The door rang and a courier delivered two Techno Spark 10 Pro telephones in the office – one in Starry Black and one in Pearl White. This is the version sold in South America, so please note that the retail package may be different in other regions.
Speaking of the packaging, it’s a relatively small box, but it packs more than you’d find from mainstream makers. We put the phone aside for a while (by the way, the phone already has a plastic screen protector pre-installed). There’s a transparent silicone case, a charger, a USB A to C cable, a SIM card ejector and – surprise! – a wired headset.
The headset looks more than a little like Apple’s EarPods, save for the 3.5mm jack on the end – the Spark 10 Pro has a wired headphone jack, which is a rare sight these days.
The phone itself also looks Apple-esque, at least from the back. However, unlike the iPhones, the square camera island is flush with the back, it just has a different surface finish. Then there are three round modules – two cameras and a dual LED flash – protruding from the back. There is also a depth sensor just above the flash.
While looking at the rear, we should note that it is made of glass, a first for the Spark line. The matte finish gives the phone a more premium feel. The official images of the two liveries show a distinct speckled pattern, although it’s hardly noticeable in person.
The Starry Black phone is a deep inky blue, while the Pearl White shifts the hues slightly when light hits it from different angles. It’s a subtle effect, but the glossy finish of the camera island has a more pronounced opal look.
In both cases, the front is black. From this angle, the Spark 10 Pro looks more like the Android phone than it is with a centered selfie camera (that’s an upgrade from the Spark 9 Pro, by the way, which used a notch). One thing few phones have (but is typically Tecno) is the LED flash tucked into the top bezel. With three lighting levels and a 32MP sensor, this promises some impressive nighttime selfies.
There’s no getting around it – as soon as you turn the device on, you’ll notice just how thick the bottom bezel is. Not that the sides are particularly slim, but the bottom one is quite noticeable. This reminds us that the phone isn’t quite as premium as its back and sturdy frame suggest.
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.
The 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 takes advantage of that.
We haven’t mentioned it before, but the screen is quite large at 6.8 inches and it’s a 90 Hz IPS LCD with a resolution of 1,080 x 2,460 pixels (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.
This weight also includes a 5,000 mAh battery. The included charger delivers 18W (7.5V at 2.4A). The 3.5mm jack is next to the USB-C port on the bottom, other interesting items on the side are the power button (which is also a fingerprint reader) and the card slot. The card tray holds two nano-SIM cards side-by-side and a microSD.
The two Spark units we received came with 8 GB of RAM (expanded to 16 GB using virtual RAM by the HiOS 12.6 system) and had two storage configurations: 128 GB and 256 GB. We should emphasize that the phone ships with Android 13 as standard. This really should be the norm for 2023, but some phones are still coming out with v12.
That’s it for first impressions, we’ll talk more about the Tecno Spark 10 Pro shortly.