All reports from MWC 2024 in Barcelona
The Tecno Pova 6 Pro has a crazy name, a crazy green color and an equally crazy design. This is, without a doubt, the craziest smartphone announced in Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024and we haven’t even started to understand the crazy functions yet.
I spent a long weekend with the Tecno Pova 6 Pro, a phone you’ll probably never be able to buy but is definitely worth a try. He managed to win my heart in a way I never expected.
Crazy and crazy Tecno design
Tecno continues to be a brand that intrigues us. The company doesn’t sell its devices in the US, but our journey with the brand began with the Phantom X2 Pro and its unusual pop-up camera, and then continued with the Phantom V Fold and Phantom V Flip, two foldable phones that you can buy for less than the price Samsung Galaxy Z Foldable 5. The Tecno Pova 6 Pro isn’t in the same tech league as these phones, but that doesn’t mean it’s boring. In fact, quite the opposite.
The color of the phone in our photos is Comet Green, and it is very green indeed. You can also get it in Meteorite Grey, but why bother when the green color is so eye-catching? It’s not just the color, pattern or shine that makes a design special. It also has a set of mini-LEDs in the huge camera module, which, like Nothing, phone 2, are activated when a call or notification arrives and show the battery charge level. The mini LEDs can even be linked to a popular game. PUBG to give it extra impact.
They’re not as bright or as customizable as the Glyph lights on the Nothing Phone 2, but it’ll be interesting to see if they can help this phone get the job done. Nothing Phone 2a when we see him in the near future. The back of the Pova 6 Pro is maddening in other, less interesting ways. It picks up a lot of fingerprints, and there are a few claims like “NFC” and “High Density Battery” that cheapen the phone’s appearance, which isn’t helped by the stickiness of the plastic used for the back and body.
Even more madness in the chassis and box. The Pova 6 Pro has a 3.5mm headphone jack at the bottom, and while that’s certainly unusual these days, inside the box is something we haven’t seen in a while: a pair of wired in-ear headphones. I told you it’s not like any other phone out there right now.
One of the largest batteries we’ve seen
The materials used to make the Tecno Pova 6 Pro hint at the phone’s sub-par status, but Tecno has packed the thin and light phone with a massive 6,000mAh battery. Does it bring back crazy battery life? I started using a fully charged Pova 6 Pro on Friday evening and ignored the charger until the battery died. It finally expired at 4pm on Monday after five and a half hours of screen time, as well as mixed usage over the weekend. It comes with a 70W wired charger and took about 15 minutes to reach 50% and less than 45 minutes to reach 100%.
It may not be absolutely crazy battery life, but it’s still impressive. The modest specifications of the Pova 6 Pro will help you get the most out of its capabilities. The screen is a 6.78-inch AMOLED with FHD resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate, and one of the worst auto-brightness modes I’ve ever encountered. His slow reaction time and preference for almost complete darkness infuriates me and I turn him off. The MediaTek 6080 processor and 12GB of RAM provide decent power and gaming performance. to Asphalt 9: Legends This presented no problem.
Tecno has updated its HiOS Android interface to match the Android 14 installation and it provides a much better experience than any previous Tecno phone you have used. Less bloatware, fewer useless apps and widgets preloaded on the home screen, and a nice change in speed. It’s not perfect—the split notification shade is annoying, and the fingerprint and face unlock system is too slow—but it’s reliable and has a much cleaner, more classic Android design than expected. It even has Apple’s own version of Dynamic Island called Dynamic Port 2.0, which works quite well.
A camera with a surprisingly missing feature
What about the camera? Pova 6 Pro has three cameras on the back and an LED flash. You know one of them is a 108MP main camera, as it says on the back for everyone to see, so the other two will be a wide-angle camera and the expected 2MP macro lens, right? Wrong. The Pova 6 Pro doesn’t have a wide-angle camera at all, which makes it stand out from almost every other phone released in recent years, quite the opposite.
Surprisingly, I didn’t miss the wide-angle camera. The condition of the Pova 6 Pro means it would probably have been a fairly ordinary camera anyway, so I never felt robbed of the ability to take a mediocre wide-angle shot that I’d probably never look at again. So what are these other two cameras? Great question. The specifications indicate a 108 MP camera, and that’s it. I checked with Tecno and found that one is a 2MP fixed focus camera and the other is an “AI camera” that collects ambient light.
The quality of photographs varies greatly. It’s average at best and lacks stabilization. It also has trouble focusing on moderately close subjects, and while the Pova 6 Pro’s camera also has an on-sensor zoom feature with a 3x shortcut available in the app, the results are rarely inspiring. Low-light photos also come out noisy. There are several special features, including a dual video mode that shoots with both the front and rear cameras at the same time, and an editing mode that changes the appearance of the sky in your photos. While the design of the Pova 6 Pro makes it seem like the camera will be a standout feature, it’s all a scam, and it’s just crazy that they put so much effort into making it look so special.
Crazy and fun, but needs some work
Tecno Nova 6 Pro is everywhere in a weirdly cute way. It has an original design, the software is surprisingly good, and the battery lasts several days with average use. It even has an IP53 water and dust resistance rating, as well as wired and wireless support for Dolby Atmos and Hi-Res Audio. However, it’s covered in fingerprints, the camera remains a mystery, basic features like the fingerprint sensor and auto-brightness are slow and unreliable, and there’s no always-on display.
However, despite all its pros and cons, I like the Tecno Pova 6 Pro and a lot of that has to do with the improved software. It makes a big difference when I don’t feel like I’m struggling with it like I did with previous versions of Tecno’s HiO. Instead, after a short time of customizing it to my personal preferences, it became a reliable companion. I got used to Tecno’s HiOS faster than Xiaomi’s MIUI, even if it is not as beautiful and functional.
What the Pova 6 Pro needs is some work as a lot of the fundamentals are broken and I would love to see a Tecno phone with a more powerful processor inside to give it extra performance. I enjoyed using the Tecno Pova 6 Pro and that in itself is a small recommendation. I still like what the company is doing, but unless you’re willing to put up with a bad camera and other craziness on display, this probably isn’t the phone you should rush out to buy.
Tecno also arrived at MWC with many other even crazier products including robot dog with artificial intelligence and some really wild conceptual stuff.
Original review in English by Andy Boxall
Source: Digital Trends
