I have been using a Tecno Phantom phone on and off since the days of the Tecno Phantom 5 and I have to say that so far I have not been disappointed. I recently got the opportunity to get my hands on the Tecno Phantom 9 which is the lastest iteration of the Phantom series and here are my thoughts;
Appearance
The Tecno Phantom 9 is a thing of beauty with smooth edges that make it easy to handle, it also comes with a Lapland Aurora colour which makes it distinct. It has a 6.4 inch, AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with 16 M colours. The thing about having a phone with a 6.4 inch screen is that it makes consumption of media especially videos more enjoyable. The screen is full HD with 1080 x 2340 pixels so you can imagine how crispy the images are. The phone’s 19.5:9 ratio means more screen and less bezels. The screen has Corning Gorilla Glass 3 which offers adequate protection as such one does not need a screen protector.
Camera
The phones comes with a 32 MP front camera, if you are into selfies, the front camera will make you love this phone. Other than the 32 MP camera, the phone also incorporates AI technology to make your selfie more vivid and flawless. I have to say that I am not into selfies but this phone really made an impression on me.
The phones has a triple camera set up at the back and it features a 16-megapixel primary sensor of an f/1.8 aperture, an 8MP ultra-wide lens of 120-degree field of view and a 2MP depth sensor rear camera. It takes some pretty decent pictures, check them out below;
Eye of Kitengela
Bumper cars for when you need to unleash your inner child
Fingerprint Sensor
I have to say that I am used to having the fingerprint sensor at the back of the phone so this phone’s sensor which is placed at the front took some getting used to. However, it is pretty nifty and I got the hang of it within no time. It can save up to five fingerprints and it is fast and accurate.
Facial Recognition
Artificial Intelligence technology allows users to unlock their phones using facial recognition. The phone does this by scanning the 296 unique recognition points of their faces improving accuracy. Its pretty fast and nifty.
Sound
The sound on the Phantom 9 is not overly impressive but it is something that one can work with. The speakers are conveniently located at the bottom so you can listen to your music whichever way you place the phone.
Performance
The phone comes with a 6GB RAM, 128 GB ROM and is powered by an MediaTek Helio P35 Processor, a 2.3 GHz Cortex-A53 CPU and a PowerVR GE8320 GPU. It also comes with a Android 9.0 OS. All these features combined make the phone incredibly fast and i am yet to experience any sort of lag while multi-tasking on the phone.
Battery
The phone comes with a 3500 mAh battery which is non-removable. A big battery means that you can use the phone for long periods without having to recharge. A full battery took me a day and a half on fairly heavy usage.
However, the downside is that it does not have a fast charge option and one has to wait for two over hours for it to charge fully.
Storage
The phone comes with 128 GB internal storage which can be expanded using a Micro SD to up to 256 GB.
Conclusion
I have to say that I have been a fan of the Phantom series for a long time, however, I feel that this particular one does not quite reach the bar set by the previous versions but it is still an awesome phone. Also, for the price point of Ksh. 24,999 it is a definite buy.