Tecno, a Chinese company has been producing mobile phones since 2006, but two to three years ago, it mostly sold ultra-cheap phones in Africa.
Even in the country of origin, it is not sold.
In recent years, Tecno started to enter new markets, including those in Latin America, Southeast Asia, India, and the Middle East.
The Phantom V Fold, a brand-new foldable, will debut in India first before expanding to Tecno’s typical markets in the Middle East and select regions of Europe and Asia.
Tecno Phantom V Fold
Tecno’s first foldable phone is a surprisingly polished piece of hardware with a virtually crease-less large screen and a sleek form factor when folded.
Key Specs
SoC: MediaTek Dimensity 9000+
Display: 6.4-inch FHD AMOLED (outside); 7.8-inch FHD AMOLED (inside)
RAM: 12GB LPDDR5X
Storage: 256/512GB UFS 3.1
Battery: 5,000 mAh
Ports: USB-C
Operating System: Android 13
Front camera: 32MP; 16MP
Rear cameras: 50MP main; 50MP telephoto; 13MP ultra-wide
Dimensions: 59.4 × 140.4 x 6.8mm (unfolded); 159.4 × 72.0 x 14.5mm (Folded)
Colours: Black, White
Unlike Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 4, the folding screen of the Phantom V Fold doesn’t exhibit a significant wrinkle.
Also, the phone folds fully flat without the gap that Samsung’s foldable left behind.
The primary screen is foldable and measures 7.9 inches. It has a variable refresh rate between 10-120Hz and is a 2K LTPO panel.
The exterior cover screen performs slightly better in terms of brightness. It is 6.4 inches long and has a fairly standard 21:9 aspect ratio.
In comparison to the thinner, candy bar-shaped design of the Galaxy Z Fold 4, this makes it seem much more like a typical phone when folded. For anyone even vaguely familiar with Chinese foldable, this is once more nothing new.
Overall, the hardware is comfortable to hold.
The Phantom V Fold is the first huge foldable to employ silicon from a company other than Qualcomm because it is powered by MediaTek’s Dimensity 9000+.
The Dimensity 9000+ is a 4nm flagship chip, but in terms of raw power, it plainly trails the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
It comes with a 5,000 mAh battery that can be charged at 45W speed with the accompanying charging brick.
Moreover, it has 256 or 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage and 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM.
A 50MP, 1/1.3-inch main sensor with f/1.9 aperture, a second 50MP, f/2.0 telephoto lens with a 2X optical zoom, and a 13MP ultrawide lens are all housed inside one aesthetically arresting circular camera module.
With Tecno’s HiOS on top, Android 13 powers the Phantom V Fold. You may change the UI, color scheme, and animations, among other things.
The phone also offers nearly a dozen swipe gestures you can use to start an action. For example, you can swipe up with three fingers to change a full-screen app into a smaller, resizable window, up with two fingers to access hidden apps, and down with two fingers to open Google Assistant.
Even two fingers rotating in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction have their own hand signals.
Considering that it is from a lesser-known company, the Tecno Phantom V Fold is amazing.
I would have picked six, seven, or ten phone manufacturers before I would have said Tecno if you had told me a month ago would be releasing a sizable foldable worldwide.
The Phantom V Fold, however, doesn’t seem to bring anything new to the foldable sector. I believe it is a knockoff of Samsung’s foldable phones.