TECNO Spark 8P is finally here. This is TECNO’s latest budget smartphone and succeeds the TECNO Spark 7P from early this year.
TECNO Spark 7P was a huge step-up and its successor has a lot to prove. TECNO also brought a few must-have upgrades to the Spark 8P which we’ll be checking out in the coming days.
Here’s what you get after unboxing the TECNO Spark 8P:
- the device
- 10W power brick and micro-USB charging cable
- a set of earphones
- Sim ejector tool
- a plastic case
- a screen protector
Picking the phone up, you’ll feel how light and compact the TECNO Spark 8P is. TECNO opted for a ridged design at the back that also colour iridescent when illuminated by the light.
Our unit comes in Tahiti Gold colour. Other options include Turquoise Cyan, Atlantic Blue and Iris Purple.
At the bottom, we have the headphone jack, microphone, micro-USB charging port and speaker grille.
On the side, we have the dual nano-SIM slot with an additional slot for an external microSD card. On the right, we have the volume rockers and power button with the fingerprint reader embedded.
The back features a 50MP triple camera array that includes a 2MP depth sensor and VGA camera. TECNO Spark 7P had a 16MP triple camera setup. The camera bump covers nearly the top half and we have the Stop at Nothing branding at the bottom right. This is TECNO’s new brand slogan.
It’s worth noting that the TECNO Spark 8 was the first phone to launch with the new slogan on its back.
Coming to the front is where we start seeing upgrades.
TECNO went with a 1080p 6.8″ LCD screen, unlike its predecessor which had a 720p screen. But there’s a downgrade too as TECNO Spark 8P lacks a high refresh rate which the Spark 7P had at 90Hz.
Nevertheless, this is a really nice screen you’ll enjoy using – from scrolling your social feeds, browsing the web or consuming multimedia content.
There’s a waterdrop notch that houses the 8MP selfie camera and an earpiece at the top bezel that also works in tandem with the bottom-facing speaker to offer decent stereo sound.
Under the hood, we have 4GB of RAM and 128GB of onboard storage. Sadly, the chip gets a downgrade too as the TECNO Spark 8P is powered by a Helio G35 processor unlike the Helio G70 that was on the Spark 7P.
So far, the phone runs running smoothly except for a few hiccups in my heavy multitasking app switches where the phone would take a couple of seconds longer to bring back apps from the background.
It’s going to be interesting to see how performance holds up long-term especially in gaming.
TECNO Spark 8P is powered by Android 11 and HiOS 7.6.
TECNO Spark 8P has a 5000mAh battery with 10W charging. The battery is huge but the charging takes a little bit over 2 hours to completely juice up.
Its endurance is pretty impressive on the other hand as I was getting around 8 and half hours screen on time. I’ll be looking to see how this battery performance is sustained in the coming days.
As I had mentioned above, TECNO Spark 8P features a new 50MP main camera which we’ll be checking out and a full assessment will be in our full review.
