Tecno Pova 3: How good is the smartphone for real time usage? Here is a full review

Tecno has launched a budget smartphone in India called Pova 3. The smartphone was released in India on June 20, 2022. At its price, the Pova 3 provides a feature-rich smartphone that can handle day-to-day tasks such as browsing through the internet, clicking pictures and watching content with ease. Additionally, users can play popular games like Battlegrounds Mobile India and Call of Duty: Mobile on the smartphone as well. Let's find out more about the Tecno Pova 3. 

Unboxing experience

At its price point, the Tecno Pova 3 offers a decent unboxing experience. The packaging was solid and customers can experience a satisfying drop-down like they might have seen on social media. As customers remove the top part of the box, they will come across the phone itself.

Users also get a bunch of accessories in the box. First, there is a TPU transparent case that perfectly fits the smartphone. Opening the internal lid, users will discover the 33W fast charge along with a USB to Type-C cable with an orange accent. Both the charger and the cable feel durable. As a nice little addition from the company, customers also get a pre-applied screen protector on the Tecno Pova 3.

Display

Pova 3 has a large 6.9-inch display that supports a 90Hz refresh rate. The larger screen size makes the phone ideal for content consumption or even general usage. Further, the higher refresh rate and the touch sampling rate of 180Hz provide a smooth experience, not only while scrolling through the phone but also while playing games.

The front camera is situated in a hole-punch display at the centre, with a tiny bit of screen in between the camera module and the upper panel. Overall, the smartphone has minimal bezels on three sides with a slight chin at the bottom, but everything seems to be functional.

Now, there are a few things that users might notice with regular use. Although the display can achieve peak brightness levels of 500 nits, which is enough for bright indoor locations or a non-sunny day, users might find the display gauzing in direct sunlight. Additionally, the viewing angles could have been slightly better, but they are not the worst.

On the bright side, the smartphone has all the necessary features such as adaptive brightness which works fine, and a dark mode that can be enabled via the Settings section. If users want to customise the wallpaper or lock screen of the device, they can do so in the Settings menu as well.

Performance

Before going into the technicalities of the hardware, it is important to mention that the Tecno Pova 3 provides a balanced overall performance. It handles day-to-day tasks such as streaming content, browsing through the internet and multitasking with ease. Hence, it is easy to recommend this smartphone to a regular user on a tight budget.

Under the hood, the Tecno Pova 3 is powered by the MediaTek Helio G88 chipset, an octa-core chipset that is based on 12nm fabrication technology and was announced in June 2021. As far as storage is concerned, the smartphone comes in two models – 4/64GB and 6/128GB. Then there are a couple of gaming-centric features including 4D vibration, a 2-axis vibration motor, and a 1GHz GPU.

That being said, let’s take a look at the actual performance of the smartphone. If customers are buying this smartphone to play Battlegrounds Mobile India, they would only get an ‘Ultra’ frame rate on the ‘Smooth’ graphics setting. Further, ‘High’ frame rate on HD settings is the maximum graphics setting that players can get. The smartphone is able to score 359 points on the single-core test and 1312 points on the multi-core Geekbench CPU test. 

It is important to mention here that other smartphones in the segment, including POCO M4 Pro 5G and Galaxy F23 5G also provide a similar graphics setting when playing the popular battle royal game. However, the MediaTek Dimensity 810 SoC on the Poco M4 Pro 5G and the Snapdragon 750G on the Galaxy F23 5G achieve higher benchmark scores than the Helio G88.

In day-to-day usage, the smartphone feels responsive and fast. As far as multitasking is concerned, the smartphone decently handles several applications thrown its way, especially when the Memory Fusion feature is enabled, which uses a part of the ROM to provide up to 5GB of additional RAM on the 6GB variant and up to 4GB of additional RAM on the 4GB variant.

HIOS 8.6 experience

The custom UI is based on Android 12. On the home screen, users have to swipe from the top right to open all the quick controls including the vertical brightness and media volume sliders which look like they are inspired by the Control Centre on the iPhone.

Users get everything they would want, including the Wi-Fi settings, Bluetooth toggle, a button to turn the flashlight and other required settings. Swiping from the top left corner opens the Notification centre. Some users might like their notifications separated from the rest of the controls and that is what the smartphone does. Lastly, swiping from the bottom of the display opens up the main app menu. Overall, the UI is smooth and does what it’s supposed to do.

Cameras

This is one of the best aspects of the Tecno Pova 3. Like most other smartphones in its segment, the Pova 3 comes with a triple rear camera setup, including a 50MP main camera, a 2MP depth lens and an AI lens. While there is not much one can do with the other two sensors, the main camera shines in broad daylight and even in moderately lit indoor conditions. To see a quick comparison, refer to the image below. 

On the left is the image clicked using the Tecno Pova 3, which is certainly more vibrant than that of an image clicked with Samsung Galaxy M51 on the right. Those who use their smartphone to click and upload images to their social media should like the results achieved by Tecno Pova 3.

While the HDR settings could use some work, the rear camera is able to replicate the same results in broad daylight as well. In addition, the rear flash on the smartphone is bright enough to lighten the subject, especially in darker environments. 

As mentioned by Tecno, the rear camera has several features including a Super Night mode and a professional mode that allows users to control settings like shutter speed, and ISO and manually focus their shots. The AI scene detection works well in most scenarios and users can shoot 240 FPS slow-motion videos as well. Interestingly, Tecno Pova 3 also has a video bokeh mode and it works well in well-lit conditions.

When it comes to the front camera, Tecno Pova 3 struggles like clicks acceptable images. On the brighter side, there is a front LED flash on the smartphone that may come in handy. However, while the 8MP front-camera is able to produce a sharp images in daylight, it struggles indoors, much like other smartphones available in the price range. Users can expect blurry images, especially when they enable HDR on the front camera. 

Battery

After the Samsung Galaxy M51 and the Galaxy F62, and Tecno Pova 2 last year, Tecno Pova 3 is among the few smartphones that ship with a massive 7,000 mAh battery. Although the battery capacity is not the only factor which decides effective battery life, it matters to a great extent.

Even with a 12nm chipset, the Tecno Pova 3 easily lasts for a day and a half with regular usage. Even with heavy usage including a couple of hours of recording video, playing games and watching YouTube videos, the smartphone will easily last users an entire day. 

At its price, Tecno Pova 3 comes with another differentiating factor. It not only has the largest battery but supports a faster charging rate of 33W as well. On top of that, the company provides a 33W fast charging adapter in the box, free of cost. Given the size of its battery, Pova 3 takes about two hours to get completely charged.

Although, the smartphone does get a tad warm during charging and while playing games for a long time. The company claims that the smartphone can reach 0 to 50% in about 40 minutes, and it did so in roughly about the same time. Also, users can plug in a dual Type-C port to charge another device with 10W reverse charging support.

Other features

Overall, the Tecno Pova 3 is a feature-rich smartphone. It has a dual-speaker setup that fires sound from both the bottom vent and the earpiece at the top of the display. The sound produced is louder than other models in the price range, however, it tends to lose clarity on higher volumes and lacks low-end frequencies.

Cellular reception on the Pova 3 is on par with other devices as well. Connectivity options include 4G, 3G, 2G, and Bluetooth v5.0, dual-band Wi-Fi, OTG for wired exteral storage and GPS. In terms of sensors, the smartphone has an accelerometer, ambient light sensor, distance sensor, gyro sensor, side-mounted fingerprint scanner and an E-compass sensor.

Talking about some really nifty features on the Pova 3, the first on the list is called Tapping wake and it wakes up the screen by double-tapping on the display. Additionally, when the screen is off, users can swipe left to switch to the previous song, swipe right to play the next and swipe up to stop the playback. Then there is the screenshot with a three-fingers gesture, also found on other smartphones. All these features are located under an option called 'Micro Intelligence' under the 'Special Function' section in the Settings menu. 

Conclusion

The Tecno Pova 3 (4/64GB) variant is available on Amazon for Rs 11,999. Further, the Tecno Pova 3 (6/128GB) is available on Amazon for Rs 13,499. For users looking to invest in a budget smartphone, the upper variant of the Pova 3 can be recommended, considering other smartphones in the segment. The smartphone is available in three colours: Tech Silver, Electric Blue and Echo Black.