i phone 5s camera and Tecno phantom camera

I have lived with the TECNO Phantom A for over a week now, using it from day to day in a variety of scenarios. A lot of people have been on my neck to publish this review. I appreciate your
apprehension, but if my review must be true, I
had to spend time with my devices. Thanks for
bearing. Finally, it is here. Enjoy.
If you are not into detailed techie things and just
want a summary from me, the Phantom A is a
superb piece of work from TECNO. From
hardware to software, this Android smartphone
delivers and it is very hard for me to find
something bad to say about it. Consider that you
are being asked to pay just N35,000 for this, and
in my opinion, it is a steal. You’ve been wanting to buy one? Go get it!

Hardware

As have mentioned earlier, what strikes you first
about the Phantom are its appearance and feel.
Both reflect quality and attention. The Phantom
looks good and feels sturdy. The body is indeed
super slim and nice at only 9.1mm thickness. The
5-inch display means that you have enjoyable
web browsing, video watching and the like. The
Phantom has an acceptable weight. I was
expecting it to be heavy, considering bits size, but
I am surprised that TECNO were able to keep it at an acceptable weight

Performance

Looking and feeling good are two things, how
does it perform in everyday scenarios is the
question that most people have on their lips. If I
can answer it simply: the Phantom performs as
you would expect any Android smartphone in its
class to. It performs well. With a 1GHz dual-core
processor and 1GB of RAM, this phone is quite
capable and stable. There is a graphics GPU to
handle graphics intensive apps like games, and
the entire combination works fine.
The Phantom is powered by Android 4.1 Jelly
Bean. Apps run nicely. All updates are executed
without issues.

Telephony & Internet

Mobile internet works as advertised – and being a dualSIM phone, one of the SIMs can have 3G
enabled and even pegged on it. To keep power
drain down, the other must stay on 2G. Both lines
are active and you can place and receive calls on
both conveniently.

Storage

There is an internal storage of 1GB, so there is
enough space to install your apps if you are into
lots of apps. There is also a microSD card slot that
supports up to 32GB cards. The Phantom gives
you the option to select either the SD card or the
phone storage as your default storage area.

Multimedia

There is a video player bundled and my AVI files
were played back without issues. Audio playback
is nice too, and loud, so music playback is
enjoyable on the Phantom. There is a built-in
equaliser (named Sound Effects), so you can
tweak output a bit. FM Radio is in there as well.

Camera

The Phantom A has an 8 megapixel camera with
LED flash. It works well and produces decent
quality images. Colours are a bit washed, and it
does not produce details close to that of the best
8 megapixel cameraphones, but it is decent. In
this price range, it really is a good camera.

Battery Life

Consistently, the Phantom A saw me through a
day’s use if I didn’t put it to extreme use. Turn on
the WiFi hotspot, for example, and the battery will drain out in a few hours, but that holds for all other smartphones. Stay browsing and tweeting intensively and power will drain fast, but for regular use – in my own case, we are looking at two active SIMs, two email accounts always connected, Facebook, Twitter, WordPress admin, and a smattering of Google+ and web browsing, the Phantom A has been very adequate for my daily grind.

Conclusions

If you have a mid-range budget but want a big
screen and good performance, the TECNO
Phantom A is a steal. In its class, this is as close to perfection as things get. TECNO has made a big splash with this one.

My Rating: 9.5/10