TECNO Phantom 9 Full Review 2020
TECNO Phantom 9 is TECNO’s latest addition to the Phantom or should I say premium line up and right out of the gate, I think this is TECNO’s first device that would feature an AMOLED display and let me just say it looks cool. It’s a bit saturated but it can pass us punchy. So we’ll start with the classic unboxing. The package of the Phantom 9 is a little toned down from what we had on the Phantom 8 but it still looks premium and you can even see that on-screen fingerprint pattern which we’ll dive into much later in this video. Opening the box still shows you some more premium packaging and gradient designs all around. The first thing here is the gift box which houses the SIM ejector tool, inside is also the specification manual which shows that it supports the Glo 4Gband, the user manual, 12 plus 1-month warranty and this soft feeling silicone case which feels good in the hand and also feels good on the device, I haven’t taken it off since I’ve had it after that we get the Phantom 9 itself inside the box and we’ll be getting to that much later in a bit. Underneath the device, we have a black TECNO headphone charging cable and a regular power adapter that doesn’t fast charge on the wrapper on the Phantom 9.
We have the four main highlights that TECNO displays and they are the triple AIm cameras on the back, the in-display fingerprint reader, the Dual front flash, the huge 128 gigabytes of storage 6 gigabytes of RAM, pretty much everything when you hear the price. The taken report shows you the six-point four-inch panel and that gorgeous “Aurora ” gradient back from blue to purple with gradients on the design, hands down one of the techno designs I’ve seen to date. On the front of the device, we’ve got the huge32 megapixel camera and above that is the speaker, the dual flashlights, what’s supposed to be the ambient light sensor and at the top is where we’ve got the secondary microphone port and on the right is the power button and the volume rocker keys that go with it. It’s a seven-point eight millimeters thick device and the camera protrudes on the back but putting the case makes it feel much smoother. On the bottom of the device is where I have got the main microphone, the regular USB ports, and this single speaker. I kind of wish the TECNO phantom 9 had a USB C port but hey it doesn’t. On the left side we’ve got the micro SD card, the dual nano SIM slots and on the back is where we’ve got the triple camera setup normal wide and portrait lens and the Phantom branding and towards the bottom is where we’ve got the TECNO branding and no other inscriptions on here.
Looking at the whole of the back of the phone it makes it look really cool. it’s a polycarbonate material though and it looks pretty nice but as I said I simply covered it during my use, with the case that came with it in the box and Yes, the device itself is gorgeous but I didn’t want to ruin this device. It took over 2 minutes to boot and set up the Phantom nine, with the display fingerprints and the face unlock from that point on its HiOS five based on Android 9 Pie. Now back to display as far as the specs, You’re getting 2040 by 1080p AMOLED display with PPI of 403 and on the phantom 9, videos were rendered quite well. I must say I actually felt good using a 1080p AMOLED HD display on the TECNO device of this brand and I didn’t have any complaints about video. However, the graphics card that comes with the MediaTek’s Helio P35 of late 2018 on this device is the power VR ge8320 and according to most benchmarks you might not be able to enjoy 3d games on here but games with flat graphics like shadow fights and Alto’s Odyssey would do excellent because it doesn’t demand too much in terms of higher frame rates. You also get the eye care and read mode. Eyecare basically dims the overall display regardless and read mode works in specific apps but both of them perform the same functions again just to help you with the blue light shining into your eyes you have a water-drop notch on this guy and you can hide it if you want which makes it my opinion very tacky and the chin on this device is much lesser than what we have on something like the common 11pro. I feel like TECNO took a lot into consideration when they crafted this one. I like it. My model has 6 gigabytes of RAM and 128 gigabytes of storage.
TECNO this device will cost around 75 to 80 thousand nairas. This is between a hundred and ninety-five and two hundred and twenty US dollars. the 6GBof RAM might seem huge but when you look at how much of it is occupied by Android system itself it’s almost 2 gigabytes about 1.7 gigabytes to be exact so you’ve really got just over 4 gigabytes to play with Multitasking also did fine and apps loaded fine back to the position where I left them but web-based apps were refreshed sometimes we also see the same pattern with storage where we’ve got 128 gigabytes on the label but about 9 gigabytes already used or by system data so you really have just over a little less than one hundred and 20 gigabytes to play with. I think I still very much enough just like the other HiOS and XOS devices there’s this smart panel that you can quickly access apps if you want you can add apps you want to quickly access and tools you need frequently so you get them as fast as possible of course what I really like about the smart panel is that I can easily screen record. oh and there’s also these settings that silence your phone when you flip it over and that’s if you get a call. I don’t know how fast this would be if you flip your phone but it exists for emergency purposes performance for me generally was smooth and I could tolerate some of the animations and some of the things the HiOS comes with and there are some things that I wanted to change like I got a lot of ads from this device which I actually found quite annoying but you can turn it off in this settings.
It’s got an octa-core processor the Helio P35 as I mentioned and this processor really defines the overall flow of this device feel it could be better but then again I feel that way about a lot of things as I said just like the cool on-screen optical fingerprint scanner it’s not super fast and you would have to rest your hand on it to unlock it. Face unlock was actually pretty fast – but it doesn’t have any extra layer of security there’s a 3500 milliamp-hour battery on this device and I didn’t get a full day of use with this device sometimes I even notice the battery going down on me you know the Phantom 9 is reliable but it only did shine when I used it lightly or moderately but not too much from my heavy use. if you ever notice the battery life on the device going low though, there’s this thing called whatsapp mode and spoiler alert it has nothing to do withWhatsApp you’re welcome so basically this WhatsApp mode is really useful and what it does is that it ensures that only the apps you open use the data at that moment and when you close the app it doesn’t use your data anymore I’m sure you know that there are some apps that use your data in the background even when it’s closed this whatsapp mode ensures that you only use your data when you want and I personally think this is a brilliant idea especially if you want to save data now about charging charging experience went something like this from 1 percent to 40 percent it took 30 minutes it took another 1 hour and 30 minutes to get to 87% on an additional 22 minutes to get to 100% which is basically 2hours and 30 minutes approximately to get from 1 percent to 100 percent on the regular charger provided I wish you could fast charge I will tell you as wesee I will share the fast charger in the box I wish there’s Bluetooth 4.0 and no mention of whether it’s a low-energy Bluetooth and it also has a nativescreencast and OTG as well as far as the sound quality of the phantom 9.
The Phantom 9 sounds pretty decent and here’s how it performs: this is how the techno phantom 9 sounds when you’re recording audio I’m holding the phone, in the same way, I would hold it when I’m making a phone call let me know what you think about the sound quality in the comment section down below TECNO also gives you sound adjustment effect right from theBoomplay app which is the default music player you can adjust the EQ you can adjust the music affects the bass and the overall sound.
You’ve got three main cameras on the back of the phantom nine you’ve got a two-megapixel F 1.8 depth sensor 16-megapixel main camera which has an aperture of f/1.8 point it as well as the 8-megapixel wide-angle camera with an aperture of f2.4, the main camera on the Phantom 9 gives you video mode where you can record 1080pwhich is highest and you can reduce it if you want. AI I camera is the default mode and it also shoots HDR and just like the video mode where you will see the modes for the camera you’ve got macro mode for super close shots wide-angle 1x and 2x we’ve also got beauty mode bokeh mode for background blurs, AR shots for face emojis and panorama mode on the a 32 megapixel replacing the panorama mode is the wide selfie mode the AR shot portrait mode beauty mode ai camera and video mode I actually did like the selfies I took with the 32 megapixel camera the portrait mode or the front camera also did a decent job of blurring the background but of course you still have some overexposure here and there the dual front-facing flash really came into to good use even in the absence of lights in low lights the front camera does this weird softening effect but the flash helps put things back into perspective about those three cameras on the back the wide-angle lens had a different color from the 1xand 2x most of the time I took pictures and they look sharp for the most part but it was always that difference in colors that was evident for me again this is especially noticeable on the skin and although the others look pleasant, the wide angle kind of fell off but in the right lighting it you do just fine as far as the video there’s no evidence of stabilization on the video recorded on this device so this is the front-facing camera video quality of the TECNO phantom 9 it is a whooping 32 megapixel front-facing camera and like I always talk about my videos you know the exposure is always not there for phones in this budget range in this price category for some reason they always like to focus on your face and blow out everything in the background just to make the image sharp and I can actually understand the skintones on this camera actually looks really goodI like the colors of the skin tones and things that are not overexposed as you can see if I put my hand in frame here it focuses on everything else and nothing is really blown out per se but when I take my hand out I’m just like everything is blown out it’s just my face and white everywhere so um theTECNO Phantom 9 also records in stereo audio as well there’s a microphone up top and at the bottom there just for crispier audio, helps with phone calls,help to do voice recording and video recording.
