When one is looking to buy a phone, one of the key things that one looks out for other than the camera and storage is the battery life.
This is simply because, a phone battery can make a difference between you having peace of mind while using it or having to constantly worry about running out of juice. A weak phone battery will have you walking around armed with a charger and a power bank like an extra appendage. Not to mention having to hunt for power sockets at every stop, the ghetto!!
As such, the Tecno Spark 5 which comes with a 5000 mAh battery is an absolute gem. This is an improvement to the Spark 4 which came out last year and which had a 4000 mAh battery. The Spark 5 battery was able to last one and a half days with heavy usage which included gaming, TikTok and a heavy call rotation. I was able to extend this to two days by using the battery saver option when the battery level got to 20%.
On moderate usage, I was able to get a 72 hours on this phone without having to recharge. This was this with the use of voice calls and Social Media apps such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp.
If you value battery life when it comes to phones, then you are definitely going to enjoy using this phone. However, the only drawback is that it does not have a fast charge option as such you have to wait for it to charge for two and a half hours.
Appearance
The Tecno Spark 5 just like its other siblings in the Tecno family comes with smoothed out edges that make it easy to handle. The Vacation blue color on the unit I have gives it a cool and premium look.
The Spark 5 comes with a 6.6 inch HD LCD capacitive touchscreen with 16 M colors. In my opinion, the bigger the screen the more enjoyable the consumption of media becomes say on Youtube, Instagram or Twitter . The screen is HD with 720×1600 pixels giving you some good images.
Unlike its predecessor, the Spark 5 does not have a dewdrop notch but rather a hole punch on the left for the selfie camera.
Camera
The phones comes with a 8 MP front camera, which takes some pretty decent selfies. Other than the 8 MP camera, the phone also incorporates AI technology to make your selfie more vivid and flawless.
The phone has a Quad camera set up at the back and it features a 13-megapixel primary sensor of an f/1.8 aperture, an 2MP ultra-wide lens of 120-degree field of view, a 2MP depth sensor and a QVGA camera. It takes some decent pictures, check them out below;
Fingerprint Sensor
Fingerprint sensors have made unlocking phones that much easier, the Spark 5 sensor is located at the back of the phone. 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. It’s pretty fast and nifty.
Sound
The sound on the Spark 5 is actually not that bad and it is something that one can work with. The mono speaker is conveniently located at the bottom so you can listen to your music whichever way you place the phone.
Performance
The phone comes with a 2GB RAM, 32GB internal storage and is powered by an MediaTek Helio A22 Processor, a quad core 2.0 GHz Cortex-A53 CPU. It also comes with a Android 10 Pie OS. The phone handles normal day to day activities without any issues, however, due to its small RAM, there is some lag when multitasking or when playing games. If you are a heavy user, this phone is definitely not for you but for regular day to day use, it works just fine.
Storage
The phone comes with 32 GB internal storage which can be expanded using a Micro SD to up to 256 GB. Having gotten used to phones with a bigger internal storage, I found the 32GB to be inadequate but the beauty is that one can always use a SD card to expand the memory.
Conclusion
For what many would consider as a budget smartphone, the Tecno Spark 5 handles quite well. I would definitely recommend purchase if one is not a heavy user and on a budget. Also, the price point of Ksh. 13,999 is quite affordable.