After nearly two years of waiting, Tecno Mobile launched the Phantom 9 that happens to be its flagship smartphone. The reason for the delay as told to PC Tech Magazine, is that the company was taking its time to see that the phone comes with the latest smartphone trends, and indeed it does.
It is much better than its predecessor, and in this quick review, we can scale it to 6/10 which is not bad for the start. The Phantom 9 promises more and can go to up to 8.5/10 scale rating in our opinion — which we shall basically see in our full review.
After the launch, we received one of the handsets which comes in Lapland Aurora color at a price of UGX919,000. The price is impressive and fair enough considering the Phantom 8 cost UGX1.3M.
Launched under the theme “Unleash Your Vision”, the phone’s key selling features are, the In-Display Fingerprint Mount, AMOLED Display, Huge Storage, and Triple Camera. These happen to be the first features on any Tecno smartphone this considering that its a flagship handset.
Not that the Phantom 9 is the third installment in Tecno’s Phantom 9 series.
Unboxing: What is Inside The Box
The Phone comes in a grey-color boxing. We recommend to inspect that the box’s seal isn’t broken if not in your presence.
Opening the box, on top is a small boxing/envelope that holds the sim-injector pin, user guides & manuals, warranty card and the rubber phone casing. Under neath is the 6.4-Inch Tecno Phantom 9, the charging brick, microUSB cable, and a pair of 3.5mm audio earphones.
That is all the set up. The setup is pretty organized and well set by Tecno.
Quick Review
To run through a quick feature and specifications of the phone, it supports Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by) as a major case. The sim slot is located at the left-side panel of the phone which also houses a microSD card of up to 1TB, first of its kind on any Tecno smartphone.
It has a 6.4-Inch AMOLED FHD+ display with a screen resolution and aspect ratio of 1080 x 2340 pixels and 19.5:9 respectively. The display is protected with a Corning Gorilla Glass 3.
The phone runs of Android 9.0 (Pie) topped with a hiOS v5.0.0. This is paired with Mediatek MT6765 Helio P35 SoC, Octa-core Processor, PowerVR GE8320, 6GB RAM, and an internal storage of 128GB which is expandable up to 1TB.
In terms of image and video, it comes with 32MP front camera with an aperture of f/2. The triple rear camera has 16MP f/1.8 primary + 8MP f/2.4 ultrawide + 2MP f/2.8 deep sensors. Both cameras front and rear shoot videos of up to 1080p at 30fps (Frames Per Second).
Connectivity-wise; the Phantom 9 supports, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth v5.0, 3.5mm audio jack, and microUSB 2.0.
First Impressions of the Tecno Phantom 9
- The price UGX919,000 is fair enough for premium phone it is.
- The AMOLED display is a huge improvement from the IPS LCD we saw with the Tecno Phantom 8.
- The In-Display Fingerprint Mount, shows that the company is keeping up with the trend.
- The internal storage (128GB) is good enough even without the expanding with the microSD card which it supports up to 1TB the first of its kind, and impressive in the long run.
We are disappointed that the Phantom 9
- Still using a standard microUSB 2.0.
- No notification LED.
- Battery capacity 3,500mAh still kept the same as its predecessor.
