The Tecno Pova 2, in partnership with the popular Mobile Legends Bang Bang, collaborates to celebrate the camaraderie among players and the ability of teams to overcome odds and obstacles as long as they work together. Now aside from that, the top-selling points of this device are the MediaTek Helio G85 chipset, a 6.9 FHD+ display, and the whopping 7000mah power battery. But can it actually give us a great gaming experience despite the price point? Let us find out.
Table of Contents
Unboxing
First, let’s unbox the Tecno Pova 2, upon removing the cover, the first thing we will see is the device itself. Setting that aside let’s run through some other stuff inside the package, underneath the device, we get a warranty card, translucent jelly case, sim ejector pin, headphones, 18w power brick and surprisingly the device itself already sports a USB type-C for its charging.
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Design & Display
The color variant of our review unit is polar grey and heading to the device, it is quite heavy weighing 185g which is understandable since it packs a large battery. It has a textured finish which adds grip to the device.
The device holds a 48mp quad cam and an 8mp front camera. Going around the frame, on its left is a sim tray that has a dual nano sim slot and memory card slot, on the right are the volume rockers and power button, and at the bottom has a headphone jack and USB type C for its charging.
Now switching to the front, it boasts a 6.9″ FHD+ IPS LCD screen. It has a 180hz touch sampling rate and 389 PPI density. Just a reminder, touch sampling rate and refresh rate are two different things. Refresh rate is about refreshing the content displayed on your screen while the touch sampling rate is about how quickly touch on the screen is registered by the display.
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Performance
Now going to its performance, this device is powered by a MediaTek Helio G85 chipset, which is paired with 128GB of internal storage and 6GB of RAM. As for the software, it runs on Android 11.0 with HiOS 7.6 on top.
This device has an oozing 7000mAh power capacity, which is a big plus considering that this is mainly a gaming phone, with the given power capacity and the chipset attached to the device, you’ll surely have a great gaming experience with this device and having a good amount of internal storage is also a big plus for it to run smoothly while gaming and streaming.
The Tecno Pova 2 usually takes up to 2 hours to get it fully juiced up, and will give you at least 10 hours of usage depending on how heavy the apps you’re using.
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Gaming
On gaming with MOBA games like Mobile Legends and Wild Rift, the gaming experience on the recommended settings is pretty good, we also tried customizing the settings a little bit, and still, the gameplay was smooth, I didn’t encounter any lags or frame drops even at clashes. Although the device feels kinda hot still it doesn’t give us frame drops. So for the bump-up settings, we get 57 to 60 fps with 98 percent stability.
Heading onto some fps games, first on the line is Call of Duty Mobile, by default settings are set to low graphics quality and high frame rates. So let’s bump it up to medium graphics plus high frame rates. The game was smooth, with no frame drops or stuttering throughout the game. So for the bump-up settings on the multiplayer mode, we get 50 to 55 fps with 98 percent stability.
Both MOBA games performed well and the multiplayer mode, but let’s see if the battle royale mode on call of duty mobile still performs on these settings. Upon landing, I did feel some frame drops but only happened when the game was just starting, but all throughout the match, I didn’t encounter any frame drops or stuttering that might ruin my gaming experience. So on its battle royale mode with the bump-up settings, we get 45 to 55 fps with 97 percent stability.
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Now let’s head to PUBG Mobile, by default settings are set to HD graphics and high frame rates. Though you can go as high as ultra frame rates, it is only available on the smooth and balanced graphics quality. Now the gaming experience on the recommended settings is pretty much smooth, with no frame drops and stuttering occurred halfway through the game. Let’s also test its performance on balance graphics quality and ultra frame rates, the gameplay was almost the same experience but this time I did encounter a frame drop while I was running around across the map, although it is not that drastic. So with the recommended settings, we get 27 to 29 fps with 97 percent stability while on the balance plus ultra frame rates, we get 34 to 37 fps with 96 percent stability.
Lastly are the E-Sports titles, we will head to Mihoyo Devs and their power-hungry and more demanding games. These games can determine if this smartphone is really an effective gaming phone in the entry-level category.
First off is Honkai Impact. by default settings are set to number 3, since we bump up all the settings of the games we tested so far, we will try it on this one as well. With both combat and out-of-combat set to 60fps we get a struggling device, it shows some frame drops during combat and when using special skills, but changing the settings to its recommended settings the game is now smoother and frame drops are now lessened. So for its bump-up settings, we get 27 to 35 fps with 96 percent stability, while on the recommended settings we get 27 to 28 fps with 98 percent stability.
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Last is Genshin Impact, this is one of the games that almost all entry-level smartphones are struggling to run even at the lowest possible settings.
Now let see if this one can handle Genshin Impact, by default, settings are set to the lowest possible settings. We do get some frame drops from time to time, but not too drastic, making the game unplayable. If you really want to experience the full Genshin experience you might want to look for smartphones in the midrange category, but if you just want to play Genshin for fun, this is probably okay. Although some of you won’t enjoy it since not just that it introduces frame drops but it also has poor graphics quality since it is set to lowest. So we the recommended settings we get 23 to 25 fps with 94 to 96 percent stability.
So for its gaming performance, it did perform pretty well on competitive and E-sports titles but struggled a bit on graphic demanding games, still, those games are playable on this device. Even though MediaTek Helio G85 was released last year it is still a very effective gaming chipset up until now.
Now as usual we started with a fully charged device, to also test the performance of the 7000 mAh power battery and for the result, after 3 hours of gaming, our battery dropped from 99 percent to 66 percent.
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Verdict
Overall, for the asking price of 7,990 pesos, the Tecno Pova 2 is a worthy gaming smartphone competitor in the entry-level segment. In addition to its gaming performance are the FHD+ display, a 48mp triple camera, and the large 7000mah power battery. Which will give you a full-on experience whether it is gaming or just simply binge-watching videos and movies, all of these you can get without breaking the bank.
Specs:
Dimensions 173.3 x 78.8 x 9.6 mm (6.82 x 3.10 x 0.38 in)
Weight 185g
Build Glass front, plastic frame, plastic back
Display IPS LCD, 480 nits
Size 6.9 inches, 113.1 cm2 (~82.8% screen-to-body ratio)
Resolution 1080 x 2460 pixels (~389 ppi density)
OS Android 11, HIOS 7.6
Chipset MediaTek Helio G85 (12nm)
CPU Octa-core (2×2.0 GHz Cortex-A75 & 6×1.8 GHz Cortex-A55)
GPU Mali-G52 MC2
Internal 128GB 6GB RAM
Quad Cam 48 MP, f/1.9, (wide), PDAF, 2 MP, (macro), 2 MP, (depth)
Features Quad-LED flash
Video 1440p@30fps, 1080p@30fps
Front Cam 8 MP, f/2.0
Features Dual-LED flash
Video 1080p@30fps
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, hotspot
Bluetooth 5.0, A2DP, LE
USB Type-C 2.0, USB On-The-Go
Battery Li-Po 7000 mAh, non-removable
Charging Fast charging 18W
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No doubt, this is targeting the Vivo Y20s (G) that had a price of P9,999 at launch, helio G80, 5000mah. Altough this has a bigger battery at 7000mah. Big question is how optimized this is, as optimization is probably the most important factor when buying a phone. Vivo is very good at optimization, so good luck Tecno Pova 2.
One of the cheapest gaming phones in the market. Thanks to its Helio G85 processor.
This is a great review. Thanks for the brand recommendation.