Tecno Phantom V Flip review

Displays

The Phantom V Flip has two displays - one small cover screen and one large foldable one on the inside.

There is little to talk about the external 1.32-inch AMOLED. It has a round panel with 466 x 466 pixels or 352ppi, 60Hz refresh rate, 120Hz touch sampling, and 800 nits of maximum brightness. It doesn't support full-fledged apps; its primary purpose is to show notifications and serve as a selfie viewfinder.

The internal display is a 6.9-inch LTPO OLED with 2,640 x 1,080 px resolution (426ppi, 22:9 aspect). It supports a dynamic 120Hz refresh rate (10Hz-120Hz), 360Hz touch sampling, and up to 1,000 nits of peak brightness. There is also 1440Hz PWM dimming support for excellent panel performance under low brightness conditions.

We've completed our display test, and the results are in line with what we've captured on the recent Galaxy Z Flips. The maximum manual brightness we measured at the end of the slider was 505 nits, on par with the Z Flip4.

The Phantom V Flip offers High Brightness Mode - it increases the maximum brightness in both manual and Auto modes under bright light - up to 818 nits. Note that if HBM has not been turned on from within the Display Settings, the V Flip will not get a brightness boost in Auto brightness.

We measured 3.7 nits of minimal brightness at point white - a solid performance.

Color accuracy

There are two color modes on the V Flip - Bright Color and Original Color, both correspond to the DCI-P3 color space. You can tune the color temperature in each. The default one is Natural, and the accuracy is faithful except for the slightly bluish white and gray hues.

The Bright Color mode brings more saturation and offers popping colors; far from accurate though.

Refresh rate

The refresh rate menu gives you a total of four options - 60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz, plus an Auto-switch mode. Regardless of mode, you can expect the Tecno to wind down to 10Hz across the UI, if you're not touching it.

Unlike the V Fold, the V Flip gets a lot of the dynamic refresh rate right.

The Auto Switch and the 120Hz options now behave identically most of the time. They will usually net you max refresh rate in web browsers, streaming services, and games that support high frame rates. We observed 60Hz and 30Hz in video playback and streaming, as well as in some apps that are incompatible with HRR.

The same thing can be said for the 90Hz and 60Hz options, too. They reach the selected cap and dial down to 30Hz for videos and 10Hz for static screen.

Unlike on the V Fold, we had no YouTube or Netflix streaming issues with the V Flip.

HDR and streaming

The Phantom V Flip does not claim any HDR capabilities just like the V Fold, and even though hardware detection apps list it as supporting HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG, that's more of a software decoding capability than actual HDR playback. YouTube did serve HDR streams, but they had a minor boost in brightness, contrast and colors. The Widevine L1 certification does allow FullHD playback for DRM-protected content.

Battery life

The Phantom V Flip is powered by a 4,000mAh battery - that's 300mAh more than the Z Flip 4 and Z Flip 5, but 200mAh less than the Razr 40's battery.

The Tecno Phantom V Flip scored a total endurance rating of 88 hours on our battery life test. It did great on the on-screen tests - the V Flip clocked north of 13 hours on web browsing and more than 16 hours of video playback. It can last almost a day on calls.

Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSerDevice app. The endurance rating denotes how long the battery charge will last you if you use the device for an hour of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. More details can be found here.

The Dimensity 8050 offers a rather average standby performance (about 230 hours).

Video test carried out in 60Hz refresh rate mode. Web browsing test done at the display's highest refresh rate whenever possible. Refer to the respective reviews for specifics. To adjust the endurance rating formula to match your own usage patterns check out our all-time battery test results chart where you can also find all phones we've tested.

Charging speed

The Tecno Phantom V Flip supports up to 45W fast wired charging, and such power adapter comes bundled with the phone. According to the press materials, the phone should be able to reach 50% charge in 15 minutes and 100% in 45 minutes.

In our testing, we didn't exactly match the Tecno numbers. The bundled power adapter recharged 34% of the battery in 15 minutes and 58% in 30 minutes. At the promised 45-minute mark for a full charge we got 82%. Finally, a full charge required 55 minutes.

The Phantom V Flip does not support wireless charging.

There are power saving options such as adaptive battery for apps and standby optimization, as well as some more advanced customizations on app basis like screen off and scheduled push. There is a dedicated Power Saver and Ultra Power Saving modes, too.

AI Smart Charge is available - it recharges to a certain percentage, and then completes the process in the morning before you wake up.

Speakers

The Tecno Phantom V Flip features a stereo speaker setup of a familiar hybrid kind. The earpiece acts as a speaker, while the other one has a dedicated driver at the bottom of the phone near the USB-C port.

While the earpiece isn't as loud as the other speaker, the setup still sounds balanced because of the speakers' positions.

So, the speakers of the V Flip scored an Excellent mark in our loudness test. Their quality is good - the vocals are nice, the high notes are rich, and the bass is barely there but it's there.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.