With the Phantom X series along with the Tecno Camon 18 Premier, the brand broke into the premium smartphone market this year. And the once-budget-only brand is building on that with their first 5G phone — the Tecno Pova 5G. It just dropped in Africa, unceremoniously.
Save for a press release, no other announcements have been made on social media yet. But the web listing for the Tecno Pova 5G is up on the Tecno Nigeria website. Performance is the big highlight of this phone.
At its heart, the Pova 5G has the MediaTek Dimensity 900 chip. It’s a current-gen 5G platform built on a 6nm node. Tecno has paired it with flagship-grade UFS 3.1 storage and ultra-fast LPDDR5 memory (virtually extended.)
We’re looking at an oversized 6.9” LCD. It delivers a 1080P resolution at a buttery smooth 120Hz refresh rate. Plus, the 180Hz touch sampling makes the gaming experience more responsive. The display is surrounded by minimal bezels all around. And an O-hole is punched through its middle.
Overall, a valuable addition to the Tecno Price list. Everything runs on a powerful 6000 mAh battery at an affordable. A single charge is good for 17 hours of uninterrupted gameplay, 24 hours of music playback, and 15 hours of web surfing. The Pova 5G quickly charges over 18W of power when you run out. In addition, software tweaks in the Android11-based HiOS improve battery life and performance.
The design follows the many Pova phones that have preceded the Pova 5G. The back is chamfered, textured, and has a flashy strip running across its length. The fingerprint scanner is merged with the power button.
Three lenses and an LED flash reside inside the elongated camera plate. It’s a 50MP f/1.6 wide lens cluster paired with two low-res cameras. Night Mode and EIS features are preloaded. The Pova 5G comes in a single graphite black color and a single 8GB+128GB variant.