Tecno Phantom V Flip2 review

HiOS 14.5 on top of Android 14

The Phantom V Flip2 runs on a fresh Android 14 software platform with a custom HiOS 14.5 skin on top.

Tecno has not explicitly outlined the software support policy for the Phantom V Flip2. Our best guess is that the phone can expect 2 Android OS updates and 3 years of security updates.

However, we assume that, like the Camon 30 series, the company plans to offer two major OS updates and three years of security updates.

An always-on display feature is available for both the inner display with plenty of styles and customization. You can have a clock on the cover display too. Plus, the outside display can be set to show a custom QR code to share a business card or things like Wi-Fi credentials.

Always On display

The lockscreen has a couple of shortcuts on the bottom - one for the camera, and 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

Multitasking features include split-screen and pop-up window modes for supported apps - nothing out of the ordinary.

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.

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 • Smart Panel • MemFusion • Peek Proof • Smart Hub

There are some pre-installed apps and utilities, but overall, it's a pretty restrained package. 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

Tecno has its own AI assistant called Ella. It is chock-full of useful features and offers voice wake-up and voice responses. Most of the data for the AI model requires an internet connection to fetch; however, commands for phone settings and tasks can also work offline.

Tecno has not disclosed the LLM powering Ella, but it seems fairly powerful, and its knowledge base is pretty up-to-date.

Google's Circle to Search is also included out of the box.

Ella AI and Google Circle to Search

Let's talk about the cover display. As we already mentioned, the new, bigger cover display has an Always-On display feature and offers what Tecno calls "NFC Tag". It just displays a QR code on the cover display with info or for sharing a Wi-Fi password.

The cover display is a lot more functional than last year. You can run full apps on there and even open a keyboard interface when needed. Apps need to be added to a whitelist in order to display on the cover screen, and there seem to be some limitations on which apps can be added. It's all a bit vague, though and requires trial and error. Of course, you can use the cover display as a camera viewfinder and take selfies with the rear cameras.

Performance

Tecno has opted for a slight downgrade in performance for the Phantom V Flip2, primarily through its choice of chipset. We'll see just how much that translates into actual performance loss in a bit. While the original Phantom V Flip uses a MediaTek Dimensity 8050 chipset, the new V Flip2 has swapped that for a Dimensity 8020.

Both chips are technically from 2023, though not exactly, since both are rebranded older models. The Dimensity 8050 is a Dimensity 1300, while the Dimensity 8020 is a Dimensity 1100. Neither chip is particularly popular nor is realistically meant to be particularly powerful. The Dimensity 8050 uses a slightly more "modern" CPU configuration with a prime Cortex-A78 core clocked at up to 3.0 GHz. That is not present in the Dimensity 8020 inside the Phantom V Flip2. Instead, it uses a symmetrical four-by-four CPU configuration with four Cortex-A78 cores, clocked at up to 2.6 GHz and another four Cortex-A55 ones, working at up to 2.0 GHz.

Other than that, both mentioned chips are based on a fairly recent TSMC 6nm node and feature a Mali-G77 GPU. Though, the latter is clocked slightly lower in the 8020 than it is in the 8050.

Tecno has paired the Dimensity 8020 chip with 8GB of physical LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB of UFS storage. The latter is sadly non-expandable.

The Phantom V Flip2 is pretty lacking in the CPU department. It is at the bottom of our flip device chart in single and multi-core scenarios.

AnTuTu is a much more compound benchmark with memory and graphical tests. It is a little kinder to the V Flip2, placing it at a comparable performance level to the original V Flip. Perhaps that's due to its newer Android OS or maybe some other software and hardware optimizations.

Finally, we have 3DMark and its graphical benchmarks where the Phantom V Flip2 doesn't particularly shine either.

While modest in performance, the V Flip2 is capable of handling daily tasks and moderately demanding games. Speaking of gaming, however, we should mention that our unit has major stability issues in that department. Games frequently crashed during our testing. Hopefully, it's just a case our unit.

Thermal-throttling

The Phantom V Flip2 demonstrates surprisingly stable performance during extended stress testing.

However, this does come at the expense of a lot of very noticeable surface heat. The frame becomes uncomfortably hot to touch during intensive usage.

Thermal throttling