Last year, Tecno made headlines by introducing two of the most affordable foldable smartphones on the market – the Phantom V Fold and Phantom V Flip series. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to try the Phantom V Fold.
Instead, I got a quick hands-on experience with the Phantom V Flip during its launch in Singapore, which you can read about here. Despite my short time with the Phantom V Flip, and with it I also had high expectations with the Phantom V Fold.
Fast forward to the present, and the successors of these affordable foldable smartphones are finally here – the Tecno Phantom V Fold 2 and the Phantom V Flip 2. If the headline of this article wasn’t a dead giveaway, we’re finally going to check out what all the hype is about with the Phantom V Fold series.
With its affordable price point, is the Tecno Phantom V Fold 2 the one you should consider over other models in the market? Well, that’s what we’ll find out in this review.
Table of Contents
First, we have to talk about the design of the Tecno Phantom V Fold 2. From the get-go, you’ll notice that Tecno made major changes to the styling of their foldable smartphone, particularly the back panel. Gone is the circular camera housing. Instead, you have a rectangular camera island occupying almost the entire width of the panel.
If you can’t tell from the “Triple 50MP Ultra Camera System”, there’s some serious firepower in the rear cameras of the Phantom V Fold 2, but we’ll talk more about them later on in the camera segment.
Our unit is in this Karst Green colorway, although it looks black, to be honest. Even under different lighting, it still looks black. It also features this marble-like finish that covers the entire back panel, which looks great.
Although not as obvious, Tecno also changed the size of the Phantom V Fold 2. Compared to its predecessor, the phone is now a lot thinner both folded and unfolded. When folded, it only measures 11.78mm thin folded and 5.52mm when unfolded. It’s undergone a diet too, now weighing just 249g.
Another small additional detail is the addition of the Phantom logo at the hinge, which you can only see when folded. Like its predecessor, the phone features an all-metal finish, and the buttons are in the same place as before. The volume rocker is found on the right side along with the power button that doubles as a fingerprint scanner.
At the bottom, you’ll find the USB-C port while at the top there’s the secondary microphone and the dual-sim card slot. It also comes with dual stereo speakers.
No doubt, the major redesign gives the Phantom V Fold 2 a more premium look. With its slimmer body and lighter weight, it’s a lot nicer to hold as well. The buttons are easy to access whether you’re using it folded or unfolded. More importantly, the phone doesn’t feel like it’s going to come apart when you open it. Overall, it looks a lot better than before no doubt about it.
Out of the box, the Phantom V Fold 2 comes with a case. It looks nice, but it hides the marble-like finish of the back panel. Besides, this phone does come with IP54 resistance.
Aside from the phone itself, we were also sent the new Phantom V Pen. It’s great to use featuring two buttons and a USB-C port to charge. There are a lot of neat features available, which we’ll discuss later, but I can’t seem to think that the Phantom V Pen is not something you’ll bring around all the time.
For starters, it has a separate case, and the pen does not magnetically connect to the Phantom V Fold. Instead, you need to tape the holder to a surface, and I’m not talking about the phone either. The holder doesn’t fit the back panel with or without the case.
As a result, I often left the Phantom V Pen in my bag or at home wherever I went out. Hopefully, Tecno finds a way to make this pen easier to bring around without having to stuff it in my pant pocket.
But let’s go back to the Tecno Phantom V Fold 2. While the design has undergone a major makeover, Tecno did carry over some stuff from its predecessor. Specifically, the displays seem to be the same as before.
The front cover screen measures 6.42 inches with the same resolution (1080 x 2550 pixels). It also has the same 120Hz refresh rate and continues to use an LTPO OLED panel. What did change is the brightness. The cover display now has a higher peak brightness of 1600 nits, making it easier for the user to see under direct sunlight.
Unfold the phone, and you’re greeted with the same 7.85-inch foldable display with 2K resolution. Similar to the front cover screen, the main display also uses an LTPO OLED panel and comes with a 120Hz refresh rate.
Some of you might be disappointed that no improvements were made to the display aside from the brighter cover screen. However, I don’t see that necessarily as a bad thing. The displays are already great as they are.
These being LTPO OLED panels, you get some really vibrant colors and deep blacks, giving users a great viewing experience. The screen is smooth too, whether you’re going through the menu, browsing the net, or even playing games.
As for the crease, it’s barely noticeable when you’re looking at the phone straight on. However, if you move your head a bit to the side, it is very noticeable. Then again, this has been a problem for almost all foldables.
When watching videos or playing games, you do have to bump up the speakers a bit. They’re a bit lackluster for my liking, lacking clarity and bass. The sound stage is great when watching on the cover screen, but it’s a different story once you use the main screen.
You can easily tell that the sound is coming from just the left side or at the bottom, depending on the orientation of the phone. Worse yet, your hands can easily cover the speakers while playing games on the main screen. Considering how big the screen is, I did expect better. Mind you this phone already comes with Dolby Atmos.
Perhaps the biggest upgrade Tecno made to the Phantom V Fold 2 lies in the cameras. The triple rear camera now comes with three 50MP shooters – a 50MP main that uses an Omnivision OV50H sensor, a 50MP telephoto, and a 50MP ultrawide. For selfies, there are two 32MP front cameras, one on the cover screen and another on the main display.
With that, you are more than well-equipped to capture all kinds of scenery. I genuinely enjoyed using the phone to snap photos of everything. The images come out sharp, whether I’m shooting in the day or low light. The phone processes the image neatly too, and as a result, the photos don’t look overly edited.
At night or in low-light conditions, the phone does a good job of balancing the highlights and bumping up the shadows. Best of all, there’s not a lot of grain in the images whether you’re using the main camera, ultrawide, or zoom.
There are various shooting modes to choose from too – normal, bright, and phantom. I personally kept most of the images in normal mode since they look the most natural, while bright does bump up the saturation to give a more HDR feel. Meanwhile, photos taken using Phantom mode have a cooler tone, higher contrast, and less saturation.
Other neat features of the Phantom V Fold 2’s cameras include AI Focus, which as the name implies, automatically focuses the camera for you. The other is motion capture, which helps when you’re taking photos of moving subjects.
To give you a better idea though, check out the gallery here to see just how capable the cameras of the Phantom V Fold 2 have become.
In terms of video, the Phantom V Fold 2 can record up to 4K@60FPS using the rear cameras, while the front cameras are limited to 1080P@60FPS max. What I like about the video is that Ultra Steady Pro mode works even at 4K@30FPS. Unfortunately, no stabilization function is available at 4K@60FPS.
Just like the images, the videos taken by the Phantom V Fold 2 are great in almost all lighting conditions. There is a lot more noticeable grain when capturing video at night, but it’s not that bad. Plus the stabilization really helps a lot in capturing cinematic shots since it eliminates the need to bring a gimbal with you.
Check out these video clips below taken using the cameras of the Phantom V Fold 2 to see what we’re talking about.
Like all Tecno smartphones, the Phantom V Fold 2 runs on HiOS 14.5, based on Android 14. What’s great about this OS is how easy it can be for you to multitask and how simple it is to use. The moment you boot up the phone, you already have the smart sidebar activated.
Then there’s the taskbar, which is similar to what you’d find in tablets. The recently opened apps also show up as thumbnails instead of the usual icons. When you’re using an app on the main screen, there’s no need for you to swipe up to see other apps too. Instead, there’s a dedicated “all apps” button in the lower-left corner of the screen.
While there are a bunch of pre-installed apps, most of these are all Tecno-related. This means there isn’t a lot of bloatware that you would typically find on their lower-end models. The Phantom V Pen also has functions too, allowing you to quickly create notes or even scrible on screen if needed.
Interestingly, the phone also comes with some AI features that users might find helpful; most of which are controlled by Elle – the phone’s built-in AI assistant. Elle can summarize websites and even translate them for you. Then there’s AI writing which acts similarly to ChatGPT helping you write projects and more.
For those into arts, or at least want to try their hand at drawing but are really bad at it, there is also AI artboard that generates AI images based on your sketches. On top of the AI functions, the rest of the features are very much standard to other Android 14. You have split screen, floating window, parallel window, and more, all of which work smoothly.
All-in-all, this phone will help you be productive in more ways than one.
The main reason the Tecno Phantom V Fold 2 runs its AI and OS smoothly is mainly because of its chipset. Under the hood, it runs the MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ chip and is paired with 12GB of RAM. Our review unit comes with 512GB of internal storage, which I find more than adequate. Unfortunately, there is microSD card slot here to expand storage further.
If the chipset sounds familiar, that’s because it is also a carryover from the Phantom V Fold released last year. This makes it quite dated as a chipset considering it was first announced back in 2022.
Despite being a few years old, the chipset runs day-to-day tasks well. More importantly, it doesn’t feel slow at all, even if you have multiple applications running in the background. The phone can also run multiple applications simultaneously without issue, which is important when you want to be productive.
In terms of gaming, it handled light games without any issues. The same can be said for graphic-intensive games like Genshin Impact and ZZZ. I mainly played Genshin on this phone, and it was very enjoyable.
The game initially set the graphics to medium. Eventually, I maxed everything out, and it still ran smoothly. Even when I was battling multiple enemies and using skills almost simultaneously, there was no lag or framerate drop in the game.
One thing I did notice is how hot the phone can get. After just playing for 20 minutes, the phone becomes hot to the touch. It won’t burn your hands or anything, but you do feel it. Thankfully, it didn’t affect gameplay whatsoever. For those of you who want to see the numbers, we’ve run our usual benchmark scores, which you can check out below.
Antutu Benchmark V10.3.9 – 1124241
Antutu Storage Test V10.3.9 – 88930
Read Speed – 1983.0 Mb/s
Write Speed – 1901.0 Mb/s
3DMark WildLife – 8112
PC Mark Work 3.0 Performance – 18321
Geekbench 6
CPU Single – 1134
CPU Multi – 3474
GPU Vulkan – 6806
GPU OpenCL – 6814
One of the biggest downsides of owning a foldable smartphone is that the battery usually isn’t big. Surprisingly, the one fitted on the Tecno Phantom V Fold 2 is quite big. In fact, it’s bigger than the standard battery you might have on typical smartphones.
It uses a 5,750mAh Aircell battery pack, which means it has one of the biggest capacity batteries in foldable smartphones today. With that, I was quite optimistic about the battery life of this phone.
After running PC Mark’s Work 3.0 Battery Test, we got a result of 8 hours and 53 minutes, which is a decent score considering that this is a foldable smartphone. Still, I did expect more given how big the battery is as compared to other foldable smartphones. For reference, the test was done using the main screen at 50% brightness, zero volume, and airplane mode.
Not surprisingly, the battery drains even faster when playing games. After playing Genshin on max graphics for 30 minutes, the battery dropped from 90 percent to 72 percent. So if you plan on playing on this phone, it’s best to bring a power bank around. But again as we always say, battery life will be dependent on the end user. If you don’t plan on playing games too much, then it shouldn’t be that big of an issue.
Fortunately, it only takes a short time before the phone is good to go thanks to a 70W fast charging system. It even comes with 15W wireless charging and supports reverse wireless charging if you want to help a friend out.
As for connectivity, you have the complete set of features – 5G, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, GPS, and NFC.
There’s no question that the Tecno Phantom V Fold 2 is a great foldable smartphone. While it does have some parts recycled from its predecessor, the changes make it a well-rounded foldable phone. Whether you’re going to be productive or play games, you will definitely enjoy it on this phone with all its features.
Then there’s the price, which is one of the key selling points of this phone. Foldable smartphones are often associated with high prices, with some reaching the six-figure mark. However, Tecno shows that doesn’t have to be the case with the Phantom V Fold 2
For those of you who are interested in picking up a more affordable foldable smartphone, unfortunately Tecno has yet to reveal the price of the Phantom V 2 at the time this review was published. But for reference, this phone retails for USD 1,099PHP 64,495INR 93,140EUR 1,047CNY 7,999 or roughly PHP 63,000USD 1,074INR 91,010EUR 1,022CNY 7,818. This makes it great value for money, all things considered, especially given just how capable this phone is.
However, manufacturers are stepping up their game too, and this year there were a lot of great foldable phones released. At this level, price is just one factor, buyers consider today. Even though the Phantom V Fold 2 is affordable, users expect more such as a newer chipset and a better battery to make it last longer.
Remember this is still an expensive phone at the end of the day. Those who buy this would probably want to keep the phone for at least two years. But if it is underperforming in a year or even less, then is the money saved worth it? Maybe not.
Still, what do you think of the Tecno Phantom V Fold 2? Is it the foldable smartphone you’d choose given its affordability? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
What we liked:
Amazing Cameras
Nice Display
Beautiful Design
What we didn’t like:
Short battery life
Performance could be better
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Manish Motwani says:
Seems a paid review,how can you ignore processor which is pretty old and lacks power compared to recent one.
Micro SD says:
You should add the expandable storage on your “things you didn’t like”:
Unfortunately, there is microSD card slot here to expand storage further.