Tecno Phantom 9 Specs and Price

Tecno Phantom 9 is the latest flagship smartphone from Tecno. The Phantom 8 is dated having been launched since 2017, this is why an upgrade is long overdue. So, let us see what is inside.

We have been seeing a slew of smartphones come to the market with triple rear camera setups and an almost bezel-less screen, and this is not one thing that Tecno plans to have its own signature design. They have, thus, answered to this trend with the launch of the Tecno Phantom 9.

For those who are familiar with this brand, the Phantom lineup is the top of the line model for every year, though the last upgrade was way back in 2017. Since we have this one in the market right now, let’s see if Tecno brought all the premium treatment with this year’s device.

Design and Display

Truth be told, we have seen the kind of design philosophy employed on the Tecno Phantom 9 a little too much this year, but that does not make it any less worthy of being talked about.

Starting with an impressive 6.39 inches AMOLED display, the device commands a stunning 84% screen to body ratio by using a waterdrop style notch inside which houses the selfie camera.

With 1080 x 2340 pixels resolution, 19.5:9 aspect ratio, and over 100,000:1 contrast ratio, the display promises to be great for watching movies and browsing the web.

Looking at the sides, you will find the usual volume rocker and power buttons on standby. A look at the base part of the phone shows that Tecno has chosen to retain the 3.5mm jack on its Phantom 9 for this year. Besides that, we have both the microUSB 2.0 port as well as a microphone slot.

On the back of the phone, we have the cut out for the triple camera sensors and an LED flash. A fingerprint scanner is noticeably missing on the back, mainly due to the fact that it has been moved inside the display for this year. That is surely some nice addition to the Tecno line-up.

Although we do get Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection on the front, we would have preferred something better. Afterall, we are on the Corning GG5 right now, so the third iteration might have even made sense.

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Looking past that, though, Tecno Phantom 9 is a beautiful device which can be snagged up in colour options of Lapland Aurora only. We hope that is only for now and more colours get introduced soon.

Camera

We have been waiting to discuss the camera sensors on this one.
The Tecno Phantom 9 starts its impressive run of cameras with a 32MP selfie snapper on the front which is sure to take some of the best images.

The camera also offers dual LED flash, with each flash flanking the earpiece above the display. This means the front camera on the Tecno Phantom 9 will fare well in low light.

You will also find the triple camera unit on the back a beauty to behold.

This arrangement starts with a 16 megapixels main snapper which is supported by an 8 megapixels ultrawide lens and the final 2MP sensor for depth sensing.

For all this camera offers, we hate the fact that there is no telephoto lens in the mix.

This would have been the best bet to ensuring this unit takes awesome portrait images – maybe even close to what the iPhones are used to. But then, we have to make do with what we currently have.

Hardware, Software and Other Features

We should probably lead with the massive 6GB of RAM which Tecno has opted for here, coupled with a massive 128GB of internal storage.

That is bettered only by the inclusion of a microSD card slot which can take as much as 1TB.

As expected, the Tecno Phantom 9 ships with Android 9 Pie out of the box, and we have a good feeling this one will make it to the Android 10 range at least.

Running things for the Tecno Phantom 9 is the MediaTek Helio P35 chipset which offers an octa-core processor clocked up to 2.35GHz.

Built with 12nm process, the chipset comes with PowerVR GE8320 GPU for better graphics rendering. To cap it all off, a 3500mAh battery is under the hood to keep the lights alive.

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Tecno Phantom 9 Price and Availability

Tecno Phantom 9 price in Nigeria starts at around 91,000 Naira. Price starts at around 24,500 KSh and 1000 GHs in Kenya and Ghana respectively.

Having been in the market since July, 2019, you can now pick up a unit for yourself from online or offline stores.