TECNO Spark 5 Review: 5 Cameras on a Budget!

Chinese mobile phone manufacturer, Tecno Mobile has finally announced the long-awaited TECNO Spark 5 – An amazing budget smartphone.

The smartphone was announced on the 4th of May 2020, and I’ve spent a decent amount of time testing out the Tecno Spark 5. Thus, below are all my findings on the budget smartphone.

Below is a video of the Tecno Spark 5 Unboxing and review; that’s if you prefer a video. The video is an in-depth review, covering the performance, battery, camera and all there is to know about the Spark 5. 

It’s time to find out if this device is a worthy successor to last year’s Tecno Spark 4, and more so, after going through this review, you will be able to decide if the Spark 5 was meant for you.

Unboxing

The Tecno Spark 5 has very nice packaging. First, you find the warranty card, then you notice the phone case which TECNO usually incorporates in their packaging. Moving on from that, you will find an earpiece and then a micro USB 2.0 cable alongside a power break which you will use to connect the USB for powering your device. Finally, you will find the SIM eject tool.

Design and Body Build

The TECNO Spark 5 maintains a nice look. The back of the device has a plastic finish with the nice-looking gradient, you would also find the fingerprint sensor above the center of the device. Finally, you will find one of the selling points of the smartphone which is the quad-camera setup at the upper left side of the device.

Flipping over to the front section of this device, we have a huge 6.6 inches IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display – It’s a dot in-display screen. The colours of the screen are quite amazing and I enjoyed it will watching videos as well as playing games.

On the right side of the device, you find the up and down volume buttons and as usual the power button below the volume button. Turning to the left side of the Spark 5, dual Nano-SIM slot with a room to also contain a Micro SDCard.

The top of the TECNO Spark 5 contains nothing but the bottom of the device contains a 3.55mm jack, a microphone, and a micro USB.

Display

The display of the TECNO Spark 5 is super amazing when the price at which it is sold is put into consideration. For those who love jumbo-sized displays, you are presented with a huge 6.6 inches IPS LCD display, which is pretty much vibrant and gets the job done.

The display features 720 x 1600 pixels, with about 83.7% screen-to-body ratio, a 20:9 aspect ratio and approximately 266 PPI density. 

Performance and Specs

When it comes down to the internals, you have a slight upgrade from the last years TECNO Spark 4. The TECNO Spark 5 features HIOS 6.1 on top of Android 10 which comes with lots of optimization when it comes to software, with minute features such as the Dark Mode. Android 10 also gives you a boost when it comes to performance.

Powering this machine is a Mediatek MT6761 Helio A22 (12 nm) chipset which is clocked at 2.0 GHz. On the GPU side of things, you get the PowerVR GE8320, GPU.

When it comes to storage, the TECNO Spark 5 packs a 32GB internal storage and a 2GB RAM which I think is pretty fair considering the price tag at which this device is sold. You shouldn’t expect the fastest and best-performing device with the specs laid out.

Battery

The Spark 5 features an upgrade in the battery section. Unlike the 4000mAh battery which the last years’ Spark 4 came along with, the Spark 5 features a whopping 5000mAh battery.

You get over a day of use from this device on a single charge and this is something most people in this region definitely love.

Camera

The camera of the TECNO Spark 5 is one of the selling points of this device. It arrives with a total number of five cameras.

At the back of the Spark 5 lies the much talked about Quad camera setup which features a 13-MegaPixel, f/1.8, PDAF (main camera), followed by a 2-MegaPixel (macro lens), then 2-MegaPixel (depth-sensing lens), and finally the QVGA Lens.

The camera setup at the back also contains a powerful flash that aids in taking bright pictures even under poor lit conditions. Below are some of the photos taken with this camera.

The cut-out notch in front of the TECNO Spark 5 houses the single 8 MP, f/2.0, (wide) selfie camera. There’s a front flash that has been provided to help produce bright selfie images even when they are taken in low light conditions. The camera is quite decent, although, you occasionally would get a little washed out photos if photos are taken in a hurry. This is not to say you get bad photos, but that the photos from on here, sometimes, need a little input from the user (such as balancing for exposure) to capture the perfect shot.

Price

Pricing is a factor that determines the demand of a device and the TECNO Spark 5 comes decently priced. The 32 GB internal storage and 2GB RAM Variant is sold for $142 which is approximately N55,000 for Nigerians, 13,399 KSh for those in Kenya and 719 Ghana Cedi.

Verdict and Conclusion

Generally, the design and build you get from the TECNO Spark 5 is one point and there’s nothing really to complain about it. As far as price go, it basically is about what you’d get for around the price point, and more so, a worthy device for what it’s worth.

Should you get it? Definitely, if your needs are not beyond the basic needs on a smartphone, but if you’d want a top-performing and multi-tasking device, we’d recommend you up your budget and get a higher specced device.

What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear them in the comment section below.