Shubham Sawarkar
TECNO unveiled its latest foldable phone, the PHANTOM V Fold, at the MWC 2023. The device comes with a MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ processor, making it the first horizontally-folding phone to be powered by this chip. This choice leads to a lower entry barrier, resulting in an affordable device that comes with impressive features.
The PHANTOM V Fold has a 7.85-inch foldable screen and a 6.42-inch sub-screen, both with a 120Hz refresh rate. TECNO claims that the screen is “virtually crease-free,” and it’s capable of 200,000 folds, which matches Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 4. The foldable phone is wider than Samsung‘s counterparts but narrower than Oppo’s, similar to Honor’s Magic VS and Xiaomi‘s Mix Fold 2.
The PHANTOM V Fold has a complete set of cameras, including a 50-megapixel main camera, a 50-megapixel telephoto camera with 2x optical zoom, and a 13-megapixel ultra-wide camera. The back cover is eco-friendly and made of recycled plastics, available in black or white. Additionally, it has two punch-hole selfie cameras, a 16-megapixel one on the foldable screen and a 32-megapixel version on the outer screen. The device packs a 5,000mAh battery with 45W fast charging, capable of reaching 40% charge in 15 minutes and 100% charge in 55 minutes.
The PHANTOM V Fold runs on TECNO’s HiOS 13 Fold based on Android 13. The company has customized the folding experience for the top 1,000 most downloaded apps globally and optimized 90% of them for split-screen and multi-window modes.
The PHANTOM V Fold is surprisingly affordable, with a base model starting at $1,099 for 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage. The 512GB variant costs $1,222. These prices are competitive compared to Samsung and even Honor outside of China. However, prices may vary across countries, with India being the first market to receive the device, followed by various African and Latin American countries where TECNO is usually active.
