Tecno is set to bring its latest smartphone, the Phantom V Fold, to Kenya.
According to the company, the company’s first-ever foldable smartphone, available through sub-brand Phantom, will be launched in Kenya by the end of March 2023. That is later this month.
Tecno just announced the device the other day at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain.
Despite Tecno having been around for over a decade and a half, this was the company’s first showing at MWC and, boy, did it make a statement. A quick look at some of the early reviews of the device shows a very positive reaction from the industry’s leading reviewers and critics.
Local pricing for the device is expected to be revealed when it’s officially launched but, working with the global pricing, we are looking at parting with at least Kshs 140,000 at current exchange rates, a 60% cut from the price of Samsung’s latest foldable at its launch late last year.
The difference in pricing is accounted for in the features with users set to get pretty much everything they’d expect from a device but experiencing a cut back on the nitty gritty like wireless charging and Ingress Protection (IP) rating.
The Phantom V Fold has a 7.85-inch AMOLED 2K main display and a 6.4-inch AMOLED Full HD+ “sub-screen” or what Samsung would call a “cover screen” since it has a similar design as the Galaxy Z Fold4 with a full front-size display that opens up to an even bigger folding inner screen. Both displays have up to 120Hz refresh rate.
The Phantom V Fold’s departure from the Galaxy Z Fold4, despite sharing near-similar design ethos is visible in the more wider “sub-screen” which should make it feel a bit more like your ordinary candybar smartphone when it is folded. It also folds flatter than the Samsung, leaving no gap. Unlike the Samsung, the Tecno foldable can’t stay half-folded.
Other specifications include a Dimensity 9000+ chipset from MediaTek, a duo of 50-megapixel cameras for the main sensor and the portrait lens and a third 13-megapixel ultrawide at the back, a 16-megapixel selfie camera on the main display and another 32-megapixel selfie camera on the “sub-screen”, a 5,000mAh battery (with support for 45W fast charging), 12GB RAM, 512GB internal storage.
The device is powered by Android 13, which is optimized for foldable smartphones (unlike in Android 12, where a bump to Android 12L was mostly necessary for a better optimized Android experience) which comes via Tecno’s HiOS interface.
