Tecno Spark 10 Pro in for review

2023-03-23

The door rang and a courier delivered two Tecno Spark 10 Pro phones at 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 package, it is a relatively small box, but it has more stuff in it than you would find from mainstream makers. We’ll put the phone aside for a moment (the phone has a plastic screen protector pre-installed, by the way). There is a transparent silicone case, a charger, a USB A to C cable, a SIM ejector and – surprise! – a wired headset.

The headset bears more than a little resemblance to Apple’s EarPods, save for the 3.5mm jack at the end – the Spark 10 Pro has a wired headphone jack, which is a rare sight these days.

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

While we’re looking at the back, we should note that it’s made out of glass, a first for the Spark line. Its matte finish gives the phone a more premium feel. The official images of the two colorways show a distinct speckled pattern, though that is barely noticeable in person.

The Starry Black phone is a deep inky blue, while the Pearl White shifts 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 that it is with a centered punch hole selfie camera (that’s an upgrade from the Spark 9 Pro, by the way, that one used a notch). One thing that few phones have (but is typical Tecno) is the LED flash tucked into the top bezel. With three illumination levels and a 32MP sensor, this promises some impressive nighttime selfies.

There’s no escaping it – once you power on the device, you will notice just how thick the bottom bezel is. Not that the side ones are particularly slender, but the bottom one is quite noticeable. This serves as a reminder that the phone isn’t really 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 capped at 1080p video recording.

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

We didn’t mention it before, but the display is fairly large at 6.8” and it is a 90Hz IPS LCD with 1,080 x 2,460px resolution (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-hand phone.

This weight includes a 5,000mAh battery, by the way. The supplied charger outputs 18W (7.5V at 2.4A). The 3.5mm jack is next to the USB-C port on the bottom, other items of interest on the side are the Power button (which is also a fingerprint reader) and the card slot. The card tray has room for two nano-SIMs side by side as well as a microSD.

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

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