TECNO Phantom V Flip 2: An affordable flip phone for the rest of the world

If you haven't heard of TECNO, then you're missing out. The company nails affordability in just about every smartphone category, with a large focus on emerging markets. The new TECNO Phantom V Flip 2 really hits the mark on some key points, bringing a foldable to markets where consumers may not be able to spend over $1000 on the likes of a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip.

The Phantom V Flip 2 is a smartly designed phone that sits comfortably in the midrange foldable category, offering well-rounded specs, a design that makes the phone look much more premium than it is, surprisingly good cameras, and a price tag that you won't have to think twice about. TECNO achieves this while seemingly pulling some inspiration from some higher-end flip phones, adding a dash of AI into the mix for good measure.

TECNO Phantom V Flip 2: Price & availability

The TECNO Phantom V Flip 2 was announced on September 13 and will go on sale on September 23 in various regions, including Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and more. The phone will be available in one configuration and retail for around $699 USD, although the price will vary by country. It should also be noted that phones will not be launched in the United States.

The phone is available in two colorways: Travertine Green and Moondust Grey.

TECNO Phantom V Flip 2: What I like

Immediately when first getting my hands on this phone, I was taken aback by the design. The phone may not be a premium or flagship device, but it's certainly designed to look like one. The front cover panel is all black, which is accented with a gold frame and gold rims around the camera sensors. It's a bit glossy, which I'm not a fan of since it picks up fingerprint sensors more, but it looks very nice.

Furthermore, the back panel of my Travertine Green colorway looks almost like Jade and gives the phone a very classy look, especially with the "Designed by PHANTOM" engraving. Overall, I'm quite impressed with the design of the phone, which features curves on both panels and makes the phone quite comfortable to hold. Interestingly, the phone is a bit heavier than some other flip phones in or even above its price point, such as the Motorola Razr 2024, but it's not the heaviest, and I'm inclined to give it a pass, given its large battery (more on that later).

If you open the phone up, you're met with a 6.9-inch OLED display. With a 120Hz refresh rate and full HD+ resolution, I have no complaints about it. Color reproduction is good and even the crease is fairly minimal, although it doesn't feel particularly smooth when running your finger across it. Despite that, the hinge feels sturdy and holds the phone pretty well it's open at various angles.

One thing I was pleasantly surprised by is the camera quality. The phone has two 50MP cameras for wide and ultrawide shots, and both churn our surprisingly decent images. Colors are often well-balanced and not too dull or saturated, although sometimes it can punch things up a bit more than I'd like, depending on the scene. Low-light is managed fairly well.

That said, I would describe images from this phone like a painting by Claude Monet; as they are on the phone, they look great. However, things sort of start to unravel a little when you zoom in on an image, as you'll see that things start to get a bit muddy and noisy, but the effect isn't terrible, and it certainly isn't the case with every image. That said, overall, I'm pretty pleased with the images from the Phantom V Flip 2.

Image 1 of 9

The phone also handles darker skin tones well, which I appreciate as a melanin-rich individual. Bokeh feels pretty natural when in portrait mode, and the phone comes with various imaging features like DV mode, which emulates a camcorder and even has various video filters and effects to make your video look more stylized. And while you can use the rear cameras for selfies with the cover screen, the phone also comes with an internal flash unit for anyone wanting to use the front 32MP camera.

Video caps out at 4K 30fps, which is perfectly fine. Videos look crisp and there's decent stabilization, but you can also kick things up a notch with the video enhancement feature, which brightens darker areas and punches up the colors.

TECNO Phantom V Flip 2: Cover screen

The cover screen experience is much different from that of the original Phantom V Flip. Instead of a circular display that was mostly good for notifications, time, and some limited interactions, the square 3.6-inch OLED takes after the Motorola Razr 2024 and the Razr Plus 2023 before it, but with a different take on the app experience.

Unlike Motorola's phones, the cameras are stacked vertically on the display, changing how the software is presented. Most of the time, you'll interact with everything to the left of the cameras, such as the time, shortcuts, notifications, and more. With most things, the section above the cameras will be reserved for the time and other status bar icons.

The result is an experience that's a little more reminiscent of the OPPO Find N3 Flip, which features a vertical display on one side of the cover panel. However, the added screen real estate makes it a bit more useful.

Surprisingly, TECNO makes cover screen apps easily accessible when setting up the external display. This isn't too common with flip phones, and Motorola is probably the only one that lets you access nearly any app from the cover screen out of the box. That's unfortunately not the case with the TECNO Phantom V Flip 2, but you still get a decent selection of compatible apps, such as Google Messages, YouTube/YouTube Music, Instagram, and more.

Because your main area of interaction is limited to the area of the display left of the cameras, apps appear more or less as they normally would with the vertical presentation but smaller and slightly wider. The downside is that since not all apps are supported on the cover screen, you will be prompted to open the phone if you tap a notification from an unsupported app on the cover screen.

There's also some continuity with the supported apps when switching from the cover screen to the main screen, as it will open straight to the place you were in the app. It doesn't work as smoothly when going from the main display to the cover screen; for example, I'll have a video open on Instagram and close the phone. I'll then have to navigate to Instagram and manually open it to return to where I was. This differs from the Razr, which will automatically open the app or ask for your permission.

Customization is fairly limited, but you do get the option to create AI wallpapers for the cover screen, and you can set shortcuts to your favorite apps on the main page.

Unfortunately, things get a little confusing when it comes to navigation. Oddly, swiping right on the cover screen won't do anything but switch between cover screen wallpapers that you've set up, which is a weird way to implement this function. Swiping left will present you with the AI Wallpaper Generator and NFC Tag reader, while swiping down will bring up notifications from the quick settings menu, depending on the side of the display you swipe from.

To access your apps, you swipe up from the cover screen and then swipe left or right to access more. However, from here, there doesn't seem to be a way to get back to the main cover screen home page unless you lock and unlock the phone again, which seems unintuitive.

Finally, if you have notifications, I found them to be somewhat unreliable from the cover screen, which will sometimes show them briefly until they disappear and I end up having to open the phone to see my notifications.

Overall, I'm pretty mixed on the cover screen experience, which to me, is the most important part of a flip phone, but much of this could be addressed with software tweaks if TECNO was inclined to rejig its UI.

TECNO Phantom V Flip 2: What could use some work

The TECNO Phantom V Flip 2 is a beautiful phone with a premium-looking design, but that doesn't necessarily translate to how it feels. It's comfortable to hold in hand, but the back panel feels quite cheap, like hard plastic. For a phone at this price point, this is not too surprising, but it's worth pointing out so you're not fooled by its good looks.

While the display is plenty visible indoors, it is also not exceptionally bright, so you may have some trouble outdoors, especially in direct sunlight.

The TECNO Phantom V Flip 2 has one of the largest batteries in a flip phone, but I wouldn't know it from my experience with the phone. Mileage may vary, but the phone doesn't seem to last all day as claimed, and I'll get about six hours of screen-on time at most.

Fortunately, the charging speed helps, as it's also among the fastest in the category. The 70W charger can top up the phone fairly quickly, getting you to 50% in just 15 minutes or 100% in less than an hour. In fact, it's surprising how quickly the phone will charge up, with it reaching 20% in just five minutes. It sort of makes up for the battery life, but I still wish that were better. There's also no wireless charging, which is kind of a bummer but not a dealbreaker.

Overall performance is fine, thanks to the MediaTek Dimensity 8020 chip, which is fairly middle-of-the-road. It won't win any performance awards, though, and I do notice that the phone will get quite hot in the top half, even if I haven't really been using it. It seems there may be some thermal management issues, and I wonder if my battery life woes are related.

Gaming isn't particularly strong, with the phone defaulting to medium settings on games like Honkai: Star Rail. It plays fine at these settings, but the phone may get quite warm if you play for long periods of time. Games will still perform okay if you bump things up to the highest settings, but there will be some choppiness.

The overall software experience is... decent, and TECNO has some interesting features that feel useful but are not fully fleshed out. The Dynamic Port, for example, is a copy of Apple's Dynamic Island but much less functional. There's also a Share Hub that lets you drag images and other content into a temporary storage space and drop them into other apps. It's cool, and it reminds me of Motorola's Share Hub, but I would like to see this expanded to include sharing content across devices like a PC.

To my dismay, there's no option for Google Discover on the home screen, and you're instead left with TECNO's Zero Screen, which can display your steps, RAM, app usage, and few other things. That said, I don't find it particularly useful. 

Overall, the software, while fine, can be a little confusing, and it may be difficult to find the features you want to use if you're not familiar with TECNO's flavor of Android.

TECNO's AI offerings on the Phantom V Flip 2 are a bit of a mixed bag. Some features work fairly well, such as the AI translations for texts and the AI artboard for generating images, and even the AI wallpapers are pretty cool. There's also an Image Clipper-like feature that cuts subjects out of images and lets you drag them into the Smart Hub to drop them somewhere else.

There's also Ella, TECNO's home-grown smart assistant that lets you control functions on the phone and perform other AI-related actions. It can do things like provide suggestions on vacations, help you draft responses, and perform other functions. However, I find Ella's voice a bit too robotic, which can be a bit off-putting when it's providing long answers to questions. I also don't find Ella to be quite as useful as I would like, but now that it's integrated with Gemini, I can see that there's plenty of opportunity to grow.

Other AI functions like AI writing work okay but feel equally limited. The Magic AI Eraser doesn't seem to do a very good job with removing object, often leaving plenty of artifacts in their place.

Fortunately, if you're not a fan of TECNO's in-house AI, you still have the option to use Google's features instead, such as the Gemini app, Magic Eraser, Magic Editor, and more. That's the great thing about options: Android gives you plenty.

Finally, it's worth noting that while this phone isn't made for the U.S. market, it will still work on the networks, but you may find that compatibility may be somewhat limited. I used the TECNO Phantom V Flip 2 on T-Mobile, but the phone only supported some of the network's bands. That said, I was still able to get 5G coverage most of the time, with the phone occasionally showing 4G+ in certain areas. It didn't bother me, and speeds didn't seem to suffer much, but it is worth nothing if you plan to somehow pick this phone up in the U.S.

TECNO Phantom V Flip 2: Competition

When it comes to affordable flip phones, there are a few in the global market that you can consider, including those from Motorola and Nubia.

The Razr 2024, known globally as the Razr 50, is probably one of the best flip phones you can buy. It has an equally large cover screen and is designed with vegan leather, which feels comfortable in hand. It also has great performance, battery life, and wireless charging. At $699 USD, it costs roughly the same as the Phantom V Flip 2, depending on the market. That said, the cameras aren't too great, and Motorola has yet to launch many of its teased AI features.

The Nubia Flip 5G is one of the cheapest flip phones you can buy, which is already pretty enticing. Even at its low price point, you still get decent performance and a well-designed phone with a good 50MP camera and minimal display crease. Unfortunately, you will have to deal with plenty of bloatware and outdated software, plus a much smaller cover screen that's really only good for notifications and selfies.

TECNO Phantom V Flip 2: Should you buy it?

You should buy this if...

• You're looking for an affordable flip phone.
• You want a phone with a good camera.
• You want to be able to use apps on the cover screen.

You shouldn't buy this if...

• You want a phone with good battery life.
• Wireless charging is a must for you.
• You live in the United States.

TECNO is a surprising brand, because it manages to launch relatively good phones at a fraction of the cost of comparable devices. While companies like Samsung and Honor are focused on the high-end, premium market, TECNO makes phones for the rest of the world that may not be able to get there hands on such devices.

The TECNO Phantom V Flip 2 is such a device, and I'm pleased with what the company has developed. Sure, it's not perfect, and some of the software/AI could use some fine-tuning, but the fact that TECNO is making such a well-made foldable at an affordable price point is commendable. Whatever shortcomings the phone has can and should be overlooked when the focus here is more on accessibility in often-overlooked markets than achieving high profit margins.

It's clear that this isn't meant to be the best flip phone on the market, but it may be the best affordable flip phone in the markets that matter.