Tecno Phantom V Fold review

120Hz LTPO AMOLEDs inside and out

The Phantom V Fold's display specs won't be out of place on one of the higher-end foldables - in fact, the Tecno outspecs a few of them. The bendy panel is a 7.85-inch unit, while the 6.42-inch panel graces the cover, and both are LTPO AMOLEDs, carrying a promise for adaptive refresh rate in the 10-120Hz range.

The inner panel has a 2,000x2,296px resolution (pixel density works out to 388ppi) in a 10.3:9 aspect ratio, so it's marginally higher-res, if fractionally smaller than the Honor Vs' 7.9-inch 1,984x2,272px unit. The Galaxy Z Fold4 is even smaller, though, at 7.6 inches, and it's also not quite as pixel-rich (1,812x2,176px). The Tecno is tied with the Galaxy here for maximum refresh rate, while the Honor's foldable display maxes out at 90Hz.

Phantom V Fold (left) next to Galaxy Z Fold4

On the cover, the Tecno's 6.42-inch panel compares similarly to these two - just barely smaller than the Honor (6.45"), more meaningfully larger than the Galaxy (6.2"). The Phantom is obviously a lot more useful than the Galaxy, also thanks to its more sensible aspect ratio (21.3:9 vs. 23.1:9). The resolution is FullHD with a slightly unorthodox 2,550px measurement along the vertical axis.

Moving on to our brightness testing, we couldn't get the Tecno to reach the advertised 1,100nits of peak brightness on neither panel, with both hovering around the 500nits mark. No boost was observed with the Adaptive brightness toggled on either. That was our experience with the Phantom X2 Pro as well, though the X2 did have an extra 200nits to unlock - so it's not like the concept of a brightness boost is foreign to Tecno.

As a general rule, competitors' results are in the ballpark of the Tecno's when adjusting brightness manually, but they tend to offer a substantial increase when placed under bright light. It's not that the Phantom's disappears when placed in the sun - on the contrary, it remains perfectly usable. It's just that you'd get a more comfortable experience with the others.

Color handling on the Phantom V Fold is done in the same two-mode way we observerd on the X2 and X2 Pro. Both the 'Bright-colored' and the 'Original color' modes target the DCI-P3 color space (there's no sRGB-specific mode) but neither does it with any particular accuracy. The bright mode is more of a vivid setting, while original tones things down a bit. Either way, you can expect relatively cold and bluish whites, and you may wish to nudge the temperature slider about a third of the way towards warm for the most neutral rendition.

The Phantom V Fold does not claim any HDR capabilities, 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 didn't have that characteristic pop or a boost in brightness. The Widevine L1 certification does allow FullHD playback for DRM-protected content.

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.

If you want to guarantee you'd be getting the full 120Hz in as many applications as possible, your best bet is the 120Hz mode. That will net you max refresh rate in games that support high frame rates. It will also let browsers roam free up to 120Hz (if for whatever reason you may want that), as long as there's dynamic content requiring it. You can still expect 10Hz when the page is still, and you're not touching the screen.

The full auto refresh mode will be more inclined to limit refresh rate on a per app basis, and while it will consistently give you 120Hz in the UI, browsers and games can end up capped at 60Hz. We'd stick to the 120Hz mode to get the most out of the Phantom V Fold's display - the adaptive smarts will still lower the refresh rate and save you battery, but you'll also be getting the maximum more consistently.

We encountered a very annoying behavior in YouTube, where if you're playing back videos fullscreen, the phone will drop its refresh rate to 10Hz, making for a choppy viewing experience. That was the case in all refresh rate modes, and affected videos shot at all frame rates except, oddly, 24fps which would play back just fine. We also observed it on both displays, so it's not limited to just the folding screen. We're hoping Tecno will come up with a software update to fix it because it's sort of a major issue if you like your adaptive refresh rate.

It was also present in Netflix, though we'd have been inclined not to make a big deal out of it, because we sideloaded the Netflix app ourselves. In a way, if it's not officially available, there's no reason to complain about an issue with it.

Tecno Phantom V Fold battery life

A 5,000mAh battery powers the Phantom V Fold - that's the same capacity as in the Honor Magic Vs and more than the Galaxy Z Fold4, Oppo Find N2, or Xiaomi Mix Fold 2. Compared to the Honor, the Phantom's more advanced display can be both a blessing and a curse - it's more adaptive, but its maximum refresh rate is higher. Then there's the matter of the chipset that sets the Tecno apart from the other large foldables - all of them use a high-end Snapdragon, this one is based on the Mediatek Dimensity 9000+.

But enough with the theorizing. In our testing, the Phantom proved a dependable performer from a longevity standpoint. We clocked 11 hours of web browsing (at a constant 120Hz) and 14:44h of looping videos (at 60Hz). The 29 hours of call time and a relatively average standby efficiency all combine to form an overall Endurance rating of 92h.

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.

Video test carried out in 60Hz refresh rate mode whenever possible. 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 - check out our all-time battery test results chart.

We repeated the screen-on tests on the cover display. We clocked 17:09h on our web browsing script and 20:08h of looping our test video - again, at 120Hz and 60Hz respectively. The Tecno is a match for the Honor when used on the cover screen, and the two are better than the rest in this respect.

Charging speed

The Tecno specs rate the Phantom V Fold's charging capability at 45W, and that's also what the bundled adapter is rated for. According to the press materials, the phone should be able to reach 40% charge in 15 minutes and be fully charged in 55 minutes.

In our testing, we couldn't quite match Tecno's numbers, but we weren't too far off. The full charge took us 61 minutes, while 30 minutes into the process, we were looking at 62%, while the battery indicator showed 31% at the 15-minute mark.

Most of the other devices in the class charge faster - not dramatically so, but the difference isn't negligible, particularly if you compare against the Oppo Find N2 or the Honor Magic Vs. That said, the Galaxy Z Fold4 is slower than the Tecno - tangibly so, too.

The Phantom V Fold does not support wireless charging, but we can hardly hold it against Tecno. It's already one of the heaviest handsets of its kind, plus it's not like wireless charging is to be taken for granted in the class - of the internationally available large foldables, only the Galaxy has it.

Speaker test

The foldable Phantom features a stereo speaker setup with a driver on each end of the top/left half of the device. Each speaker outputs through a grille in the frame while the top one also serves as an earpiece and thus also diverts some of the sound towards the display.

As is fairly common, the top speaker is assigned the left channel when in portrait orientation (the Honor Magic Vs is a notable exception). Most others will adjust the output to match the device's orientation when you're holding it in landscape, but not the Tecno - so to get the correct channels coming from the correct side, you need to hold the Phantom V Fold with the camera half up. It's not a huge deal - that's the general behavior of all of Sony's phones for example, but auto switching can't be too hard to implement (if you're not stubborn about it).

Top speaker • Bottom speaker

Automatic channel switching or not, the Phantom V Fold did okay in our loudspeaker test. It earned a 'Very Good' rating for loudness - on par with the Honor Magic Vs and a couple of notches above the Galaxy Z Fold4. Sound quality isn't exactly impressive, but it's not bad either - there's a bit of a bathroom-y vibe to the mids, but the treble is well defined and there's some bass too.

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.