Tecno Phantom V Flip2 review

Display

The Phantom V Flip2 has two displays. The external display has been vastly upgraded since last year. It now measures 3.64 inches with a pretty high, nearly square 1056 x 1066 pixel resolution. That works out to 413 ppi, which is perfectly sharp.

The display is AMOLED, which means perfect contrast and deep blacks. We measured a maximum brightness of 825 nits, which is pretty good and quite usable even in sunlight. The refresh rate is just a basic 60Hz, which is not ideal, but it is not a huge deal on a small cover display.

The internal display is a familiar 6.9-inch LTPO OLED panel. It has a 2,640 x 1,080-pixel 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 pretty impressive. The panel seems to be the same as the one on the original V Flip, yet the brightness has improved a little. We measured 561 nits by maxing out the slider and 893 nits in auto mode.

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 2.0 nits of minimal brightness at point white - a solid performance.

Refresh rate

The refresh rate menu gives you 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.

The Auto Switch and the 120Hz options now behave identically most of the time. They will usually net you a maximum 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. They reach the selected cap and dial down to 30Hz for videos and 10Hz for static screens.

HDR and streaming

The Phantom V Flip2 lacks any official hardware HDR support. It does offer HDR decoding support for HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG (no Dolby Vision). The phone has the highest possible Widevine L1 DRM certification, allowing apps like Netflix to offer up FullHD streams.

Battery life

The Phantom V Flip2 has a significantly larger battery than last year's model. The capacity has grown from 4,000 mAh to 4,700 mAh. The V Flip2 is slightly thicker and ever so slightly heavier than its predecessor, but the larger battery outweighs the easily-ignorable growth in size.

Battery life on the Phantom Flip V2 is solid for the form factor. An Active Use Score of around 11:37 hours is quite alright for a "flip phone", but don't really expect anything more than one day of battery life.

Our new Active Use Score is an estimate of how long the battery will last if you use the device with a mix of all four test activities. You can adjust the calculation based on your usage pattern using the sliders below. You can read about our current battery life testing procedure here. For a comprehensive list of all tested devices so far, head this way.

Charging speed

The battery capacity in the Phantom V Flip2 grew, and so did its charging capabilities. The phone now supports 70W fast charging, with an advertised charging rate of 50% in 15 minutes and 100% in 45 minutes.

Our tests largely confirmed Tecno's claims regarding full-charge performance. However, we observed a charge level of 45% in 15 minutes, slightly below the stated figure.

The Phantom V Flip2 offers impressive charging speed overall and tops the charts of all flip foldables we've tested.

However, it uses a proprietary charging standard, so it will require the use of both the original charger and cable to achieve this sort of charging speed.

Speakers - loudness and quality

The Tecno Phantom V Flip2 features a stereo speaker setup of a familiar hybrid kind. The earpiece acts as a second speaker along with the dedicated driver at the bottom of the phone.

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

Unfortunately, the speaker setup seems downgraded from the original Phantom V Flip. It is no longer nearly as loud. On a more positive note, at least the quality hasn't degraded. It is still good, with nice, clear vocals and generally rich mids.

The Phantom V Flip2 has Hi-Res Audio and Dolby Atmos certification.

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.

Connectivity

The Phantom V Flip2 is a single SIM device. A single Nano-SIM card with SA/NSA Sub-6 5G support can be taken. Unfortunately, there is no eSIM support. The Flip2 has GPS support for location. Local connectivity includes dual-band Wi-Fi6 and Bluetooth 5.3 with LE support. There is NFC on board. No infrared port and no FM radio or a 3.5mm audio jack.

The Type-C port uses a basic USB 2.0 "Hi-Speed" connection, which means a theoretical maximum data transfer speed of 480 Mbps. There is OTG/Host support, but nothing fancy like video output.

The Phantom V Flip2 has an lsm6dsvq accelerometer and gyroscope combo, an mmc5603 magnetometer and a compass combo. There is a stk35f62 light sensor and no barometer.

Unfortunately, the phone has a virtual proximity sensor instead of a hardware one. It works well enough to turn off the display during calls, but it is still not ideal.