Tecno Phantom V Flip review

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The Tecno Phantom V Flip launches for INR50,000 (the equivalent of $600) in India and for €700 in Europe, which is one super competitive price considering the smartphone class and premium design. Foldables are still an exclusive club that's not for everyone, and the Flips are even harder to make properly because of the limited space and cammed components.

So, considering that Tecno has managed to offer a unique design, good displays, very good performance and all-around camera experience with solid photo and video quality, we cannot but think of the Phantom V Flip as a winner in spite of a few setbacks.

Let's consider a couple of alternatives now.

The first one that comes to mind is the Motorola Razr 40. It costs about €800, which makes it more expensive than the V Flip, but the premium will net you a properly flat opened state, a more polished software with 3 years of updates, and even basic ingress protection.

The Galaxy Z Flip4 from last year has dropped to a similar price - about €700. It offers complete water protection, a better inner OLED, a more powerful chipset, a better selfie camera, far better video stabilization, and wireless charging.

The Oppo Find N2 Flip is more expensive than the V Flip, but quite a similar foldable when it comes to the inner display, performance, camera experience. It does have a larger cover screen, but it looks inferior to the Tecno in many other aspects.

The Google-less Huawei P50 Pocket is also more expensive on many markets, but it is worth considering for its fashion-centric design, unique cover screens, and premium camera experience with superb photo and video quality.

Motorola Razr 40 • Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 • Oppo Find N2 Flip • Huawei P50 Pocket

Our verdict

The Tecno Phantom V Flip is an affordable foldable smartphone with a ton of premium features across the board. We can praise its leather design, we found both screens to be of high quality, the performance and stability of the Dimensity 8050 chipset were enough for good gaming, and the camera quality was very good across all three cameras.

The V Flip comes bundled with a stylish protective case and a fast charger, and its two color options are incredibly attractive.

Finally, the HiOS 13.5 turned out to be pretty good with little bloatware and plenty of useful features, gestures, and customization options.

We have encountered a few issues on the Phantom V Flip. First - its inability to open completely flat. This requirement must be one of the things that nobody should get wrong, yet Tecno did it. Sure, it doesn't get in the way of the V Flip's operation, but it's there, and you can not only feel it, but see it, too.

Then there is the extremely hot frame during heavy graphics use. There is no sugarcoating it - the upper part of the frame becomes a scorching hot after just 15 min under peak GPU loads.

And lastly, video capturing needs proper stabilization, not merely an optional mode that offers a heavily cropped 1080p footage.

The Tecno Phantom V Flip isn't the ideal foldable smartphone, that is for sure. But its $650/€650 price is affordable as far as these devices go and we would consider its specs sheet well-balanced. We found that the Phantom V delivered on most of its promises, and we have had positive handling, working, gaming, and imaging experience with the phone during our time we spent using it.

The Phantom V Flip may not be a perfect phone, but it does come at a perfect price. One that makes you think of it as a tempting ticket to the foldable class, one that will show you what's all that fuss about and maybe get you hooked, too. And if not, you would still have one incredibly compact phone, that's light both on your pocket and on your wallet.

Pros

• Attractive design, nice case.
• Bright and mostly color-accurate foldable OLED.
• Interesting cover OLED, ideal for viewfinder, too.
• Decent battery life.
• Loud stereo speakers.
• Adequate performance and stability, gaming included.
• Very good photo and video quality across the board.
• Minimal bloatware.

Cons

• No ingress protection.
• The phone does not open flat.
• No official HDR10 support.
• No EIS for 4K videos.
• The frame gets scorching hot during heavy GPU loads.