Tecno Phantom V Flip review

Android 13 with HiOS 13.5

The Phantom V Flip runs Android 13 with a layer of the in-house HiOS on top, version 13.5 on the Flip.

The general V Flip interface is an ever so slightly touched up version of the HiOS 12 we saw on the Phantom X2 and X2 Pro.

There is an always-on display available for the foldable screen and it offers plenty of styles. It can be always-on, scheduled, show on tap, or disabled.

Always-on display

The lockscreen has a couple of shortcuts on the bottom - one for the camera, the other for the flashlight.

Once you're past the lockscreen, you arrive at a standard homescreen interface. The leftmost pane, called the Zero screen, holds cards with suggested news, weather and quotes widgets and an app usage widget. You can disable the Zero screen in the 'Desktop settings'. There's an app drawer by default.

Lockscreen • Homescreen • Zero screen • Folder view • App drawer • Task switcher

The multi-tasking is business as usual - you can use split screen and/or pop-up window for supported apps.

Entering the Phantom V Flip is no different to any other non-foldable - you get both fingerprint and face recognition. You can have the fingerprint reader unlock with just a tap or require a press as well, and face recognition can be set to bypass the lockscreen directly or require a swipe instead.

Biometrics and security

Tecno has a long-standing selection of advanced features that generally get carried forward from older models. That includes the Game mode with all the settings, statistics and parental controls. There is also the Smart panel with slide-from-the-side shortcuts that we mentioned above.

The Social Turbo toolset is rather interesting (a WhatsApp enhancer of sorts) - it can change your voice, enhance your face during video calls, record your WhatsApp calls, and allow you to read messages without marking them as Read.

MemFusion is Tecno's name for virtual RAM. The Phantom V Flip has 8GB of physical RAM chips on board and can extend that up to a total of 16GB with another 8GB of virtual memory. By default, MemFusion is set to 5GB.

Peek Proof grays out important stuff on your screen.

Special function menu • Game mode • Social Turbo • Smart Panel • MemFusion • Peek Proof

There are some pre-installed apps and utilities, but it's a pretty restrained package overall, with a lot less bloatware than the X2 and X2 Pro we had last, which in turn were a significant step in the right direction. You get an in-house gallery and video player, but no proprietary app stores and no Hi browser pre-installed. Not even the Hi Themes app is here - there are just a couple of themes pre-installed.

AI Gallery • AI Gallery • Visha Player • File Manager • Themes

There are just a few provisions in software for a semi-folded state - the Gallery, the video player and the camera app. YouTube automatically switches to its own foldable-specific half-screen split interface, too.

Semi-folded YouTube • Gallery • Video • Camera app

Finally, let's talk about the cover screen.

Let's start with the fact that you cannot have the cover screen always-on, just show on tap or on pickup.

Swipes in all four directions on the cover screen do different things. Swiping up launches the mini notification area, while swiping down brings up quick toggles - Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Mobile Data, Airplane, Vibrate, DND, Hotspot and NFC.

You can also choose from five different pets to spice up your clock widget.

Swiping to the right brings up a selection of up to nine widgets - weather, schedule, camera, vitality (fitness) rings, alarm, weather alerts, voice recorder, stopwatch, and timer.

Swiping to the left reveals the music controls.

Cover screen settings

And it's a wrap on the software side of things.

Performance

The Tecno Phantom V Flip employs the Mediatek Dimensity 8050, which is a brand new 6nm chip, at least on paper. But gathering some more information, however, reveals that the Dimensity 8050 is almost identical to the Dimensity 1300, which in turn doesn't really differ from the Dimensity 1200.

The Dimensity 8050 has four fast Cortex-A78 cores and four efficient Cortex-A55 cores. The Cortex-A78 units are actually divided between 1 Super Core running at up to 3GHz, and three Performance Cores ticking at up to 2.6GHz. There is a Mali-G77 MC9 GPU inside the chip. It is paired with 8GB of physical LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB of non-expandable UFS 3.1 storage.

Let's run some benchmarks now.

The CPU scores are in line with the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 inside the Motorola Razr 40 and not that far away from the SD888 inside the Huawei P50 Pocket and the Dimensity 9000 inside the Oppo Find N2 Flip.

The GPU offers a solid performance, much better than the Razr 40's. The P50 Pocket and the Find F2 Flip offer more FPS, but we are not sure this difference would translate into something you can see and feel when gaming.

Finally, the AnTuTu tests shows the MT8050 superiority over the SD7G1 inside the Razr 40 and not that far behind the flagship P50 Pockat and Find N2 Flip.

Overall, the Phantom V Flip offers adequate performance for its price and class and it delivers smooth performance across various apps, games, and Android UI.

We also ran our typical stress tests. Tecno says this is the first flip phone with an ultra-thin VC liquid cooling solution enhanced with a graphite layer. And the results are impressive.

The V Flip scored 63% of CPU stability, which is better than what most modern Flips can offer.

The V Flip also scored the impressive 94% GPU stability, which is an absolute record for such a foldable. But...

While the V Flip remained warm during the CPU test, its frame became scorching hot during the GPU stress test. After 20 mins running at peak GPU performance, we grabbed the Flip to make a screenshot and dropped it with a scream. The aluminum frame around the top part was incredibly hot and we almost got burned.

CPU test • GPU test

For the sake of this review, we ran a game for about an hour and it never made the frame this hot. But you should be aware of this as Tecno allows the GPU to run at peak performance without taking precautions to keep your hands safe.

At the end of the day, we'd rate the Phantom V Flip performance as very good, plenty adequate for this device and it can handle gaming on the go hassle-free. But if it gets hot, you better stop and let it rest and cool down.