design all we want, but it’s an objective fact that a smaller crease and the ability to fold flat just feel better. So right away, the Phantom V Fold looks and feels better than the Galaxy Z Fold 4.
Unfortunately, the Phantom V Fold’s crease cannot stay in place mid-fold, so it loses a crucial feature of Samsung’s foldables: using it in L-shape laptop mode. Of course, there’s no official water resistance rating (Samsung makes the only foldables with those ratings).
The main foldable screen measures 7.9 inches. It’s a 2K LTPO panel with a variable refresh rate between 10-120Hz. The screen looks great in most conditions, but maximum brightness is noticeably dimmer than all other recent foldables I’ve tested. Tecno did not announce official numbers, but I’m guessing this is sub-1,000 nits.
The outside cover screen fares a bit better brightness-wise. It measures 6.4 inches, with a mostly conventional 21:9 aspect ratio. That makes it feel much more like a normal phone when folded compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 4’s narrower, candy bar-shaped form. Again, this is nothing new for anyone remotely familiar with Chinese foldables.
The hardware feels good in the hand overall. I’m a fan of the backplate, which uses material made from recycled plastic. It has a grippy matte texture that’s warm to the touch — not quite as soft as faux leather, however. The phone’s dimensions are acceptable by 2023 standards and feel similar to the Honor Magic Vs, although it’s not as thin and light as the Xiaomi Mix Fold 2.
Internal hardware: Unique silicon
The Phantom V Fold is powered by MediaTek’s Dimensity 9000+, making this the first large foldable to use silicon from a brand other than Qualcomm. The Dimensity 9000+ is a 4nm flagship caliber chip, but it clearly ranks below the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in terms of raw power. Still, I don’t think most users would notice unless they are heavy gamers.
Under the hood is a 5,000 mAh battery that can be charged at 45W speed with the included charging brick. It also has 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256 or 512GB of storage using UFS 3.1.
Cameras: Check out that camera module
Inside that visually striking circular camera module is a 50MP, 1/1.3-inch main sensor with f/1.9 aperture, another 50MP, f/2.0 telephoto lens that can do 2X optical zoom, and a 13MP ultrawide. It’s far too early in my testing period to have conclusive opinions on the cameras, but I did notice a pretty bad shutter lag whenever I switched out to the ultrawide camera. I’ve included some early photo samples below.
Software: How do you feel about HiOS?
The Phantom V Fold runs on Android 13 with Tecno’s HiOS on top, which I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, HiOS is the most customizable UI I’ve tested in a long time (I’d have to go back to those odd Smartisan Chinese phones to find a more customizable UI), and that’s something I usually like. Everything from the UI to the color scheme and animations can be tweaked. The phone also has close to a dozen swipe gestures you can do to launch an action, including a three-finger swipe up to turn a fullscreen app into a smaller resizable window; a two-finger swipe up to access hidden apps; a two-finger swipe down to access Google Assistant. There are even gestures for two fingers turning clockwise and counter-clockwise.
As I said, I generally like customizable UI (it’s why I liked OxygenOS so much), but HiOS borders on overkill and the settings menu can be overly complicated. Even so, HiOS looks clean enough to still resemble Android the way Google intended it to be.
The software plays relatively nice with the floating form factor, although the phone’s inability to go into “Flex Mode” means the UI doesn’t have to shift around as much as a Samsung foldable.
Early thoughts: Should you check out the Tecno Phantom V Fold?
The Tecno Phantom V Fold is impressive, considering it comes from a smaller brand. If you had told me a month ago a phone brand would be releasing a large foldable internationally, I would have guessed six or seven (or 10) brands before I would have named Tecno.
However, I don’t think the Phantom V Fold offers anything new to the foldable scene. It’s not particularly thin or light like the Xiaomi Mix Fold 2, nor does it sport a unique form factor like the Oppo Find N2 or pack never-before-seen tech like the Vivo X Fold. I suppose I am spoiled because I have tested every foldable phone that saw a release over the past four years. For others, particularly someone who wants to have more than one brand to choose from when considering a foldable phone, this device’s mere existence is a step forward for the foldable scene.