The door 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 please note that retail packaging may be different in other regions.
Speaking of the package, it is a relatively small box, but it contains more stuff than you would find from traditional manufacturers. Let’s 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 earpiece bears more than a small resemblance to Apple’s EarPods, except for the 3.5mm jack on the end—the Spark 10 Pro has a wired headphone jack, which is a rare sight these days.
Even the phone itself looks Apple-like, at least from the back. Unlike iPhones, however, the squircle camera island sits flush with the back, just having a different surface finish. Then there are three circular modules – two cameras and a dual LED flash – jutting out the back. There’s also a depth sensor just above the flash.
As we look at the back, we should note that it’s made of glass, a first for the Spark line. Its matte finish gives the phone a more premium feel. Official images of the two colorways show a distinct speckled pattern, though this is barely noticeable in person.
The Starry Black phone is a deep inky blue, while Pearl White changes hue slightly as the 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. In that respect, the Spark 10 Pro looks more like the Android phone than with a centered-punch selfie camera (which is an upgrade over the Spark 9 Pro, by the way, which used a notch). One thing that few phones have (but that’s typical of Tecno) is the LED flash hidden in the top bezel. With three lighting levels and a 32MP sensor, this one promises some impressive nighttime selfies.
There’s no getting around it: Once you turn on the device, you’ll notice how thick the bottom bezel is. Not that the lateral ones are particularly slender, but the lower one is noticeable a lot. This serves as a reminder that the phone isn’t quite as premium as its sturdy back and 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 (2.0GHz) and six A55 cores, plus a Mali-G52 MC2. A notable upgrade over the previous G85 chip is that it can run FHD+ displays at 90Hz and the Spark 10 Pro makes use of this.
We haven’t mentioned that before, but the display is quite large at 6.8 inches and is a 90Hz IPS LCD with 1,080 x 2,460 px (20.5:9) resolution. With 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.
This bob includes a 5,000mAh battery, by the way. The supplied charger outputs 18W (7.5V at 2.4A). The 3.5mm jack sits next to the USB-C port at 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 space for two nano-SIMs side by side and a microSD.
The two Spark units we received came with 8GB of RAM (expanded to 16GB using virtual RAM from the HiOS 12.6 system) and had two storage configurations: 128GB and 256GB. We should point out 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 all for first impressions, we’ll have more to share about the Tecno Spark 10 Pro soon.
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