Few days ago, the African mobile community was awash with news of Tecno’s brand new and “awesome” flagship device which launched in Nigeria and Kenya over the weekend. When we got wind of the Tecno Phantom 5 device, firstly it was nice to see that Tecno has finally “tushed up” or as many Nigerian bloggers called it, gone premium.
looked moderate and had promising specs to its name and unlike some Tecno phones we’ve seen in the past, doesn’t come with an “outdated” OS; in fact, the smartphone is allegedly running on the latest version of Android OS — Android version 5.1 Lollipop.
However, on seeing the price tag associated with the device –like many Nigerians did — yours sincerely got a little bit of worried: Worried that Tecno might not be able to sell much of these devices owing to its “huge” price tag (70,000 naira (about $350)) and at the same time worried that a whole shitload of these might be sold. If the product managed to sell a lot and the phone turns out to be great, that’s great; but if it turns out to a nightmare like the half-baked, lagging and tearing products Tecno used to sell, you can imagine the numerous population of cheated customers that will run to our comment sections to lay their complaints (like say we be Tecno customer care). So, the big ticker here is, “Is Tecno Phantom 5” really good?
Tecno Phantom 5 key specs
- 5.5″ IPS touchscreen display
- 1080p resolution, 401 PPI
- Metal unibody with 6.8 mm thickness
- 32GB of non expandable storage
- 1.5GHz octa-core 64-bit CPU
- MediaTek MT6753 chipset
- Mali-T760 MP4 graphics processor
- 3GB of RAM
- 13-megapixel rear camera with dual LED flash
- 8-megapixel front-facing camera
- 3,000mAh battery
Is Tecno Phantom 5 good?
We wouldn’t know because we haven’t touched the device *insert huge sigh of relief here* since the product is not on sale at the time of writing this piece. Nonetheless, our local bloggers should stop feeding us with blasphemy. Where did they find the guts to use sensitive phrases like “awesome”, “looks premium”, “feels great”, “excellent”, “best smartphone”, “it does everything” and other unimaginable words to describe a device you have never seen or felt?
As at press time, the blurry picture above is the only official press shot of Tecno Phantom 5 we could lay our hands on after a thorough searching. We wonder where our copy and paste bloggers are getting their heartfelt emotions. But then, we also wonder if Tecno is still running the pay per post campaign which they once used to try to blackmail us into their good side after
years
So, whether these “bloggers” are paid goons or they wrote with their common sense is a question for another day. For now, let’s take a look at how the Phantom 5 ranks among its purported Chinese contemporaries.
Tecno Phantom 5 vs Xiaomi Redmi Note 2
