TECNO Spark 3 Review: An Impressive Budget Mid-range Smartphone
After two-weeks of intense usage with the TECNO Spark 3, we finally have our say on it. Launched earlier this month, it is worth crediting TECNO Mobile for putting much efforts, innovation, and technology to developing their smartphone handsets.
Basing on the TECNO Spark 3, we have to say it has a premium look much like any high-end smartphone considering it being a mid-range handset. From the feel, touch, design, weigh and affordable puts the TECNO Spark 3 on a recommendation list.
TECNO is looking at the latest smartphone trends that they try to adopt their handsets. For instance, battery and camera performance, design and display, mobile software among others.
The TECNO Spark 3 has a lot of new developments compared to its predecessor. The one reason why we would recommend you buy the phone. The phone comes with developments in design, battery life, AI technology integration, camera capabilities, software and storage upgrade. We applaud TECNO Mobile for this as we continue to believe that the company can do more than this.
After the launch on May 6th at the Sheraton Hotel, PC Tech Magazine received a Midnight Black TECNO Spark 3. However, the phone comes available in three other color options; Champagne Gold, Bordeaux Red and Aqua Blue.
Design, Build, and Display
The Spark 3 is designed for class and elegance — also as a light weight carrier. It is designed with a 3.5mm audio jack on top and a microUSB port at the bottom. The volume & power buttons appear on the right while the sim and mircoSD cards are placed underneath the back hood.
On the back appears a dual cameras placed vertical, fingerprint mount sensor at the top-centre and a mono speaker at the bottom right.
The display perspective, the Spark 3 has a 6.2-Inch HD+ Super FULLVIEW and the color is vibrant with a screen resolution of 1500 x 720 pexels, The display is notched housing the 8MP camera, ear piece and the LED flash.
The Spark 3 is built with poly-carbonate plastic with a granite-like finish seen at the back. It also has an built-in non-removable 3,500mAh battery, built-in filters in its AI Bright Camera that beautify the photos/videos even in low light setting. Finally, the Spark 3 has a built-in MTK6761 processor and a Quad-Core, 2.0GHz chipset. In summary, the built quality is very good.
In summary, from the feel and look, you wouldn’t be able to tell it’s a mid-range smartphone.
Performance, Battery and Storage
The Spark 3 general performance is fine — on a scale of 10, we rate it at 7/10. The performance worked fine on video, and light-weight games including some 3D games. We couldn’t run heavy duty games considering that it doesn’t run on a high-end chip and its RAM placed at 2GB. A high -end could take up to 2GB of space and if ran it could consume nearly half of the processor’s performance. Therefore, the phone is best to run light-weight games and apps for best performance — which it did.
The Spark 3 comes with a MTK6761 processor, Quad-Core, 2.0GHz chipset and 2GB RAM. As we mentioned, best to run light-weight applications that can run smoothly even at multitasking.
The storage as we mentioned before is 16GB, but there’s an option to expanding it with a microSD card of up to 128GB.
The battery is 3,500mAh same as its predecessor. We extensively used the battery on a single charge for two and half days. This counts leaving background applications running as well throughout day/night.
The ability for the battery to run for more than 2 days on a single charge is because of the in-built ‘battery lab’ as termed by TECNO. It comes with an AI-enable smart power saving mode. It is able to optimize your battery life by restricting how much power you running apps are consuming. At 10% on the third day, all apps were optimize buying us more time to charge the phone.
Software
The TECNO Spark 3 runs on Android 9 Pie. For a mid-range phone to have the newest mobile OS is impressive. The OS is topped on with Tecno’s HiOS v5.0 UI which looks really clean with the Android 9 and makes the apps work swift. Tecno really cleaned up the software as compared to most of the tecno phones we’ve reviewed.
Camera Performance
While the best things come last, we have to say the cameras on the Spark 3 are good. The spark 3 comes with an 8MP front-facing camera and a dual rear camera with 13MP+5MP sensors. The photos taken with the spark 3 cameras are good but don’t appear sharp and crisp. The photos taken are best for social media and can’t be recommended for more than that. We however, point out that the photos keep the colors well balanced.
In conclusion;
We truly applaud TECNO Mobile on the revamp of the Spark 2 and we are so impressed with the outcome of the phone. The Spark 3 has the premium finish and can’t be told it is an mid-range smartphone. From the feel, touch, look, the TECNO Spark 3 is truly a classy and elegant smartphone.
The UGX429,000 is worth the pay.
