TECNO Phantom 6 and Phantom 6 Plus has finally arrived after a suspense filled digital build up tagged Beauty and the Beast which BellaRose tagged cheesy in one of her piece. The campaign was a success as it got a lot of people talking and expecting what the Phantom 6 will offer, apparently the expectations got a bit lit when Nigerians who thought the device will launch in Lagos Nigeria as we have witnessed other flagship launch, got the news that the launch event will take place in Dubai.
Anyway that was a sly from TECNO because Nigeria seem to be the biggest market but we are not angry. So because the Phantom 6 is a “follow up” on the Phantom 5 which I liked, I was anxious to lay my hands on it.
PS: If you want to buy the Phantom 6 and you are not ordering online, please go to the phone store with a ‘Ghana Must Go’ bag in order to conveniently carry your phone without stress.
Oh Yes!! I just said that – it is actually an hyperbolic rhetoric to express the size of the phone box. The first statement that came out of my mouth when I first saw the pack was “Why is it so big?”, looks more like a shoe box if not bigger.
TECNO Phantom 6 is a beautifully crafted flagship for 2016, obviously a beauty at first glance, no doubt it looks premium with an impressive design crafted with a mix of plastic, metal and glass. A lot of attention has been given to aesthetics this time around, its sleek and so slim as you would like your phone to be, hence the name ‘Beauty’.
All navigation keys are on-screen, volume rocker and power button are placed at the right and can be easily reached using one finger. It is dual SIM enabled, with a SIM slot for two sim cards on the RHS and a slot for microSD card for memory expansion.
The phone is blessed with two cameras at the back, TECNO calls it “refocus dual camera”. I personally do not like camera compartment, while the back of the phone is flat, the camera compartment bumps out causing frequent scratches on the glass covering. You may have to stick with the smart cover to prevent such scratches.
Display of the Phantom 6 is bright and sharp, all thanks to the AMOLED technology. The 5.5-inch display is vivid for people who love to watch movies on their phone, it is also bright enough to use in the under the sun without any stress.
Camera
This is one of my favourite part of a smartphone, not because I love to take pictures like BellaRoast BellaRose and some other persons reading this but because almost every smartphone manufacturer boast of how wonderful their cameras are and how these cameras can possibly take pictures almost better than a professional Cannon camera. Well, let’s simply say I want to always burst their bubble.
Although I hate to burst TECNO’s bubble because I just think they put the camera on the Camon C9 and dumped it on the Phantom 6. There really seem to be no difference at all, its pegged at 13MP and there is still no camera settings for you to make adjustments such as light, image size and other simple settings obtainable on camera phones. The interface just looks basic and you are only restricted to the default regulars like HDR, guidelines, gesture shots.
This time around, there are two cameras at the back, a 13MP autofocus and a 5MP refocus camera. Front camera sits at 8MP with a flash to take selfies at night.
So we decided to use the front flash and below is what we got:
Social pundits will like the square feature of the camera which saves you the stress of editing pictures into the required square size acceptable on some social platforms like BBM, Instagram. You just select the square feature, hit the camera button and you are good to go.
So you may want to ask why does the Phantom 6 have two cameras? The second 5MP camera is used to refocus on subjects in pictures. In fact When taking pictures in normal mode, only one of the cameras work, the two cameras only work when you select the “refocus” option.
Refocus actually gives you the freedom to choose and select different part of the picture to focus on but there is a spoiler, refocus doesn’t work under low light.
Watch the video review to see how the refocus feature works.
Battery is capacity is not impressive
Maybe this is the gloomy feature on the device, I questioned the 2,700mAh capacity of the battery after checking through the specs sheet of the device. Maybe I should refresh your memory by telling you that the Phantom 5 had 3,000mAh battery capacity.
Screen is an Amoled display which obviously drains battery as long as you have more screen-on time but somehow users can manage the power by using dark coloured wall papers and themes to reduce excessive power usage by the screen.
Heavy users should get themselves a power bank, you are only sure of an average 6 hours or less if you indulge in continuous chat, calls, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, videos and those social stuff.
Apparently all is not so bad, at least there is something to console users, something I call a relief. The phone charges really fast and I mean really fast when you use its charger. TECNO called this Light Speed charge.
From a test I did here, a five minutes charge moved the battery meter from 9% to 14% and then after exactly one hour, we got a reading of 86%.
With this, you may just be rest assured that a few minutes of charge will get you going. Power saving mode also works very well to keep you up till you can get to hug a wall.
Software, storage and performance
It runs on Android Mashmallow with an overlay of TECNO’s HIOS interface. The HIOS looks revamped and so nice, better than what was debut on the Boom J8. Somehow, TECNO seem to customize the HIOS for different devices.
Processor is a MediaTek octacore processor clocked at 2GHz, RAM size is an impressive 3GB while internal memory is 32GB, Just enough space for your multimedia files. There is also an option to jack up the memory with an external SD card so if you think 32GB memory is just too small for you, you can “EPP” yourself by inserting a memory card for that extra space you desire.
Switching between apps on the phone doesn’t drag, everything runs smooth even when you have a number of apps open at the same time. However we will still check this out over a period of time.
3D graphics games such as Asphalt 8 Airborne runs smoothly without any lag or drag, the game never crashed at any point.
Others accompanying HiOS features you will find include Micro Intelligence, an array of gestures used to perform certain activity on the phone. They include music gesture which allows you skip tracks, pause or play music on the Boom player while the screen is off. Screenshot can also be taken by swiping down the top of the screen with three fingers.
Eyeprint which serves as a security features is also present, I bet you it still doesn’t work well under low light just as we expressed during the review of the Camon C9.
Watch the video review of the Phantom 6 here
There you have it, my hands on experience with the TECNO Phantom 6, i am presently using the Phantom 6+ and be sure that i will drop the review in the coming days.