Before making the new Tecno Camon 17 series official, the brand launched a sequel to their popular budget ‘gaming’ phone Pova yesterday. The new Tecno Pova 2 is a quintessential Tecno phone — it combines an oversized display with an equally massive battery. The phone also features a few welcome upgrades over its predecessor, adding to the overall value.
We start with the Tecno Pova 2’s screen. It’s grown to 6.9” (almost a tablet form that fills a tall 20.5:9 aspect ratio). The original Pova was capped at a 720P resolution, but the Pova 2 peaks at a crisp 1080P. It’s still an IPS LCD with a 60Hz refresh rate, made more responsive with a touch sampling rate of 180Hz.
In a similar vein, the Pova 2 is now more powerful than ever. Compared to the 6000 mAh cell inside its predecessor, the new Pova uses a gigantic 7000 mAh cell. 18W Flash Charging powers the phone. Only ten minutes of charging is enough for 20 hours of music playback or 2.4 hours of uninterrupted talk time.
The CPU and GPU performance remains more or less the same. At its heart, the Tecno Pova 2 has the MediaTek Helio G85 and comes at an affordable Tecno mobile price. It works with 6GB of memory and 128GB of internal storage, expandable via a microSD card. Android11-based HiOS 7.6 runs on the Pova 2 right out of the box.
Nothing much has changed in the way of design, however. To accommodate the 7000 mAh battery, Pova 2 shell is 9.62mm thick. It has a subtle texture finish and an iridescent stripe running down the middle. Four cameras are embedded in the camera plate: one 48MP wide camera and three unspecified lenses. Selfies are shot with an 8MP camera.
The Tecno Pova 2 build, available in Polar Silver, Power Blue, and Dazzle Black, also includes NFC support. It starts from PHP 8,000 (~ Rs. 25,800) in the Philippines.