TECNO Phantom X Unboxing & Review

I’ve been using this phone  for over a week from before it launched and since it came out. This is an upgrade to the TECNO  Phantom 9, which I also reviewed, link below. if I remember correctly, the Phantom 9, which also  launched around this same time last year had an AMOLED display, this one here has a Super AMOLED  display plus 90Hz.

Basically better than any other TECNO device’s display on the market right now. It’s Curved, a first for TECNO too. It’s got a whopping 50MP back camera with laser autofocus,  gorilla glass 5? on the front and the back?,   quite a really big step up for TECNO devices. In  this video, we’re going to go over the features of this smartphone and my initial use. What you get when you spend on a phone like this. If you’re new, welcome and if you’re subscribed,  welcome back, do give this video a thumbs up so more people can see all of the details you see.  Without further Ado, let’s get to the video. Unboxing & Set up The box of the TECNO Phantom X is  much bigger than what you normally get.  Do not accept if seal is broken.

Taking the  wrap off the Phantom X, we get to a paper reading,   “for the ones who are worth it”. Okay,  inside the box, which smells nice by the way,   you first get the case which is quite flexible.  Taking it unclose, it looks like we’ve got a   leather or leatherette feeling case on the back  with that Phantom X branding. It also smells nice   out of the box, probably because I’ve not used  it that long, and the texture is on point here. Of course, it’s designed by Oraimo. Putting the  case back and taking the device out. IT’s got a   wrapper with the Phantom X branding. We’ll put  it to the side for now to look at the rest of   the items in the box. Each and every item is color  coded blue and has icons for each segment or item. The first box has the headphone and the charging  cable icon, the charging cable is a USB C one with   orange accents. The headphones feel solid and  has some heft to them which gives me some hope,   it’s got a silver accent on the earth section,  the control section and the section that plugs   into the phone. Looks good. The next item which  deserves its own box is the huge 33W charger,   also with orange accents that should get you  from 0% to 70% of battery life in 30 minutes.   I tested it myself with this charger that comes  in the box and I’ll share my results shortly.

The last box has the Simi  ejector tool and the 12+1 months warranty. That’s everything we  get in the box and now to the device. Build Quality Overview When it comes to the color  options with the TECNO Phantom X,   This is the Van Gogh Starry Blue, and the other  option is the Monet’s Summer. My version looks   really nice if I’m being honest, I also like  the pin striped pattern on the back of it.   It’s not just a flat drawn pattern but you  can actually feel it in your hands with the   striped grid. Now the thing that gets me with  this device is that the front and the back   are curved glass. Not just curved, but Gorilla  Glass 5. That to me show effort and is cool. Alright we’re in the build quality segment, the  right side of the phone has the power button   and volume rocker keys, there’s nothing on the  left side and the bottom is where we get two antenna lines, a headphone jack, microphone, USBC  port and speaker. Unfortunately in what felt like a downgrade, the Phantom X has only one speaker  which is at the bottom and not a stereo speaker setup. The top of the has one antenna line, the  microphone port, and the slot for your expandable   storage and 2 nano SIM cards. The back has that  triple camera array that totally eliminates the   2 megapixel filler cameras that we don’t need or  use. Here we’ve got a huge 50MP camera and that’s   the main sensor, we then get the 8MP 120 degree  ultra wide camera, and a 13MP 50mm portrait lens   that can help with telephoto shots.

I realized  that when I switched to the Portrait mode,   there as some zoom and that’s simply the lens  switching. We also get a Laser focus system   to help focus better and faster in video and  photos, the rear flash and of course, the TECNO   Phantom branding on the back. At the front  side of things, we get a dual camera set up, 8M ultra wide and 48M selfie camera plus the selfie flash light. I like the case   that the device comes with, it’s sleek  looking and protects the Corners while   retaining the quality and clarity of the edge  of the display. It also really smells nice. Keep in mind that these cameras’ lens cover  on the back, protrudes quite well. It’s a huge camera bump. Even with the case it still  protrudes and while that would rock on a flat   surface. I think it has its advantages. One  of which is the fact that because you have a   glass display and cover on the back, this device  would get slippery and if it falls, and breaks,   that would be quite bad. But this is gorilla  glass so you’re kind of safe. The protrusion   I think helps hold the phone in place  when it’s in your hands so it doesn’t fall down. Yeah it’s big but something  has to hold 50 megapixels and all these   cameras and elements, because of that  also, it will rock on a flat surface. Display Quality Overview TECNO Phantom X’s Display is the star of the  show. It’s the thing that’s a unique selling   point of this device with that they’re calling  the 3D Borderless Design or just a curved display. This right here is a Super AMOLED Display, no  LCD or any of that, It’s 6.7 inches in size.  

91.3% screen to body ratio guys. Thanks to  that curved screen you’re getting a much   more premium look and definitely more screen real  estate. This reminds me of many devices and one   it does remind me of the most is the Mi Note 10  from Redmi. Quite some similarities I must say   and again, while curved displays have predated  this device coming from the Samsung S-series   of old and many of their recent flagships,  this device by TECNO is one to appreciate. Your palm or any other part of your hands  resting on your screen is pretty much fine   when scrolling or zooming so palm rejection is  solid on here as far as the edge is concerned. Resolution is set at 1080 by 2340 and  it’s a 19.5 by 9 Aspect Ration display,   that’s simply just how tall it is versus  how wide it is. It’s also got one of   the sharpest pixel dense displays for a  TECNO device. The number for the PPI is   385 which is high for TECNO. It’s also good  enough for navigation and that 90Hz screen   shines through quite well and it even looks  much better or appealing when it’s in dark mode, the AMOLED screen shines through in those  deep blacks and of course, your battery is   saved and will thank you for dark mode when  light isn’t cast upon but only emitted. I watched high quality YouTube videos on here, you  can stream 4k content of course and I played some   games to see how I could push the Phantom X to the  limits. I think it’s safe to say that the Phantom   X has got good viewing angles even with the curved  edge and that camera cut out. Content looked good. I found reading to be very interesting on here,  both scrolling wise, zooming wise and consuming   image content. Typing also had pretty decent  haptics. Better than other devices from the   brand’s recent past. I did find out that some apps  or maybe games may not display in full screen in a   bid to not be too close to the hole punch camera.

This for me is awkward but thankfully that didn’t   happen with my call of duty sessions. Another  thing I noticed while viewing stuff with this   display though is that, the sound, even while it’s  loud, you only get one speaker. Because it’s only   one speaker, if you’re playing games or watching  stuff horizontally, you will block unknowingly.   I did block it many times when I was gaming and  this was annoying for me. It feels like a let down   especially considering the price tag  and considering that just the last   Camon device has stereo speakers. Storage, Processor and Features Just like the Infinix Note 10 Pro and the TECNO  Camon 17 Pro, you get MediaTek’s Helio G95 on   here. On the TECNO Phantom X. We’ve seen how  it’s touted as a gaming focused processor. An Octa-core one with 12nm and a good enough  Graphics Processor. MediaTek places it as a   premium 4G gaming processor and thankfully, the  phone holds up. 8GB of RAM is quite large and   good on here, although a significant  portion will be in use by Android OS,   the Launcher and Google Services but that’s  fine. It didn’t deter multitasking for me,   I was able to resume apps I left for a short  while where I left off. Good enough. Storage   space for me is 256GB, also really plenty  for me and if it seems like it’s not enough,   you have an expandable storage slot so  you can effectively double your storage. While this processor can also support up to 64MP,  TECNO didn’t push it with the 50MP camera on here,   they simply gave us just enough  and we’ll test it out soon. You have Android 11 with TECNO’s HiOS 7.6.  The user interface feels a bit more vibrant   thanks to that AMOLED Display. I like the App  drawer and how smooth the scrolling is again,   thanks to the 90Hz display. Of course, it’s  not without it’s faults. For the first few   days I had this phone, I didn’t get too much  bloatware notifications or anything like that.  

After a while, I did start getting them and  consistently too. I know it’s a software thing   I’m complaining about but you can simply turn them  off individually in the notification settings of   your phone. One thing I also noticed that caught  my design eyes was that the time being displayed   at the top of the phone was a little too close  to the dual camera or almost at the centre of   the phone. I don’t know how I feel about that  but it’s a thing I just thought to point out. Some of the features you get on here that  TECNO’s also touting are language translation   with either speech, text, images or phrases.  Then there’s the Live Transcribe feature that   will write whatever you’re saying  out and you can copy and paste   to edit or send to someone. “Don’t  forget to hit that like button and also   subscribe to the channel”. There’s also Ella which TECNO is touting as well, basically   going into the voice assistant game. Just like  we’ve got Siri, Bixby and Google Assistant,   the new virtual assistant is called Ella. So for  instance I can go, Remind me to wake up at 7am. It’s alright, they all work quite alright but  they aren’t yet as sophisticated as Google   Assistant or Siri or anything like that.  However  for basic commands, you’ll get some fanciness   out of this. Essentially, seeing this  list, these are all the things Ella can do,   make phone calls, send pictures to WhatsApp,  open apps, set alarms and reminders + more. [ Gaming + Battery & Charging Speed ] So, the G95 is a gaming centric processor. If you’ve watched my previous review video   about the Camon 17 Pro, which also has  the same processor, the gaming prowess   is pretty much on par with this. Very  solid gaming quality performance and   display wise. I didn’t experience  any lag except for situations where   my own data speeds dropped. Like the previous,  when you try to max out the graphics,   you can’t max out the frame rates and vice versa.  Maximizing frame rate won’t maximize graphics. My usual call of duty online sessions ran for an  hour, the first 30 minutes of gaming got me from   29% to 16% which is a 13% loss and in an hour, I  was down to 2%, another 14% lost. Hypothetically,   you should be getting, 3 and half to 4  hours of heavy duty gaming on this phone.

The Phantom X is said to have liquid cooling  features so the CPU or processor’s temperature will be 3-5 degrees lower than normal. I  did find that during my gaming sessions,   the phone got considerably warm to the touch.   Although it didn’t go out of hand but that’s  something I observed, it was warm enough   to warrant my statement in this video and  trust me I played games a lot on this guy. Standby time is really good on here  with regards to overall battery usage,   day to a day use will net you around  a solid 8 hours with moderate use or   more even. If your usage isn’t all that  heavy. It’s a 4700 mAh battery too so   not as big as some of the predecessors  or even competition but plenty enough. With the 33W charge, according to  TECNO, you should go from 0% or   dead battery to 70% in 30 minutes but   that was not exactly the case for me. Here’s how  my charging speed went in 15 minute intervals. From 0 to 32% in 15 minutes, up to 58% in 30  minutes, 83% in 45 minutes, 97% in 1 hour and it   got totally full or at 100% in 1 hour and 7  minutes. So 30 minutes charge was more around 60%   than 70%. It might be more or less but it’s  still not bad at all. I mean in an hour you’re   already at 97% form 0. That’s not something  you see everyday, especially on TECNO devices. [ Fingerprint & Face Unlock ] When it comes to the unlocking methods of the  Phantom X, regular methods like the Pattern,   PIN, Password are there, you can also  choose to not use any of them and just swipe or unlock with a button.

The main unlocking  methods we use though, the fingerprint and face   unlock were kind of underwhelming but not so  bad on here. You guys know I’m a huge fan of   the power button being the finger print reader.  We’ve seen it on things like the Camon 17 Pro   which has the same processor as this and it’s  a physical button, it’s fast. This right here,   is an on-screen fingerprint reader. Same with  the Phantom 9 of last year, and I get it that   many high end android devices are doing this.  However, the on-screen fingerprint reader does   take a little bit more Time to unlock and  it’s not instant. You can’t just press it. You have to press and hold for a little bit.  The face unlock as well did a fair job too.   One could say it’s even faster than the  on-screen fingerprint reader but hey. They work and it’s not super slow just thought to let  you guys know of that micro second speed time. [ Camera ] As I’ve mentioned earlier, the Phantom X comes  with a triple camera set up on the back and a dual   camera set up up front. Starting with the front,  we’ve got 48MP wide camera, and an 8MP ultra wide   camera. You can expect 1080p videos at 30 fps  and of course, 4K videos. The back side of the   phone is where we’ve got the upgrade. 50MP  main wide sensor that also supports their   new Dual Pixel Auto Focus and Laser Autofocus  with that tiny module you can see on the edge. 13MP Telephoto lens to help with portrait mode   also works well with autofocus  and the 2X zoom as expected. 8MP Ultrawide camera which is more or less  the underperforming one in terms of quality   but it will capture a 120 degree wide angle photo. You’ve got a Quad LED flash as well and you can   expect to get 4K 30 and 1080p  60FPS shots out of this guy. In the camera app though, you’ve  got the SuperNight Mode which   we’ll see the results shortly, it even  has a Tripod setting if your phone   is stationary which will enhance  the quality of your night shots. You’ve got video mode which you can go all  the way up to 4K with the 50MP enabled lens   and the other lenses top at 1080p, and you  can’t switch between lenses when recording.   You have the normal camera mode, You’ve got  beauty mode for skin smoothening effects,   Portrait Mode, which works with the 13MP lens.

Ultra HD for higher quality images, Film Mode,   Slow motion for up to 960FPS. Which when I tested  looked a lot like optical flow rather than an   actual frame capture and the video quality  is 720p, less than full hd. The front camera   has all of these modes except document scanning  which is understandable and slow motion is capped   at 240 FPS on the front camera with ultra hd  mode being 48MP and not 50MP like on the back. Indoors, selfies are usually  okay with a little bit of   redness or saturation. I also compared the  images with those I took on a very higher   end device and here’s how it looked. It’s clear  that the TECNO device prioritizes the face,   at least for selfies and not the face and the  background and this is the same thing with videos. Outdoor though, these images look really  good. With that selfie camera, in the   right lighting, it comes really really clear.  It’s also clear that the ultra wide camera have   a little lesser quality but it’s  still fair in the right lighting. Portrait mode also does look fair although with  its own share of over exposure in the light. As I mentioned, video quality from the  front camera is fairly decent as well   and it over exposes for the face and  not the face + the entire background. [VIDEO] The front camera can again,  also record in a wider angle   with the smaller 8MP but the quality is lesser. With regards to the back camera though,  Images came out looking sharp and colorful.  

In portrait mode, you definitely get a  decent background blur plus that fore-ground   cut out but the over exposure still remains. One thing I noticed with regards to the imagery is  that the main lens got cool details for the shot   and when I used the Ultra HD mode, the  shot I got had a fair amount of contrast. While the back camera’s 4K image quality is  definitely colorful and can be cinematic,   exposure really deals a blow  to all the numbers on paper. This was an occurrence over and over again  that the quality of 4K is more saturated and   colorful than 1080p and yes, it can zoom  all the way up to 10X with some grain. Getting this guy will definitely have  you recording more in 4K although it’s   double the storage space you’ll have to  use if you were recording only 1080p. Night mode shots again were super  dope, no qualms in that aspect,   you get quality as far as you’re  able to hold your hands steady. All in all, I found it to capture better than  many other predecessors at least from before   the Camon 17 Pro. Let me know what your  thoughts are about these sample images. The TECNO Phantom X comes at a  very steep price of 228K or $457   if you’re looking at the black market rate.  You can tell that TECNO is appealing to the   wider midrange Audience. They brought a bunch  of Nigerian celebrities on stage when they were   announcing in Nigeria and I’m sure they had  a huge budget for them.

I think they really   have a huge commitment to this device, and they  really have competition so they wanted to prove   something with the TECNO Phantom X bringing  that curved display and new look and feel. One thing that has always stood in the  way are the over exposure in the cameras,   for this device also, I would have loved  the side mounted fingerprint reader   rather than an on-screen one which is slower. It’s also the fact that gaming with this device   does get warm but I hope it’s not a cause for  concern. Other than that, it’s a great buy if   you’re in the market for a very dope display,  with loud speakers which you might unfortunately   block since it’s just one at the bottom and  not two, it’s great to see TECNO go this route   with a screen like this and not just the screen,  the back is also curved gorilla glass so it’s   premium. User experience is better and 90Hz is now  here to stay, all in all it’s a decent package. What are your thoughts about the TECNO Phantom X  is this something you’d get if you had the money for it? Let me know in the comments below. Also if  there’s any questions you have about this device, do let me know, I’ll be in the comments chatting  with you guys.