Tecno Phantom Z Hands-On Review

It took a while but we finally got the review copy of the Tecno Phantom Z, a device that has actually changed the way a lot of us perceive Tecno Mobile as a company. Till date, Tecno Mobile has produced nothing like the Tecno Phantom Z (Tecno A7), even the last flagship product can’t be compared to this awesome device. I’ve been using this device for almost a week now and I’m impressed; I’m highly  impressed. The performance is as good as advertised.
The first thing that strikes you is the way the phablet feels when held. It has that premium look and feel anyone would love.

What’s Inside the Box

Tecno Phantom Z comes packed in a cream case housing the device itself, a stylish earpiece, a USB cable and a charger. It also comes with a free 5200mAh power bank and a smooth textured, nicely designed smart cover for protection.

However, you can only get the free power bank and smart cover for a limited time. It may or may not come with your own purchase.

Quick Specifications

Before diving into the full review, let’s take a quick look at the most important specifications.

• Display: 5.2-inch AMOLED display, Gorilla Glass
• Screen Resolution: 1920 × 1080 pixels (424 PPI),
• Dimension: 71.9 x 144.5 x 7.8 mm
• Memory: 32GB internal
• Camera: 16MP(rear), 8MP (front)
• SIM type: Dual SIM [Micro-SIM]
• Network data: GPRS/EDGE/3G/3.75G
• OS: Android 4.4.2 Kitkat
• Chipset: MediaTek MT6592
• CPU: Octa-core 2.0 GHz Cortex-A7
• GPU: Mali 450-MP4
• RAM: 2GB
• Battery: 3030 mAh

We already have the full specifications here.

Physical Appearance

With a thickness of just 7.8mm, Tecno Phantom Z is a slim phone with a solid build. It’s 0.3mm thinner than Samsung Galaxy S5, has a plastic body and features a 5.2-inch screen. The back cover is made of made of leather grain textured plastic of good quality.

The power button is on the right side and on the left, there’s the SIM tray and the volume controls. Tecno Phantom Z is sealed with no removable cover and there’s absolutely no SD card slot.

There’s a softkey below the screen bordered with a white LED; the Home, Back and Menu softkeys are positioned on-screen. There’s a rear camera with dual flash and another front facing camera at the top-right corner with the flash placed beside the earpiece. The MicroUSB port is at the bottom with the 3.5mm audio jack at the top.
The overall design is beautiful and it’s obvious quite a lot of effort has been put into it. The phone feels light and at the same time feels solid to hold. The 5.2-inch screen is a great choice for people who want something between a 5.5″ phablet and a 4.7″ smartphone.

Display

A 5.2 inch Super Amoled display with a resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels is expected to be crystal clear. Tecno Phantom Z has a pixel density of 424 ppi and this makes the display even better with objects appearing like they should and the contrast well defined.
The brilliant display is protected with Gorilla Glass that’s scratch resistant with normal use.

Performance

Tecno Phantom Z boasts of a 2.0GHz Octacore processor (MediaTek MT6592 chipset)  and this makes the phone super fast and efficient. It has a 2GB random access memory. Multi-tasking works fine and during use, applications running in the background are hardly force killed due to memory issues.

It outperformed HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4 with a very huge margin during Antutu benchmark as seen in the image above.

Battery

One of the areas Tecno really focused on was the battery. With data turned off, I was still left with about 60% battery after two solid days. The 3030mAh battery could last for a whole day with normal use (internet, calls, gaming).
This phablet has a pretty good battery (non-removable) that you shouldn’t think of replacing anytime soon. The free power bank is actually a plus but unlike the previous models, you may not need it very often if you’re not a heavy user.
Just like any other phone, the battery drains faster on 3G when compared to accessing the internet all day through WiFi.

Operating System, UI and Pre-installed Apps

Tecno Phantom Z runs Android 4.4 with a system wide dark feel. The default launcher was enough and I haven’t seen the need to replace it with Nova Launcher like I normally do.
It comes bundled with SwiftKeys set as the default keyboard. As seen on the Tecno R7, you can update the device over the air.

An upgrade was pushed to the phone within the first week of use and I do hope to see an Android 5.0 Lollipop update anytime soon.
There are a bunch of pre-installed apps that include Flashare, Facebook, BBM and others.

Memory

Tecno A7 has a memory capacity of 32GB. There’s no SD card slot and a number of people may not be comfortable with this but for most users, it won’t really be an issue. 32GB is a quite a lot of space but only about 17GB is available to the user. The OS and apps use the rest.

Connectivity

It’s a dual-SIM device and has a slot for two micro-SIM cards on the left side. Both SIMs work simutlaneously as expected. It supports GPRS, EDGE and 3.75G. The device is WiFi enabled and can be used as a WiFi hotspot.
Unfortunately, the device isn’t NFC enabled.

Camera

The 16MP rear camera captures clear pictures under different lighting conditions. It has a dual flash that can be a bit too bright at times, especially when the object is up close. However, this can always be adjusted in the robust camera settings.
The 8MP front facing camera also has a LED flash for taking selfies even in the dark.
Based on the lighting condition, the settings can always be fine-tuned to create good looking photographs. There are filters you can select from and I’m not sure there’s need to a 3rd party camera application. The picture quality is quite okay.

Likes & Dislikes

If there’s one thing I’m not really comfortable with, it’s the softkey LED light that appears to stay on at times. Besides that, the performance is super, the battery is strong enough for an octacore device and the design is lovely.
Tecno Phantom Z is a great device to own and use.

Tecno Phantom Z Price in Nigeria

Tecno Phantom Z is available in retails stores and presently, it’s being sold for 53,700 naira on Konga. As you’re aware, the price is subject to change.