TECNO has unveiled a new device with the TECNO Spark 30. You don’t see collaborations with smartphones often so this caught my eye immediately. Don’t worry, folks, the Spark 30 does not transform into a little Autobot and attempt to communicate with you through popular media (or unfortunately if you really wanted that).
This is TECNO’s latest offering to entry-level smartphones. The question is: how is it in everyday use? Well, dear readers, we’re going to answer that right here. Let’s roll out and start this review! You can also check our feature article of the smartphone here.
Table of Contents
Starting right off the bat, the first thing that will catch your eye is, of course, the Bumblebee-inspired design of the smartphone from the Transformers franchise. Based on how the device was advertised, it seems that it’s based more on the latest Transformers movies like Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.
Of course, if you do not wish to have the striking black and yellow colorway, there is always the Stellar Shadow and Astral Ice options.
With a phone like this, the worry now is whether to add a case on it to protect the device, but lose the design aspect of the Spark 30. If it helps reassure you, it is made with a plastic rear and has IP64 rating for dust and splash resistance.
At the back, you are greeted by the Spark 30’s circular camera island with its three sensors and rear flash looking back at you. We’ll get back to them real soon.
For I/O, you get the usual volume and power buttons on the right side, the SIM card tray at the left, a USB-C port, 3.5mm audio jack and one half of the stereo speakers at the bottom and the other half of the speakers on top.
If you are a huge fan of the Transformer series and really like Bumblebee, this will definitely make your head turn.
For display, the phone has a 6.78-inch FHD+ screen which caps at a refresh rate of 90Hz and up to 800 nits peak brightness.
You might experience some struggle when using this phone under harsh sunlight, it still provides a decent viewing experience. I was able to use it to watch Netflix on the Spark 30 and catch up on Arcane and dive into Our Oceans.
Though it isn’t as vibrant as I usually want my screens to be, it didn’t deter me from enjoying the experience of watching and getting into the media that was before me. Its thin bezels helped in that too.
In the audio department, however, you get Dolby Atmos dual stereo speakers that give a decent volume output. There were moments where I did have to increase the volume all the way to the max, but the speakers were able to pull through.
Of course, if that isn’t for you, there’s always the trustworthy wireless earbuds that you probably have in your disposal. You can also opt to use the 3.5mm audio jack for you to connect your wired earbuds to. I always appreciate a smartphone that gives options for listening to music and the like so kudos to that.
For biometrics, you have a side fingerprint scanner on the power button and face detection. Fingerprint detection takes almost no time to read your fingerprint as it takes less than a second to unlock the device.
With the TECNO Spark 30, you surprisingly get just a 64MP Sony IMX682 main camera at the rear and a 32MP selfie shooter is right at the front.
It took us off guard especially with the photos it was able to capture. The results come out sharp and with great color reproduction. It struggles when the environment is dark and doesn’t have that much light but this is where Supernight Mode comes in. The post photo shows a brighter image and removes the amount of noise seen without the mode on.
You also get features like AI Eraser for users who post-process their photos. Its rear flash can be adjusted with how intense you want it to shine. A neat feature for those who want just a little bit of lighting.
Both the front and back record up to 2K@30fps which is surprising at this price point. There isn’t that much stabilisation when we tried it for ourselves though.
You can check our sample photos here to see for yourself.
Rear camera video sample:
Front camera video sample:
Next, the TECNO Spark 30 uses HiOS 14 based on Android 14. The system is also themed with Bumblebee’s colors as apps like Gallery, Settings, and the like are also customised to the Transformer. It has a LOT of bloatware though that you can uninstall manually.
You have the usual features like having up to two floating windows, a Smart Panel where you can select apps to open into floating windows, and High Boost when opening a game application. The OS is able to run smoothly without any stutters when I had my hands on the device.
One thing I want to point out is that the Spark 30 has a feature called a Dynamic Port. This appears around the selfie camera and delivers information such as detecting Face Unlock, calls, recordings, and the percentage of the phone when it’s charging.
There is also Smart Hub that can temporarily store images, text, files and the like to be used in another application or window.
The Spark 30 is powered by a MediaTek Helio G91 chipset with an ARM Mali-G52 MP2 GPU. For more info, this processor was made back in June of last year. It’s got two Cortex-A75 clocked at 2.0 GHz with the rest being six Cortex-A55 cores with speeds up to 1.8 GHz.
You get 8GB RAM and 256GB of internal storage. If that RAM isn’t enough for you, you do not have to worry as there is MemFusion. The RAM can be doubled, giving you a total of 16GB.
We played Honkai Star Rail, Zenless Zone Zero, Pokemon Unite and Mobile Legends on this device. When it came to the MOBAs, the TECNO Spark 30 was able to handle the graphics of the phone with ease at its highest settings as I never experienced any form of lag one bit from it. You can be sure to win your matches with this without any hindrance here.
As for the more graphic intensive titles like Honkai Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero, there was a HUGE struggle with even running the game. Though it was able to handle Honkai Star Rail’s auto battles, you can see the frames freezing during their Ultimates. With Zenless Zone Zero, however, I had a hard time even moving around New Eridu even when trying to do my dailies. Nevertheless, it got the job done, but I wouldn’t suggest playing intense stages like Shiyu Defense and Hollow Zero.
Of course, you can see our benchmarks here to know more about how the Spark 30 handled the tests:
Wrapping up the review, with the smartphone, it comes with NFC and an IR Blaster which is rare for this price point so huge kudos to TECNO for adding this to the Spark 30.
The TECNO Spark 30 packs a 5,000mAh battery with support for 18W fast charge support via USB Type-C wired charging. It takes around an hour to get the device up from 20% to 100%. At this point, this is basically the standard waiting time for most devices.
The Spark 30 can last almost the whole day when I used it outside. I played some games on the phone, but mainly took photos and videos white scrolling through my social media accounts.
In our proprietary video loop test, where we run a 1080p video at 50% brightness with zero volume and in airplane mode, it gave us a result of 13 hours and 47 minutes.
The device was able to pump 11 hours and 7 minutes of activity on PCMark’s Battery Test.
So, with all that being said, how much is the TECNO Spark 30 here on our local shores?
From what we stated, it is part of the entry-level budget, having a retail price of PHP 15,999USD 273INR 23,112EUR 260CNY 1,985. As of writing this article, it is exclusively sold in Shopee and can have discount prices resulting in a PHP 7,599USD 129INR 10,978EUR 123CNY 943 price tag.
For its price, it’s a great pick up for everyday photography, daily social media consumption and MOBA players. Transformer enthusiasts would want to eye this phone if they want to keep it in their collection too.
But, if you were thinking of having this as your next gaming device, I would not recommend it. But, what did you guys think of the vivo V40 Lite 5G? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
What we liked:
* Striking design
* Decent camera
* Battery life
What we did not like:
* Subpar processor
* Not too bright display
TECNO SPARK 30 specs:
6.78-inch FHD+ (2460 x 1080) Hole Screen
90Hz refresh rate, 800 nits
MediaTek Helio G91
ARM Mali-G52 MP2 GPU
8GB RAM (+8GB Extended RAM)
256GB internal storage
64MP Sony IMX682 main camera, rear four flash
13MP front camera, dual color temperature flash
2K at 30 fps video recording
Dual symmetrical speakers
DTS audio
3.5mm audio port
Dual SIM
4G
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth
FM Radio
USB Type-C
HiOS (Android 14)
IR Remote Control
Fingerprint sensor (side-mounted)
5,000mAh battery
18W fast charge support
168 x 76.43 x 7.7mm (dimensions)
Stellar Shadow, Astral Ice, Bumblebee Edition (colors)
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