The Tecno Spark series smartphones are made as ‘budget all round phones’. They usually have good cameras, can handle gaming and have good battery life. What I have here is the Tecno Spark 10 Pro smartphone and with 256GB of internal storage and 8GB RAM which is expandable up to 16GB, I’m already impressed. You can also watch this review in my video below.
By the way I recorded the voice over in the video above on the Spark 10 Pro. So how does it measure up to my other expectations? Let’s find out. The cost of this specific phone is KES 22,800 and like always, Tecno is always generous with their accessories.
The phone comes with a transparent flexible phone case, 18 Watt charger, USB Type-A to Type-C cable, earphones, SIM Ejector tool and a pre-applied screen protector.
Design
I have the Pearl white version of the Spark 10 Pro but it also comes in Starry Black which is KES 200 more than the Pearl white version. The back cover is made of a hard wearing starry glass which is very smooth and does not retain fingerprint smudges. The phone can be easily held with one hand and I like the short radius corners on the phone.
The camera bump stands out from the overall design of the phone. The dual flash is hidden in plain view and all the 3 rings are very thin and close to the body. The transparent phone case grips the phone very well. It’s slightly thicker than the protruding camera bump so it will prevent scratches and dirt on the lenses. With the phone case the phone weighs 226 grams and 208 grams without it.
The power and volume buttons are located on the right and at the bottom it has the headphone jack, microphone, USB C port and the speaker outlet. The speaker output is loud enough and has very nice mids and highs. For some better bass you’re better of using the headset provided. The long SIM Tray just below the display can hold 2 Nano SIM cards and an SD card is located on the left.
On the right are the volume rockers and below that is the power button which doubles up as the fingerprint scanner. It’s very fast.
Display
At the front is the big 6.8 Inch/172.7mm Full HD+ LCD display. It’s very bright even in direct sunshine. This display is perfect for consuming video content from YouTube, Netflix and others as well as gaming.
It can display animations smoothly thanks to the 90Hz refresh rate. To prolong battery life, it’s recommended to use the Auto switch refresh rate because not all apps can utilize 90Hz capabilities. The Spark 10 Pro has some special function features and here are 2 of my favourite functions. First is the lightning multi window that can enable me to make applications float in the foreground.
This enables me to use two applications at the same time as well as listen to YouTube videos while in the background. The next feature is the much-upgraded screen recorder which I can access easily from the smart panel by swiping from either edge of the display. The screen recorder has a lot more settings that include choosing whether to record the device or microphone sound or both. I no longer need third party apps for this. I can even choose to show taps and the max quality is 1080p.Here is a sample gaming clip I recorded from the Spark 10 pro using this feature as we get into the performance.
Performance
The Spark 10 Pro is powered by the MediaTek Helio G88 gaming octa-core processor with a Mali-G52 MC2 GPU. The official RAM is 8GB which can be extended up to 16GB with RAM expansion. This of course will use a portion of the 256GB of internal storage.
Playing simple games is just like watching movies on this device. It can definitely handle these small games that we use to kill time with. The big full HD+ display comes in handy here.
The expanded RAM is used to run background apps thus improving the speed of frequently used apps. That’s why switching between apps is very fast and you will always get your project, game or video exactly where you left off.
The phone has a gyroscope and game rotation sensor to help with your first person player games. It can handle fairly large games from reducing the loading time to even enhancing the graphics. I didn’t experience any overheating while playing games.
What about the Operating System? The Spark 10 Pro uses HiOS version 12.6.0 which is based on Android 13 operating system. With the recent software update, it now has the April 2023 security patch.
Camera
Let’s now take a look at the camera performance. Again, the best way to experience this camera review is by watching the embedded review video above.
The Spark 10 Pro has a dual rear camera set up at the back. The main lens is 50MP lens followed AI lens. At the front is a 32MP dot in display lens with dual LED Flash.
The rear camera produces very colorful photos. There is some colour saturation but overall the photos are nice. But this colour saturation is not available in video mode. Even with HDR turned ON, I could not get the photos and videos to look the same. The maximum video recording quality is 1440p at 30 frames per second for both the front and rear cameras.
To zoom in and get good details on any photo, have the 50MP option selected. The outcome will be big size and detailed photos. You can zoom in and get very good details. The front camera also takes very nice selfies and videos as well.
This phone doesn’t have any video stabilization. In low light conditions it is better to use the super night feature. For example, here is a normal photo and one taken using Super night.
Battery & Charging
The 5000mAh battery is definitely a 2 day battery. It’s perfect some social media, watching movies and occasional gaming. Charging while playing games doesn’t overheat the phone. You will just feel a slight warmth.
What about charging? How long does the 18-watt Flash charger take to fill the battery? Well, from a flat battery I got 24% in 20 minutes, 36% in half an hour and full battery capacity in1 hour and 44 minutes. I’m glad it didn’t cross the 2 hour mark. This is the type of phone you can get a decent battery top up in like 20 minutes.
Here is the full battery charging experiment.
And here are my results.
- 1 Minute – 3%
- 6 Minutes – 7%
- 10 Minutes – 12%
- 20 Minutes – 24%
- 30 Minutes – 36%
- 41 Minutes – 47%
- 50 Minutes – 58%
- 1 Hour – 69%
- 1 Hour 20 Minutes – 90%
- 1 Hour 40 Minutes – 99%
- 1 Hour 44 Minutes – 100%
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Tecno Spark 10 Pro is a budget all round smartphone with good performance and also takes very nice photos. What about a special version? Are we going to get a special version of this phone like we got the BMW version of the Spark 9 Pro last year? We’ll just have to wait and see.