Tecno Spark 10 Pro for Review

The doorbell rang and a courier delivered two Tecno Spark 10 Pro phones to the office – one in Starry Black and one in Pearl White. This will be the version sold in South America, so keep in mind that the retail package may be different in other regions.

Speaking of the packaging, it’s a relatively small box, but it packs more stuff than you’ll find from traditional manufacturers. We’ll put the phone aside for a while (the phone has a pre-installed plastic screen protector, by the way). There is a transparent silicone shell, a charger, a USB A to C cable, a SIM ejector and – surprise! – a wired headset.

The headphones are more than a little like Apple’s EarPods, except for the 3.5mm jack at the end – the Spark 10 Pro has a wired headphone jack, which is rare these days.

The phone itself also looks like Apple, at least from the back. Unlike iPhones, however, the Squircle camera island sits flush on the back, it just has a different surface finish. Then there are three circular modules – two cameras and a dual LED flash – protruding from the back. There is also a depth sensor just above the flash.

Looking at the back side, note that it is made of glass, a first for the Spark range. Its matte finish gives the phone a more premium feel. Official images of both colorways show a distinct speckled pattern, though it’s barely noticeable in person.

The Starry Black phone is a deep inky blue, while the Pearl White changes hues slightly as light catches it from different angles. It’s a subtle effect, but the glossy finish of the camera island has a more pronounced opalescent look.

In both cases, the front is black. From this angle, the Spark 10 Pro looks more like the Android phone than it does with a center punch-hole selfie camera (it’s an upgrade from the Spark 9 Pro, by the way, this one used a notch). One thing few phones have (but is typical of Tecno) is the LED flash tucked into the top bezel. With three lighting levels and a 32MP sensor, it promises impressive nighttime selfies.

There’s no escaping it – once you turn on the device, you’ll notice just how thick the bottom bezel is. Not that the sides are particularly slender, but the bottom one is quite noticeable. It’s a reminder that the phone isn’t quite as premium as the back and sturdy frame make it feel.

Going back to the rear camera for a moment, it has a 50MP sensor behind a bright f/1.6 lens (there’s no OIS). Due to chipset limitations, the camera is limited to 1080p video recording.

Said chipset is a Helio G88 – a 12nm chip with two Cortex-A75 cores (2.0 GHz) and six A55 cores, plus a Mali-G52 MC2. A relevant upgrade over the previous G85 chip is that it can run FHD+ displays at 90Hz and the Spark 10 Pro makes use of it.

We haven’t mentioned it before, but the screen is quite large at 6.8 inches and it’s a 90Hz IPS LCD with a resolution of 1080 x 2460 px (20.5: 9). With the bezels, the phone measures 168.4 x 76.2 x 8.4mm and weighs 208g. It doesn’t feel heavy at this size, but it’s more of a two-handed phone.

By the way, this weight includes a 5000 mAh battery. The supplied charger produces 18 W (7.5 V at 2.4 A). The 3.5mm jack sits next to the USB-C port on the bottom, other interesting bits on the side are the power button (which is also a fingerprint reader) and the card slot. The card tray can accommodate two nano-SIMs side by side as well as a microSD.

The two Spark units we received came with 8GB of RAM (expanded to 16GB using virtual RAM by the HiOS 12.6 system) and had two storage configurations – 128GB and 256GB. We must point out that the phone comes with Android 13 out of the box. This really should be standard for 2023, but some phones are still releasing with v12.

That’s it for first impressions, we’ll have more to share about the Tecno Spark 10 Pro soon.