TECNO Pouvoir 4 Review: More Than You Expect

We’ve had the TECNO Pouvoir 4 for a good amount of time since it launched recently in Kenya. In our first impressions review, we said it was more than just a powerhouse as the Pouvoir series is known for its huge batteries.

The TECNO Pouvoir 4 brings more to the table than just that and in our review, we tell you why you should consider it if you’re in the market for a budget smartphone that still ticks the checkboxes for must-have features.

Design

TECNO Pouvoir 4 is a beautiful phone when you first pick it up. The colour gradient back will have people turn around twice when you pop it up from your pocket.

The back shifts depending on the lighting

However, the beautiful back will not only attract attention but also fingerprint smudges so the clear case provided in the box will come in handy.

You get quad-camera setup at the back and a fingerprint sensor. The fingerprint sensor is quite fast as you just tap and lift to unlock your phone.

The TECNO Pouvoir 4 comes with a 7″ Drop Display at an aspect ratio of 20.9:5 to give a 90.55% screen to body ratio.

Sadly the resolution is stuck at 720p. This is something TECNO needs to work on.

This, however, doesn’t mean you won’t get to enjoy consuming media on it – you will. The stereo speaker setup offers that immersive experience when watching videos, listening to music or playing games thanks to Dirac sound that offers fundamental audio performance improvements.

There’s a textured orange button to the side which is a dedicated Google Assistant button. It works even when the phone is locked.

You get the regular volume and power buttons in the left.

At the bottom you’ll find the headphone jack, microphone, charging port and speaker grill that works in tandem with the earpiece at the top bezel to offer stereo sound.

The top bezel also has a notch for the selfie camera and a notification light.

Overall, the hardware is as expected, good looking, solid and punctuated by the decent screen.

Performance

I was impressed by the performance of the TECNO Pouvoir 4. You get aa Helio A22 processor 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage which you can expand.

The TECNO Pouvoir 4 also runs on Android 10 and HiOS 6.1. It’s worth noting that the phone is also listed in the Android 11 Beta program so that’s pretty cool too [Details here on how to install it].

For everyday tasks, the phone handled itself and the performance was exceptional. Multitasking was a breeze except for the occasional slowdowns when launching RAM-hungry apps.

You’ll definitely enjoy browsing the web with several tabs open, scrolling Twitter and Instagram, replying to email while listening to podcasts or streaming music over Bluetooth and taking photos

You can also game on this phone. Games with less graphics such as Ninja Arashi played really well – and so did Asphalt 9.

Graphic intense apps such as PUBG needed to be played with medium settings to avoid lag during gameplay.

HiOS 6.1 though lean, still comes with bloatware apps and you’ll need to take your time to disable most of them and deny permissions.

You’ll also have to turn a lot of features off such as the smart panel unless it’s useful to you.

Battery Life

The TECNO Pouvoir 4 has stellar battery life. That’s its main selling point. You get a gigantic 6000mAh battery that TECNO says will offer up to 4 days on a single charge. On my mixed-use, it only pushed to 2 and a half days – that is still close enough.

On most days of heavy use, I could push between over 10 hours of screen-on-time.

Sadly, charging takes close to 3hours. I wish TECNO implemented fast charging on its power brick.

Cameras

This is the part that had me wowing each time I took a photo – the TECNO Pouvoir 4 camera performance was more than expected.

The main camera setup includes four cameras that consist of 13 MP lens, two 2MP lenses, an additional AI lens and a single 8MP selfie camera.

With enough patience, you can get decent photos to share on social media platforms. There are different mode to choose from including bokeh, beauty, portrait and panorama.

I loved the consistency.

Click on the photos to expand and swipe for more in the galleries below.

Here are some samples:

Selfies

Beauty shots

Portraits

Regular Shots

Bokeh

Lowlight

The TECNO Pouvoir 4 will take amazing shots if you give it enough time. It will struggle with exposure as you’ve seen in some shots.

I liked the colours on the shots including the food and drink shots to share on Instagram.

Final Thoughts

The TECNO Pouvoir 4 is a budget smartphone that shouldn’t be overlooked. It comes with more impressive features and with its capable performance, you get more than you expected.

You’d think that the huge battery will make TECNO compromise on other smartphone features but no – you get a camera setup that gets you decent photos and overall solid performance that gets rounded up by the attractive design.