Remember when foldable phones were these unbelievably futuristic luxury handsets that were considered both experimental and expensive? The first foldable phone from Samsung, the Galaxy Fold, retailed for $2,000; Huawei’s first foldable phone, released a few months later, had a $2,700 asking price and was resold on the import market for over $3,500.
That was just five years ago. And the technology has matured and commoditized enough that you can now get a premium foldable phone for not much more than a normal phone.
And Shenzhen OEM Blackview is now taking it to another level by making the first affordable foldable phone. It’s a clamshell flip phone (not the larger book-like foldable), but it’s officially priced at just $400.
The Hero 10 features a 6.9-inch 120Hz 2.5K OLED screen that folds in half to become a smaller box roughly the size of a wallet.
The main foldable display looks good, though maximum brightness is a bit dimmer than the recent batch of foldables from bigger names. It’s got a relatively pedestrian Helio G99 chip from MediaTek, but a solid 108-megapixel camera sourced from Samsung. The 4,000 mAh battery is also quite large for a flip foldable.
The most crucial part about the foldable phone is the hinge and screen, and I can say the Blackview Hero 10, at least my unit, folded and unfolded a few hundred times during my testing without issues. However, I did hear from a peer that his unit has a very minor creaking at the hinge area sometimes when he unfolds. He stresses it’s been very minor. But still, perhaps concerning. Blackview is a smaller OEM without the R&D budget of bigger brands.
Elsewhere, I find the software — Android 13 — to be fine. It’s a bare bones vanilla version of Android, and it performed as it should. The hinge also allows the phone to stay in place mid-way, which allows the UI to take advantage and turn the Hero 10 into something like a mini laptop.
Overall, the Blackview Hero 10’s biggest draw is its very low price for a foldable phone. If you’re okay with the risk that comes from buying from a smaller brand, the Hero 10 may be worth a look.
