Elegance, class, style. These words best describe the new Tecno Phantom 6.
Tecno Phantom 6 and Tecno Phantom 6 Plus are Tecno’s latest flagship, which redefine the brand's premium in terms of features and even price - factors that have raised eyebrows.
I have had this phone for close to two weeks and my verdict is that it is one of the best mid-range devices brought into the Kenyan market yet.
Design
At 6.15mm, the phone is one of the slimmest smartphones in the Kenyan market.
The Tecno Phantom 6 is one of the slimmest smartphones currently in the Kenyan market. /COURTESY
The phone has a full metal body and an aluminum frame together with a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 screen, which makes the Phantom 6 extremely resistant to physical damage.
The back cover of the phone bears the dual rear cameras. At the top of the phone you find an earphone jack, while a USB type-C port and speakers are placed at the bottom of the phone.
The screen itself is a 5.5″ full-HD AMOLED display, which is great to use and also great in conserving battery power. It comes in two colors, Champagne Gold and Anthracite Gray.
There’s 32GB internal storage and a slot for microSD card of up to 128G, and the device also supports USB-on-the-go.
Software and performance
The device runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, with the latest version of Tecno’s HiOS Phantom 1.1.0.
With 3GB of RAM for its MTK Helio P10 CPU, you would hardly ever find this device dragging. Its CPU clocks at 2GHz and a 64-bit processor.
The Phantom 6 uses the new USB Type-C port. Tecno included a Type-C adaptor in the sales box, which you can use with other USB types too.
The eyeprint scanner is the Phantom 6’s extra layer of security, but it still seems shaky. It could take 3 seconds to verify at times, and other times take almost 8 seconds of staring before it does.
Nevertheless, the Phantom 6 is dual SIM with good call clarity. As is custom with Tecno, the Phantom 6 lets you peg network to 2G, 3G, 4G, or auto, so that it switches networks based on signal availability and strength.
Music lover too have not been left out of this. Tecno’s built-in Boom Player lets you search for, stream and download music by African artistes. It also notifies you of new music when they are released. The Phantom 6’s loudspeaker is awesome for your sound, music quality.
"At the top of Tecno's Phantom 6 you find an earphone jack, while a USB type-C port and speakers are placed at the bottom of the phone." /COURTESY
Camera
The Phantom 5 has dual rear cameras comprising of a 13 megapixel auto focus camera, and a 5 megapixel fixed focus camera. There is also a dual tone, dual LED flash to help with low-light situations.
You may ask: why the dual camera? This setup makes it possible to add a 'Bokeh' effect to pictures taken in Refocus mode. How it works is that once you take a photo in that mode, you can edit it to focus on a section of the photo and blur out everything else.
Battery
The Phantom 6 spots a 2,770 mAh battery. Combined with the power saving features in it, it will serve you for a full day if you are among those who use their phones regularly. But it will require you to recharge sometime in the day so as to juice it a little bit.
The Ultra Power Savings (UPS) mode in the device is amazing and can easily give you extra hours of battery life if you activate it when you are running out of power or when you are not using the phone.