This is one of the newest contenders in
the fold able seat the Techno Phantom v-fold now Samsung isn't the only one on the block with these fold able phones but does the Techno v-fold have what it takes to compete with them I'm will for GSM Arena and let's find out in our full
Design and build quality
the v-fold is tecno's first fold able phone and is also one of the first Rivals to Samsung's Galaxy Z fold 4 to appear in global markets one advantage techno does have right off the bat though is a much lower price this is launching for about the same as a typical flagship the v-fold emulates the successful design made Popular by Samsung with the cover screen on front and a large folding inner screen tucked away inside the Phantom V4 does bring some of its own charm into the mix though the back panel is made of some poly carbonate with a fiber texture it feels almost like cloth also the multi-step camera bump lends a unique aesthetic otherwise the v-fold looks like your typical fold able phone it is on the heavy side though weighing in at just under 300 grams there is no Ingress Protection here which Samsung's fold ables do have let's talk a bit about the hinge and the folding mechanism it feels pretty sturdy and unlike the galaxy z-fold force hinge the technos folds flat with no Gap but on the other hand the V4 doesn't unfold as flat retaining a bit of an angle even while open it's worth mentioning that the Techno doesn't stay open half folded either which limits some of the extra utility of the folding form factor
the Techno Phantom v-fold's front display is a 6.42 inch curved 1080p AMOLED with a 120 hertz refresh rate the aspect ratio is wider than the galaxies which is on the narrow side and that makes the Phantom feel more natural to use in one hand when the device is unfolded you get a larger 7.85 inch AMOLED with the 2296 by 2000 resolution and again a 120 hertz refresh rate the crease on the folding display is relatively smooth and unobtrusive here both the inner screen and the cover screen use ltpotec and they will give you the smooth 120 hertz while you're swiping around and then they will dial down as low as 10 Hertz when you stop interacting with the display to save energy both displays look nice they're sharp and contrasty maybe not the most color accurate though whites tend towards bluish and there's no HDR video support here either besides that though there is a major issue when it comes to streaming video content for example YouTube works fine when played backward in a window but in full screen mode the v-fold will actually dial down the refresh rate to 10 Hertz after a few seconds leading to stuttering and it's not only on the folding inner screen the same thing happens on the cover screen too it's pretty frustrating and we hope techno will fix this soon through a software update but besides that brightness also leaves more to be desired we measured a maximum of 500 nits with a manual brightness slider and there is no boost on top of this in auto mode so the phone isn't as comfy to use Outdoors on a sunny day
for audio the v-fold has a pair of stereo speakers the loudness is very good and the sound quality is not bad the mids could be better but you get nice treble and some bass nightmare you can wake up and unlock the phone
with a side mounted fingerprint reader built into the power button and the v-fold comes with 256 or 512 gigs of storage and that isn't expandable through MicroSD the interface
of the phone is a fold able specific version of techno's high OS 13 running on top of Android 13. there are plenty
of options when it comes to multitasking as it should be on affordable device every app has a button within its status bar which gives you split screen and pop-up options alternatively you can hold that button and pull down on it and that moves the current APP to the side while opening the app drawer to choose a second app you can also minimize an app into a pop-up window by swiping up from the bottom of the screen and dragging the app to the side then there's the pinch gesture if you pinch in with four or five fingers you'll shrink the full screen app into a larger sized active pop-up window the task switcher also holds icons for both split screen and pop-up window modes next to the apps that support them app pairs are a thing too located near the top of the task switcher these shortcuts will launch a split screen you've already saved on The Fly or maybe you prefer to use the smart Edge panel to enable your multitasking tapping on an app icon opens it in a pop-up window and dragging it to either side of the screen takes it into split screen there are a couple of limitations to the split screen though you can't resize the windows when a split screen it's locked at 50 50 and you can't split horizontally either besides the multitasking you get a standard techno software package which includes features like a dedicated game mode
the chip set of the Techno Phantom v-fold is mediatek's high-end domensity 9000 plus it's a flagship grade chipset that's in the same class as last year's Snapdragon 8 plus gen 1. and benchmarks the Techno does a great job demonstrating performance has on par with Samsung's Galaxy Z fold 4. the
thermal management is decent too the Phantom V4 did a good job in GPU stress tests the CPU stress results weren't exactly smooth but still not too bad the Techno Phantom v-fold comes with a 5
000 milliamp hour battery larger than the z-fold 4S however in our proprietary tests the battery life here wasn't quite as excellent but still decent with an overall endurance rating of 92 hours with our screen on test running on the cover display the results were a bit better with a rating of 114 hours the v-fold supports 45 watt charging and with the bundled adapter we were able to charge from 0 to 62 percent in half an hour there is no support for wireless charging here though
the main Cam's photos are pretty good with excellent sharpness and detail and balanced rendition they do seem exposed to Tad too bright though and the color rendition is on the conservative side the zoom camera's two times photos are nice with a bit livelier colors and plenty of detail the fine details like foliage can end up looking a bit sketchy though if you're shooting a distant subject with the ultrawide cam the resulting shot is actually a composite with the center of the photo being sourced from the main cam this means that you get softer detail around the edges the effect looks good though and since the ultrawide has autofocus you can use it to take close-ups these look good with sharp and detailed subjects
in low light the main camera's photos aren't perfect but they're still good the detail is very good and noise is well contained the dynamic range is just okay the phone struggles with contrast to your scenes where you get clipped highlights and Dark Shadows enabling the super night mode will get you improved dynamic range restoring those highlights and boosting the darker areas it smears some details and there is plenty of sharpening added too zooming at night will get you photos from the dedicated camera no crops from the main cam the detail level is respectable but you again get dark shadows and clipped highlights super night mode delivers the expectedImprovement in dynamic range with the trade-off of smear details the ultra wise low light photos are rather soft unless the composite processing happens to kick in in that case you'd mostly be looking at results from the main cam the dynamic range is decent All Things Considered super night mode seems to disable the composite processing but otherwise there isn't much difference from the regular shots now let's talk about selfies you
actually get two different selfie cams a 16 megapixel one on the inside and a 32 megapixel one on the cover screen selfies from the cover screen selfie cam have plenty of detail and good exposure the colors could use some more saturation and the dynamic range isn't the widest but these are still good the internal selfie camera is pretty good too it renders detail in a way that's gritty and sharp and the dynamic range isn't too wide but with those cameras aside you have the ability to take selfies with the rear cameras too as you'd expect from an affordable phone selfies from the viewfold's main camera are really nice the detail is very good the skin tones are lifelike and you even get some natural blur in the background
the Phantom v-fold records video in up to 4K at 60fps with this Main and zoom cameras footage from the main cam has nice looking colors and plenty of detail but the contrast is too high resulting in a narrow dynamic range zoomed videos are just as contrasty and the colors have a bit of a magenta cast the ultrawide's video recording again brings that high contrast and loaded image range and on top the resolution here is capped at 1080p electronic stabilization is available on all of the cameras and up to 4K at 30fps one thing you can't fault the viewfold's videos for is stabilization it's excellent on all three cameras
in low light the footage of the main cam retains plenty of detail but also exhibits plenty of noise the color saturation is good and the dynamic range is reasonably wide zoomed videos at night are so so there's an okay amount of detail and the dynamic range is decent the ultra wide struggles in the dark these videos are soft with limited dynamic range so that's the Techno Phantom v-fold
overall it's impressive the Techno is offering a full-fledged foldable phone for so much cheaper than the competition there are a couple of missing features like waterproofing and wireless charging and the displays are in some ways inferior to the more expensive options especially with the current buggy refresh rate handling but still if you're after a new affordable phone and want to save a few hundred bucks the Phantom v-fold could be worth considering
alternatives to the Phantom v-fold that we've reviewed on our Channel starting with the Samsung Galaxy C fold 4. another option is the honor magic vs let us know what you guys think and I'll see you on the next one
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