TECNO Phantom V Flip Review – Best Budget Flip Phone?
Is this phone really the best budget Flip phone? For $1,000 in 2023, you’ll get Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 5, for $900 you’ll get the Motorola Razr and for $600 you’ll get this, the TECNO Phantom V Flip one but why should you even care about this phone and why are big creators like Mrwhosetheboss and MrMobile talking about this device? I have had the Tecno Phantom V Flip for a couple of days, and here are 10 reasons why this phone could be your next phone, and 3 other reasons it may not. Without further ado, let’s get to
the video. The first and most obvious reason to love this device is the flip form factor. A lot of flip phones have entered the market and I have gradually become a big fan of the flip form factor, how the flip looks and one more addition to the bunch is definitely very welcome. Having a Flip phone means folding an entire phone with this screen size into half its size and with the way phones are constantly getting bigger and bigger, this is something people might appreciate over time. As a plus, something about using a flip phone like
this in public just makes you look cool. And of course, the satisfaction of answering your calls by opening it or ending your calls by closing it is just
like us will just need to place the phone on a flat surface like this and hit record or take photos with it. And you can even use gestures. You can just raise your hand and it will capture you or start recording. The User Interface also adjusts to the folding movement in the camera and it is a feature that TECNO calls FreeCam. You also get to control the user elements of the camera in the folded position and you can even swipe in your gallery. Of course, there is the question of the quality of these cameras, but
we’ll get to that later in this video. The build quality of this device is….solid. When it came to the design of the Phantom V Flip, Tecno did not miss a beat. Both how it looks and how well it feels, everything just seems so well done here. Apart from the large circle on the front of the device, the design is very simple. I personally like the purple-ish color that we got here and Tecno calls it the Misty Dawn color. If you prefer something more toned down, then you can always go for the “Iconic Black” color. Tecno
also went the extra mile to add a leather texture to the back of this device that makes it feel both premium and comfortable in the hands. I think I am genuinely impressed with the hinges on this device. It is so solid that it can stay at almost any position and this gives you more confidence in the hinge and the fact that it will not just break on its own or break by mistake. Moving to the things on the inside of this device, Tecno did a great job with the display. The display of the Tecno Phantom
V Flip is a foldable AMOLED display with 1000 nits of peak brightness and a refresh rate of 120 Hz. I am happy that it also comes with the LTPO technology, which simply means that it can automatically adjust your refresh rate depending on your usage, and also to save power. In reality, you will enjoy using this display to watch videos and consume content. If you watch very high quality videos like our videos on YouTube or social media, or you watch high quality videos in general, you are going to have a 10 out of 10 experience with
this device. At 1000 nits, I did not have issues with this display in direct sunlight or in very bright lighting. Everything is bright and sharp; the colors, the contrast, the quality.. Everything just came out well on this display. It has a full HD resolution of 1080 by 2460 pixels and a 6.9-inch screen with relatively slim bezels. The screen to body ratio is approximately 84.6%, so it still maintains the feeling of a premium device when you take a look at the display. But this then brings up the elephant in the room—or, in this case, on the
display. Today, anyone using a foldable of any kind already knows what they’re signing up for. They’re signing up to have a line running across the center of their device at the point where it folds. At this stage of foldables in this current year, it is all about who can conceal it the best. I have to say TECNO has tried to conceal this and they’ve managed to do it in a way that you can look at it without seeing it or look at it from a certain angle In fact, right out of the box, it was
the first thing we noticed. As long as you are not looking for it by turning the phone at every possible angle, you will pretty much not notice the crease all the time. Whenever you are holding the phone in a natural position, whether you are texting or watching videos and streaming movies, the crease will not distract you. The only time it reminded me of its presence was during vertical scrolling. If, for whatever reason, you are scrolling up to the point where your thumb gets to the center of the screen, then you will definitely feel that bump.
Regardless, Tecno gets full credit for making this crease as non intrusive as possible for the viewing experience at least. And Hey, if you’re enjoying this video so far, make sure you hit that like button and make sure you’re subscribed to the channel, it’s free and you’ll be getting more videos like this one. Alright, let’s talk about the performance, because it is also one of the advantages you will find with this device. On paper, the TECNO Phantom V Flip gets a Mediatek Dimensity 8050 chipset. You also get 8 gigabytes of RAM and 256 gigabytes of storage,
with no higher options. Now, the Dimensity 8050 is not the most powerful chip in the world, BUT it is not one that lags behind either. It is a pretty capable chip, and I did not experience any performance issues during the time that I used this device. Everything works as it should when it comes to response time. opening and closing apps, the fingerprint sensor, and all the touch and go stuff that you do on the smartphone on a daily basis. The face unlock here is pretty impressive too, but it struggles in the dark unless you have
it blasting the bright white screen at your face for better performance. But even then, it can be hit or miss. Since this is foldable, you’ll naturally want to use it for multitasking like splitting the screen and floating windows. When I did stuff like this, the device handled it without dropping in performance. As for gaming, I played Call of Duty at the highest graphics and frame rate settings available for this device, and it was a good gaming experience overall. Since it is on the slim side, people who are more used to gaming on larger screens may
miss that with this one. But in terms of performance, it holds up pretty well. I also noticed that because it’s a Flip phone, whenever you’re holding it, it doesn’t feel natural sometimes and you might bend it when you’re playing The only reason I would not give this a 10 out of 10 is that after playing about a match or two, the top half of the device started to get warm to the touch. I think that cooling is something that still needs to be improved upon across the board when it comes to flip phones. I also
noticed the same thing when I was shooting a video for like 19 minutes. Other than that, it did not affect how the phone responded to tasks, and it did not take long to cool down after I closed the game. All of this brings us to the topic of battery life. As always, the most important thing to note when it comes to the battery of your device or your smartphone is that it is heavily dependent on the user. It depends on how you use your phone. Now, that aside, I have to commend Tecno for the battery
life or the battery performance of the Phantom V Flip. Not only does this have a big battery but it has a very well-optimized one too. The battery on the V Flip is a 4000mAh battery, which is relatively big for this form factor. During my tests, I did not stress this device for anything other than regular social media usage, gaming, and recording videos. This is pretty much the regular stuff that most people will do with their devices on a day to day basis. Through all these tests, the device held up pretty nicely. It also has amazing
standby battery usage. Little things like the 8050 chipset and the LTPO display will allow this Flip to be more power-efficient or to be as power-efficient as possible. These days, it has sort of moved from having massive batteries to getting the best out of what you offer buyers, and I think Tecno got that part ironed out. The phone lasted days without losing battery when it was sitting on its own, connected to WiFi, and getting notifications. We still got some battery out of this guy. I have to point out again that I did not necessarily push the
battery performance to the max with the V Flip, and the results may differ for each user depending on how much of a power user you are. But what happens when the battery eventually dies? The Phantom V Flip comes with a 45-watt charger right out of the box, which Tecno claims can take this device from 0 to 50% in 15 minutes. Interestingly, the device comes close to that in reality. With some of the extreme charging speeds that you get on Android devices, 45-watt charging may not look like a lot, but… it is the fastest charging you
can get on a flip phone right now. Testing the charging speed, 0 to 50%, took about two minutes more than the advertised time, and in just over 45 minutes of charging, the device was fully charged and ready to go. Just before we get to what I think is the best thing about the V Flip, let us address the fact that you get to take selfies with the best camera on this phone. First off, you are getting a 64-megapixel main camera and a 13-megapixel ultrawide camera both on the rear side. The selfie camera on the front
is a 32-megapixel one. But of course, megapixels mean little these days with the existence of image processing. On the Phantom V Flip, the cover screen on the back of the device allows you to get a pretty good view of what your camera is seeing before you take that photo. This is a very useful tool for taking good selfies with the higher-quality rear cameras and also for taking photos of people who are never satisfied with the photos you have taken. While I consider it a massive benefit that you can see a preview of yourself on the
rear camera through the cover screen before you take that photo, I still think that the cameras on the V Flip are somewhere in between. I’ll explain. The 32MP selfie camera did a decent job when it came to image quality. In fact, you’ll get really good when shot under ideal lighting conditions. The colors may look a little off, especially on skin tones, but overall, they are decent. The struggle really begins when there is not an idea lighting situation or you have inconsistent lighting like having clouds. The image processing seems to struggle under certain lighting conditions by
trying to figure out what to adjust for. The story is about the same when you switch to the rear cameras. Of course, you are getting better-processed, and higher quality photos when you shoot with the rear cameras. And here’s how the lowlight image compares to a naturally lit one. Still, though, if you are taking photos with the rear camera under ideal conditions on a bright sunny day with blue skies, you will definitely like the shots that you’ll get on the V Flip. In terms of colors, In terms of detail, and in terms of the processing, both
with the photos and the videos in some cases. The colors also came out really punchy with the camera and if you want to get an even higher resolution, you can shoot 64MP. You can zoom all the way to 10X digitally and it still retains some kind of information in the photo but it will not be as sharp. The processing on the videos is a little too evident when it comes to sharpening, but seeing it work over time to keep the dynamic range between the sky and the human subjects made me very happy. It is really
important that the sky is not just a blown out white in the background, and Tecno made sure we did not have to worry about that anymore. What I think remains the best thing about this device is its price point. Most of the foldables or fllp phones on the market right now are very much on the higher end of the price spectrum, and so having something that offers just about everything we want in a flip phones is a pretty big deal. The Tecno Phantom V Flip costs just 569,000 naira, or around $599 What do you guys
think of that price point based on all what we’ve mentioned How are they able to pull this off with the pricing? There are a few things that you are going to need to watch out for. So, let’s look at why not. Tecno calls this cover screen the planet cover screen, and while I genuinely appreciate the creativity of making the screen circular, trying to be different from everybody else and giving it a space-like themes with the cameras and some other things, there seems to be a challenge. It is easy to argue that the cover screen is
designed to be solely used as an auxiliary screen for minimal things, minimal usage. But we are in 2023, and cover screens are doing way more than the 1.32 inches that you are getting with this guy. The cover screen on the V Flip looks like a smartwatch and is mostly directed towards quick things that can be done at a glance. At the moment, there are only 9 widgets available for this cover screen, and they are all basic stuff like you calendar, alarms, timers, weather, voice recording, and obviously the camera widget. All things considered, it is Tecno’s
first shot at a flip style folding phone, and I look forward to how they build on this foundation on future models and what they improve upon. I’m actually hopeful for this and it’s good that they’re coming in the space with a budget flip-style foldable phone. Then there are a few extra things that should improve the usage experience of a device that just take a bit of a hit on the V Flip. For example, the speakers. I know how difficult it could be to fit in big speakers on something they’re trying to make this size, this
slim but if you really want to enjoy music, then you are going to need headphones or an external speaker. I also don’t know if it’s my unit but the mic also struggles to get clean audio, especially when you are in a noisy place. So this is the video quality of the TECNO Phantom V Flip, let me know what you guys think about this video quality as well as the audio quality in the comments section below. The Audio recorded with the V Flip sounds like the mic is constantly trying to cancel noise, so there’s some kind
of thinning that comes with the audio that is very evident when you play it back. Finally, the UI is something I think could get a better with design. The software is very well-optimized to fit flipping this foldable phone, but we could use a more intriguing interface and I’ve seen a lot of people complain about this TECNO interface. Tecno has made some progress of course, in improving their user interface across the board, but I think it is getting to the point where another major upgrade could definitely change things This is kind of random, and also something
I noticed on Samsung’s Z Flip 5. The V Flip does not unfold or open completely flat. This is even more evident when the case is attached. It has this slightly bendy shape to it. But for the most part when you’re looking at it head on, it looks like a phone. I think this may be something related to the hinge and how sturdy and strong they want to make it and this one should be a very minor issue either way, I don’t think it’s a major thing that can affect your usage. But again, you should probably
go out and test the phone in a showroom or something before you buy one. If you are more into foldables than flip style phones, you’ll want to check out our day in the life video of TECNO’s Phantom V Fold. We did a day in the life video that was very cinematic and very interesting. Check it out here.
