Blackview has promised to release the world’s cheapest foldable, the Blackview Hero 10. The launch will be in May, but the phone has already appeared on AliExpress with specs and images – however, there is no confirmation of the expected price. The Hero 10 is supposed to cost € 400 (US$ 425/₹ 36,000), which will undercut the current cheapest foldable, the nubia Flip, by some margin (it made its debut at the MWC at US$ 600). With that in mind, let’s look at the hardware.
The Blackview Hero 10 features a 6.9”
AMOLED display with 1,080 x 2,560px and 10-bit colors. It has a peak brightness
of 1,300 nits (1,920Hz high frequency PWM dimming). When opened, the phone
measures 169.0 x 75.7 x 8.1mm and weighs 198g. This display folds with a
waterdrop hinge and is rated for 250,000 folds. The hinge can hold it partially
open at at 30° and 150°.
As you can see, it has a circular cover
display next to the dual camera. Impressively, that camera includes a 108MP
sensor (the 1/1.67” Samsung ISOCELL HM6). Next to it is an 8MP ultra wide
(120°), the selfie camera inside has a 32MP sensor. So far, so good. However,
something had to give to stay within the budget and that something is the
chipset – it’s a Helio G99. Blackview specced it with plenty of RAM (12GB,
LPDDR4X) and storage (256GB, UFS 2.2), but this is still a slow chipset with a
4G-only modem.
On the plus side, the company will deliver
3 years of updates – labeled as just “OTA updates”, so it’s probably not 3 OS
updates. Android 14 is coming later this year, the phone will launch with
DokeOS 4.0 based on Android 13. The chipset is certainly less than ideal, but
the Blackview Hero 10 ends on a high note. It has a large (for a foldable)
4,000mAh battery and supports fast 45W charging (20 minutes gets the battery to
48%). Other goodies include stereo speakers, NFC and a dual-SIM slot.
The aluminum alloy frame of the phone is
covered with vegan leather. It is coming in Sakura Purple and Eclipse Black.
