Of all products, Tecno decided to go stealth mode on the Spark 8. So even though the phone is now selling in Nigeria, Tecno have not made any single official announcement yet; no social media post and there’s been no promotion of any sort either. Anyways, here is our quick hands-on and initial unboxing preview of the latest Tecno Spark 8.
About the Box!
We usually talk about box content in our reviews and not the box it self. But the route Tecno took with the Spark 8 box design is worth mentioning. The box is now chiseled down to be more compact, and even light-weighted. Although not as compact as the iPhone 12 Mini’s box, but notably smaller than the Box of POP 5 and many other device within the range.
Small compact box, yet busy innards with all pins and accessories included. The phone is the first thing you’ll see when you open the box. It is wrapped in an orange leather, just like the box color itself.
All accessories are included; Wall Charger, microUSB cable, earpiece, SIM ejection tool, TPU case and 13-month warranty card. Although user manual is still missing.
Although the Spark 8 has a large 5000mAh battery, but it misses out on fast charging. The charger included in the box is a 5V/2A charger, which is an equivalent of 10W standard charger.
Tecno Spark 8 is the direct successor to the Spark 7 announced about four months ago. You won’t notice much changes on the frontal portion of the phone. The display remains same 6.52-inches screen and the resolution used is 720 x 1600 pixels, resulting to about 269 PPI. It has a notch cutout just above the screen.
The display brightness is good indoors for watching movies, but while the screen is still bright and usable outdoors, it does struggle notably under direct sunlight.
No much changes on the sides of the phone. Power button and Volume -/+ are on the right hand-side, three-in-one card slot is on the left-hand side, mic receiver, UBS 2.0 port and 3.5 millimeter audio port are in the basement, while the top is left with nothing.
Where the Spark 8 introduced notable changes is on the rear of the phone. You are getting a revamped camera module, with repositioned fingerprint scanner, which is now kept within the camera panel.
Tecno now has a new brand slogan. So, instead of the Spark branding which was written on the rear of the Spark 7-series, the new Spark 8 has a large “STOP AT NOTHING” slogan, stamped on the rear of the phone.
The device is powered by MT6762V/WD, a similar CPU model to the Helio A25 SoC used on the vanilla Spark 7. The CPU has 4×1.8GHz and 4×1.5GHz Cortex-A53 CPUs. It support 4G network, has dual SIM, backed by PowerVR GE8320 GPU, 2GB RAM and 64GB ROM.
As for the camera department, a 16-megapixel main lens and a QVGA depth sensors are used on the rear, while a single 8-megapixel snapper is kept within the frontal notch, for selfie. Here are some random camera samples from the Spark 8.
The selfie camera also took clean pictures in good lighting. The two images below were captured indoors with soft-box overhead.
Tecno Spark 8 first impression
The Spark 8 looks promising. The refreshed glossy design, and the elaborated camera module, which now houses the rear fingerprint scanner is also eye catching. But the phone may not appeal much to those who already own a model in the Spark 7-series, especially the vanilla 7, which has almost same specs as the Spark 8. I’ll try out other aspects of the phone, and come up with a full review later on.
