Phantom V Fold: Going Hands-On With Tecno's First Folding Phone

Chinese manufacturer Tecno is seeking to make a name for itself globally. After dominating in the African market, Tecno showed off its first foldable phone, the Phantom V Fold, on Tuesday. The new foldable is set for an international release. 

The Phantom V Fold is a book-style foldable phone with two 120Hz screens, a grand total of five cameras, a large battery, fast charging and a powerful chipset in the form of Mediatek's Dimensity 9000 Plus. 

Tecno is playing up the camera module as one of the phone's top features, partially thanks to the presence of a telephoto lens capable of 2x optical zoom and 20x digital zoom. It's also showing off the ability to take selfies with those fancy rear cameras, as opposed to just the front-facing cameras. The hinge, which Tecno says is made of an aerospace-grade material, is supposed to last more than 200,000 folds.

In the short time I spent with the Phantom V Fold, I appreciated the phone's slender hardware and the way it seamlessly folds. I looked for a crease but couldn't see one when the screen was unfolded, though I did sometimes feel its subtle presence when scrolling.  

I didn't get to test the camera or the battery life, but I did spend about 30 minutes or so trying the phone out. Navigating and scrolling across apps was fluid thanks partially to that 120Hz display. Multitasking was also a pleasant experience, helped by that 7.85-inch inner screen, which allows you to enjoy split screens, picture-in-pictures and parallel windows. It also lets you drag and drop across screens. 

However, the Phantom V Fold doesn't seem to take advantage of its folding capacity in as many ways as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4, its top rival. First of all, I couldn't position the phone in a variety of ways or even at half-fold. I could only unfurl it into the larger tablet-sized display, or I could fold it closed to use the outer screen. 

I couldn't prop it up to use in a laptop-style position and I didn't find any functionality similar to Samsung's Flex mode, which moves the app you're using to the top of the screen while displaying the controls at the bottom when the phone is half-open. On the Galaxy Z Fold 4, for example, the YouTube app shows videos on the top half of the screen while the bottom half is for scrolling through comments or the description.

The announcement of the Phantom V Fold means Tecno is the latest of an increasing number of companies to enter the premium foldable phone segment, in which Samsung currently holds the leadership position. Former Huawei unit Honor also recently showed off the Magic Vs, its first book-style foldable bound for a global release. The the Phantom V Fold unveiling comes months after the release of the company's inaugural global flagship the Phantom X2 Pro, the first commercially sold phone with a pop-out portrait camera. 

To learn more about the Phantom V Fold, take a look at the specs below.

Key specs

Inner Screen: 7.85-inch AMOLED, 120 Hz, 2,296x2,000 pixels
Cover Display: 6.42-inch AMOLED, 120 Hz, 1,080x2,550 pixels
Processor: MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ (4nm)
Rear Camera: 50-megapixel (main), 50-megapixel (telephoto), 13-megapixel (ultra-wide)
Selfie Camera:  32-megapixel, 16-megapixel
Memory: 12+256GB; 12+512GB
Battery: 5,000 mAh (45W charging)
Price: TBC