We Tested The World's Cheapest Foldable Phone. Is It Any Good?

Investing in a foldable phone is a risky proposition, predominantly due to the fragile nature of its flexible screen and hinge assembly. I vividly remember when the first wave of foldable phones arrived. Samsung's debut was nothing short of disastrous. At a Huawei press meet, the press was not even allowed to touch their foldable phone samples.

The engineering situation has improved in the past half a decade, but fragility remains an issue. I investigated the pattern of customer complaints at Samsung service centers and found a repeating pattern of the hinge parts misaligning, oozing glue, and the screen no longer folding properly. Naturally, when China's Blackview announced a foldable phone that cost just over $400 on launch, I was skeptical. 

Nadeem Sarwar / SlashGear

So, when the company boldly claimed to have launched the "world's cheapest foldable phone," I was curious to check if it was an oxymoronic product of market hype or if there was any substance to it. After a few weeks of testing the phone, my experience ended up on a pleasing surprise note.

Blackview is not out here beating the big boys like Samsung or Huawei on engineering finesse. It's not realistically possible either, especially when your product costs a third of what the upmarket players will pull from your wallet. But the Hero 10 is surprisingly well-built and feels astonishingly premium due to the choice of materials.

On the rear shell is a thin layer of vegan leather, while the hinge cover and frame rely on aircraft-grade aluminum alloy. There's a high-quality polish applied over the metallic parts, and in my time testing it without a protective cover on, I didn't see any knicks or the paint peeling off. I've had a bad experience with the paint job on Samsung phones in the past, so the Hero 10s resilience came out as another surprise.

Nadeem Sarwar/SlashGear

In its closed state, the phone is as thin as what you'd get from mainstream brands. I didn't notice any unexpected movements around the hinge, nor was there any creaking when the flexible screen was opened or closed. Another neat aspect is that it's a gapless design, which means the two halves shut close tightly without any space between them.

This was a problem on Samsung phones for a while, which often ended up with dust and other particles making their way inside. Now, the Hero 10 doesn't advertise any IP-certified water-proofing, but it would be unwise to expect that at this asking price, especially on an entry-level foldable device. Also, that fingerprint sensor on the side gets the job done reliably, although it's the fastest one of its kind out there.

The inner flexible screen on the Hero 10 is a 6.9-inch AMOLED panel with a resolution of 2560 x 1080 pixels, which is impressive. This is not a high-refresh-rate panel, which is again a cost-cutting bargain. However, the OLED panel makes up for it with a nice color reproduction and acceptable viewing angles. There's a protective plastic coat on top and in dark mode, there is a fair bit of reflection going on under natural light.

Blackview has employed a layer of Ultra-thin Glass (UTG), which was introduced to the market first by Samsung, and has now become a mainstay option for foldable phones. The panel folds and creates a waterdrop shape that slots in the hinge space. The brand has done a good job of hiding the crease, too.

Nadeem Sarwar/SlashGear

The Hero 10s inner display is claimed to last 250,000 folds, which surpasses Samsung's promise of 200,000 folding and unfolding cycles for its foldable phones. It's impossible to verify these claims at face value, but so far, my experience with the Blackview phone has been relatively smooth. In the unfolded state, the hinge can support angles between 30 and 150 degrees.

The hinge holds itself steadily at various angles and in a right-angle state, the Hero 10 proves helpful as a reference screen for watching videos or taking video calls. There's a round 1.19-inch OLED screen at the back. It can't quite run apps, but doubles as a hi-resolution camera viewfinder and can handle tasks like music control, checking the weather, handling calls, and basic notification tasks.

The Hero 10 is not out there to blow you away with some fiery benchmark figures and take the ultra graphics presets of top-tier games for a spin. That's not attainable in this price bracket, nor advisable from a thermal standpoint given the shortage of internal space. On the Hero 10, we get MediaTek's Helio G99 Soc, an octa-core processor based on the 6 nm process. The cluster includes two Arm Cortex-A76 cores and six Cortex-A55 cores.

As I mentioned, a frugal offering, but not exactly sluggish by any means. Where Blackview felt generous was the memory. You get 12 GB of RAM, which is more than what the top iPhones have to offer, and matches Samsung's top-end foldable phones. Blackview also touts 24 GB of virtual RAM, but I didn't feel it made any standout difference in the day-to-day experience.

Nadeem Sarwar/SlashGear

The SoC can handle games like "Asphalt 9" and "Call of Duty" at low to medium graphics settings, while less demanding titles run smoothly without a hitch. What perplexed me was the general sluggishness of the UI, although it didn't freeze at any point. Maybe it was the slow screen and the shift from 120Hz panels that I've gotten used to, but a few willing volunteers had a brief taste and confirmed that UI interactions feel slow.

It's not exactly a deal-breaker, but it's certainly something you feel when using the phone as your daily driver. It's also a bit surprising because I've tested phones with the same MediaTek chipset inside, and they felt fluid. I believe it has something to do with the heavy software skin. On the Hero 10, I brought down the window and transition animation scales to 0.5x, and the experience was snappier afterward.

If going overboard was a competitive errand, Blackview obliged with an added dash of enthusiasm. That's particularly evident in the imaging department of the Hero 10. Despite being a foldable that costs as little as much, the Hero 10 tries to make a splash with a massive 108-megapixel primary camera. And with a Samsung-made ISOCELL HM6 sensor, no less, that serves 0.64μm-sized pixels.

Where the phone flexes its affordability muscles, and in an unsavory fashion, is the camera app. It's bare bones, and the slow shutter speed (especially while capturing full-resolution 100-megapixel photos), can be a bit of a focus nuisance as well. As far as photos, the pixel-binned photos that come out at roughly 8-megapixel resolution contain plenty of details. The colors are sharp, although not as vivid as one would expect from the post-processing done by the likes of Samsung.

Nadeem Sarwar/SlashGear

There's a tad bit of color muting going on over here, but nothing that a bit of exposure and temperature adjustment won't solve. It's just a shame that you'll have to rely on a third-party camera app. Sadly, I tried multiple modded versions of the excellent Google Camera app, and none of them worked. Occasionally, if you click macro shots, there's a halo effect noticeable around the subject edges.

On the positive side, I noticed little color disparity between shots captured by the main and the 8-megapixel ultra-wide camera. The 32-megapixel front camera, on the other hand, does a surprisingly good job at delivering crisp selfies without too much of an overprocessed filter work going on. What the camera needs is a bit of algorithmic touch-up to solve its exposure issues, because low-light shots in night mode could use some added fine-tuning.

The Hero 10 runs what the company calls DokeOS 4.0 built atop Android 13. Yeah, that's a bit too far in the past by 2024 standards, but Blackview will roll out the Android 14 update later this year. The company is also promising updates all the way up to Android 16, so that's a bright assurance. Blackview extended me the necessary files and instructions to install Android 14 on the Hero 10, but I avoided doing so to replicate the experience of an average buyer and not a tech-savvy nerd.

DokeOS 4 is a breath of surprise since it doesn't come pre-installed with a ton of bloatware — something Chinese smartphone brands have cultivated infamy for. I am looking at you, too, Samsung. Thankfully, I didn't come across any nasty unskippable ads using the Hero, and a healthy bunch of pre-installed apps that I came across, well, they do something practical.

Nadeem Sarwar/SlashGear

For example, there's a borderline useless one called One Click Wallpaper. It doesn't even open anything. You tap the icon and it instantly changes the system wallpaper. A joyful little surprise, I'd say. There are dedicated apps for Focus Mode controls, one that puts certain apps to sleep, Game Mode, wireless emergency alert, Notebook, and one called Workspace that lets you create twin versions of communication apps.

There are more Google apps that are installed out of the box than Blackview's own, some of which I barely ever bother opening. There are some neat in-house tools, too, such as a customizable smart window, à la Samsung and OnePlus phones. This side panel lets you quickly access frequently used apps and tools. Overall, the feel is pretty much that of stock Android on phones like those from Motorola, and that's not a bad deal at all.

You get a fairly decent-sized, 4000mAh battery inside the Hero. Each half of the phone has battery packs of uneven size. Blackview claims the phone can handle six hours of video watching and four hours of gaming. In real life, where the screen brightness is set to roughly 80% mark, I reached just over four hours of HD streaming over Wi-Fi before I got the low battery warning. In general, this phone will last you a day of normal usage, which can be attributed to a couple of frugal choices made by Blackview.

The silicon is not as demanding as your usual high-end foldable phone, and this is a 4G-only phone. There's no 5G support, which is disappointing, but in hindsight, the trade-off is worth it. It's a debatable bargain, one that depends on how many hours you spend outside space without Wi-Fi and the bandwidth offered by your network carrier.

Nadeem Sarwar/SlashGear

My carrier served a 40mbps download speed indoors, which was enough for watching Reels, attending WhatsApp calls, and listening to podcasts. With a bit of casual gaming thrown in, such as a few "Asphalt 9" races and a few "Call of Duty: Mobile" sessions, the phone still managed to stay alive by the time I went home. I'd call that a victory for a flip-style foldable phone. Another unexpected surprise is that this budget foldable supports 45W charging, and the charging brick comes bundled in the box. Here's a lesson for you, Samsung and Apple.

It would be somewhat imprudent to judge the Blackview Hero 10 using the same parameters as an average $400-500 phone. The primary reason lies in the fact that this phone invests most of its worth on a sophisticated foldable display tech, and does a good job while at it. But in doing so, some concessions are to be expected.

Where the Hero 10 shines is the hardware, which feels far more premium than a phone in this segment has a right to attain. The software is not a messy ad-ridden hell and the upgrade commitment is also promising on this one, albeit with the usual delay caveat. Support for 45W fast charging is a practical boon, and so is a secondary OLED display on the rear shell. You also get 256 GB onboard storage, which in itself is yet another underrated perk. The camera hardware is also quite impressive, but it would need polishing done on the software to achieve its full potential. 

Overall, if you're a foldable phone enthusiast but have been hesitant to adopt plunking a fortune on one, the Hero 10 is a great place to start. If you can put your faith in a relatively unknown Chinese market and secure one via international waters, this phone won't leave you with a bitter taste. It certainly didn't leave me wanting to throw it in a puddle, and that's after using flagship foldable phones for the past five years consistently, so there's that assurance, in case you seek one.

BlackView Hero 10 is currently available for $420 from AliExpress, $529 from the company's official website, and $699.99 from Amazon.