Tecno Phantom V Fold2 Review: The perfect foldable for those on a budget

2 days ago 8

Tecno’s newest foldable brings one thing to the segment that we’ve all been asking for – affordability. While it is pricier than its predecessor, the Tecno Phantom V Fold2 is the most affordable foldable you can buy in India right now. Available in a single 12GB RAM + 512GB Storage variant, the smartphone is priced at Rs 99,999. The second iteration of the foldable gets a completely new design and some tweaks to the camera system. Of course, Tecno has made some trade-offs to keep the price of the device in check. We used the smartphone for a week to see if it is worth the investment. Here is our in-depth review of the Tecno Phantom V Fold2.

Read Also: Redmi Note 14 Pro review: A decent phone for multimedia consumption

Tecno Phantom V Fold2 Review: Design and Displays

Before we talk about the foldable’s design and form factor, let’s take a look at what you get inside its retail box:

Smartphone
70W power adapter
USB Type-A to Type-C cable
Back cover with kickstand
Carlcare Butler Service card
Tips & Tricks NFC card
SIM ejector
Warranty card
User manual

The Phantom V Fold2 flaunts a completely new design thanks to Tecno’s collaboration with Loewe (German electronics brand, not to be confused with the Spanish luxury fashion house). The revamped rear camera panel has a rectangular shape and a dual-tone colour theme. The faux leather back panel does not register any smudges or fingerprints.

Design and Displays

The curved aluminium rails of the smartphone offer a good grip. The left edge of the frame houses the volume rocker keys and the side button. This side button doubles as a fingerprint reader. The primary speaker grille, USB port, and primary microphone lie on the bottom edge. The secondary speaker, SIM tray, and secondary microphone are positioned on the top edge of the smartphone. The device has an 11.8mm thickness in a folded form. When unfolded, the smartphone is just 6.1mm thick.

design

As far as the hinge mechanism goes, the Phantom V Fold2 is very impressive. The ‘aerospace-grade’ grade design is good for 400,000+ folds, as claimed by Tecno. The Loewe branding embossed on the spine adds to the aesthetic value of the device. However, the most incredible thing about the V Fold2’s design is its almost invisible crease. It is quite amazing that an affordable foldable has got the crease on a lock. It took us multiple attempts to spot the crease with the display turned off. When the display is turned on, it feels like you’re working on a small tablet.

Design and Displays

Our only minor complaint with the device is its hinge resistance. The display holds up well at certain angles but glides shut in other positions. When the angle is closer to 90 degrees, the smartphone starts wobbling on the desk. While this isn’t a dealbreaker, we’d like to see Tecno resolve this issue in future iterations of its foldable.

display

Let’s talk about the Phantom V Fold2’s displays. The 6.42-inch LTPO AMOLED curved display has a 120Hz refresh rate and can reach a peak brightness of 1,600 nits. While it isn’t the brightest display we’ve ever seen, it gets the job done in outdoor daylight conditions. The 7.85-inch inner LTPO AMOLED display also has a 120Hz refresh rate. There are sizeable bezels around this display, which is something we like in a foldable since it limits accidental touches.

display

During the review period, we streamed movie and TV titles across major OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+ Hotstar on the Tecno Phantom V Fold2. The smartphone put up a delightful performance, relaying detailed pictures with punchy and rich colours. The handy Flex-Still Mode makes it easy to prop the phone on a table and view the content without needing a kickstand. The dual speaker setup on the smartphone is tuned by Dolby. While the audio output is loud, it sounds slightly tinny.

Tecno Phantom V Fold2 Review: Performance and Cameras

Tecno Phantom V Fold2 is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ chipset. This is the same chipset as its predecessor. The flagship Dimensity 9400 SoC would have been ideal for this smartphone, but a limited processor is one of the trade-offs that you will have to contend with.

Performance and Cameras

The good thing is that the Phantom V Fold2 puts up a solid everyday performance. The apps take minimal time to load and the displays are fluid and very responsive. Multi-tasking on the larger display was a breeze as well. The foldable can run two apps at the same time with ease. Tasks like video calling, instant messaging, web browsing, and navigation are handled with expertise. On the Geekbench 6 app, the smartphone scored 1,334 points in the single-core test and 3,729 points in the multi-core test.

performance

The gaming performance of the smartphone leaves more to be desired. We played the Call of Duty Mobile and Asphalt Legends Unit on medium graphics. Apart from the odd frame drop, the gameplay was largely smooth. Pushing the gameplay to high graphics introduces occasional jitters. Additionally, the smartphone starts warming up after 30 minutes of uninterrupted gameplay.

The Tecno Phantom V Fold2 runs Android 14-based HiOS 14 Fold out of the box. This is slightly disappointing as you’d expect flagships to run the latest OS version from the jump. Tecno’s promise of 2 major OS upgrades is far below the segment standard.

android 14

With the drawbacks out of the way, let’s talk about how the HiOS 14 performs in day-to-day usage. To begin with, the OS is well-optimised and quite snappy. The sharp animations and effects make the device fun to use. The software makes good use of the larger display, offering tools like the app bar, split-screen mode for apps, parallel windows, and more. In fact, there is an entire ‘Folding Screen Zone’ in device settings dedicated to the foldable functions of the smartphone.

dual screen

Tecno has also added a good range of AI functions on the Phantom V Fold2. For starters, the smartphone has its own AI assistant called Ella. While we like the idea of OEMs creating their own AI bots, Ella has a long way to go before it catches up with the likes of Gemini. Tecno’s in-house AI assistant takes longer to come up with query responses than Google Gemini. Strangely, it cannot carry out some of the functions that are offered as prompts within the app (for example: resetting the lock screen password, checking for updates, etc.). However, its floating icon does a decent job of summarising web pages.

apps

The Phantom Fold V2 now supports stylus input, but the pen is sold separately. The Notepad app is equipped with a handful of AI features that can detect your handwriting and convert it to text, create artwork from basic sketches, and do basic math.

Tecno has made significant improvements to the battery performance of its second foldable. The smartphone packs a 5,750mAh battery and supports 70W wired charging. During the review period, the Tecno Phantom V Fold2 lasted us an entire day with ease. Even when we pushed the smartphone to its boundaries, we were left with a 15-20% charge at the end of the day. The 70W power adapter provided in the box charges the smartphone to 100% in under 50 minutes.

primary shooter

The rear camera panel of the Phantom V Fold2 packs three 50MP sensors, one each for the primary shooter, telephoto lens, and ultrawide camera. The cover and inner displays are equipped with 32MP selfie cameras.

Performance and Cameras

The 50MP primary shooter takes great images in outdoor daylight conditions. The images showcase a lot of detail and pack a good dynamic range. The sharpness and contrast levels are also on point. In limited lighting conditions, the smartphone does a great job of brightening the subject and removing noise from the images.

Performance and Cameras

The 50MP ultrawide camera replicates the performance of the primary shooter. There is very little drop-off in the colour richness, which is amazing to see. However, the sharpness levels aren’t up there with the results from the primary sensor. This is something that is to be expected from most ultrawide sensors. The ultrawide sensor does a decent job of capturing images in limited lighting conditions. It brightens up the subject and assigns accurate colours to the surroundings. However, some grain manages to creep in the final shots.

The 50MP telephoto camera with 2x optical zoom also replicates the performance of the primary shooter. We found ourselves using this camera quite a lot due to the sharpness and the colour-richness of the images. This performance remained consistent in limited lighting conditions as well.

Portrait shots taken with the Phantom V Fold2 are sharp and well-focussed. The smartphone does a good job of separating the subject from the background and assigning it accurate colours. Our only gripe with the portrait shots is that they could use some more background blur. The 32MP selfie cameras on the cover and inner displays deliver good results, but one of the advantages of using a foldable is that you can take selfies using the primary camera. For video calls and quick selfies, the two 32MP selfies do a decent job.

Read Also: How to log out of Instagram on all devices?

Verdict

The Tecno Phantom V Fold2 is the ideal foldable smartphone for those on a budget. Sure, the ‘budget’ foldable comes with tradeoffs like a relatively older chipset and limited software support, but the overall experience makes up for it. We are delighted to see that the tradeoffs don’t extend to the phone’s hardware. The Phantom V Fold2 has one of the most subtle creases we’ve seen on a foldable. Its back panel design is truly inspired and gives it a unique personality. The camera performance is also on point. Overall, we’d say that the foldable is well worth the Rs 99,999 price tag.