Tecno Pova 3 Review - ticks all the right boxes

Tecno Pova 3 offers an opportunity for gaming on a large 6.9-inch display. The phone is packed with features and comes with Android 12 out of the box, adding to the experience is the humongous tablet-sized 7000mAh battery. Powered by the popular Mediatek Helio G88 SoC the device and priced under INR 15,000, and the device looked promising on paper. But let's get into the details.

• Tecno Pova 3
• Transperant TPU case
• 1x USB Type-C to USB Type-A cable with orange inserts
• 1x Power brick rated at 30W
• Documentation and warranty card
• 1x sim ejector tool

The design of the Tecno Pova 3 is impressive, the phone with its 6.9-inch display is obviously going to be huge. But the device feels well built, the huge battery adds a bit of weight to the phone and that added weight adds a bit of a premium feel to it.

The rear is interesting, first off you get triple cameras and one of them is a 50-megapixel sensor, but the more interesting part is the design of the back panel, the satin black finished rear has a glossy vertical strip running through the middle and this strip is slightly protruding outwards. This interesting design aspect just makes the Tecno Pova 3 quite different and good to look at. While the satin black finish at the rear doesn't catch fingerprints, the glossy black vertical strip is a finger magnet.

On the left side of the device, the 'hybrid' dual sim card tray is placed, while on the right you get the volume rocker and a recessed and textured power button, interestingly Tecno has incorporated the fingerprint scanner into the power button. Mind you this is not a con, while in-display fingerprint scanners looked cool in 2018-19, they are expensive and optical scanners are slow and unreliable. This on the other hand was fast and almost always unlocked the phone 9 out 10 times.

Moving on the bottom side of the Tecno Pova 3, USB Type-C charging port and a speaker grille are available here along with a 3.5mm audio jack. (+1000 for the addition of the 3.5mm jack itself)

The Tecno Pova 3 comes with a 6.9-inch FHD+ IPS LCD panel with a 90Hz refresh rate and 180Hz touch sampling rate. The display panel comes with a hole punch selfie camera and a screen protector from the company. Now the display panel quality-wise is obviously not up there with the flagships but having said that the colors reproduced are punchy and vibrant.

Contrast levels are decent and black levels are ok, but these things are visible or noticeable if you have multiple phones lined up for comparison. On its own, the display does a good job, of producing punchy colors while gaming. However, while watching movies in the dark you will notice the underwhelming black levels.

The display of Tecno Pova 3, comes with 500nits of brightness and works well indoors but under direct sunlight, the low brightness levels do make the screen a bit difficult to view. But considering the price the Tecno Pova 3 is available at a large screen real estate is a treat for gaming and content consumption.

MediaTek's Helio G88 a 12nm SoC powers the Tecno Pova 3 and this processor is a powerhouse with 2 cortex A75 cores clocked at 2.0 GHz and 6 A55 cores at 1.8 GHz. This year-old processor still has it and it shows. Gaming on the Tecno Pova 3 is an enjoyable affair, with decent framerates, Garena Free Fire Max ran smoothly and we ran out of energy before the Pova 3 could run out of battery.

The Memory fusion function, which uses the ROM to increase the RAM also works well. In our 6GB ram variant, the feature can increase the RAM by up to 3GB more totaling 9GB. The apps stay in memory for longer and we did not notice any stutter during our usage.

I was not expecting much from the cameras of Tecno Pova 3, however, I was pleasantly surprised. The device comes with a triple camera setup with a 50-megapixel main sensor and 2-megapixel depth and AI sensors.

The main camera performs well, produces sharp images, and focuses quickly. The camera struggles to capture high dynamic range scenarios but that's ok, considering the segment. Moreover, the selfie camera, which is an 8-megapixel unit is surprisingly sharp and can produce some amazing selfies with some software tweaks built in.

The camera app starts in AI cam mode and offers multiple other modes like portrait, beauty, panorama, AR shot (Snapchat-like filters) Ultra HD (Full 50mp), slow-mo, etc. In terms of video, the Tecno Pova 3 can shoot up to 2K resolution which is 1440P at 30fps. Short form video is something Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are working on and with the Tecno Pova 3, making short-form videos is a little bit easier with the built-in 'Short Videos' mode.

In our usage, indoors with enough lights, the camera performs really well, its sharp and colors are good. However, in high dynamic range situations like the bright sky and dark foliage the camera blows out the highlights. The same is the case with the selfie camera, the subject will be well exposed however, the sky will get blown out. There is no stabilization so that affects low-light shots and videos.

The Tecno Pova 3 comes with dual speakers, the bottom speaker, and the earpiece both work in tandem and produce sounds with a good amount of loudness. You will never miss a notification on this device for sure. Even watching Netflix or Youtube videos or gaming is fun with the good stereo separation. And then there is the 3.5mm headphone jack, this feature is becoming rarer and rarer in higher-end phones but Tecno Pova 3 has it, which means you can attach a wired headset and you are good to go. In our usage, the sound quality from the 3.5mm was loud and clear, even during calls.

Tecno Pova 3 also held on to WiFi signals and 4G signals really well, but the device doesn't support 5G and this is something you should consider before buying. India is right on the verge of getting 5G this year. While 5G pricing, speeds, and coverage is still a question mark, a 5G-enabled device will be future-proof.

This is my first tryst with HiOS and I'm happy that it doesn't come with much bloatware. The other thing that I liked was that HiOS takes inspiration from the 3rd party launchers and organizes apps alphabetically which makes finding apps that much easier.

There are some interesting quirks and features, like Peak Proof - which blurs out sensitive data on the screen, Theft alert - which will sound an alarm if your device is taken off the charger, and more. There are a lot of customization options and HiOS is quite intuitive for moving around and finding things.

Well, this phone comes with a battery that is suitable for an 8-inch or 10-inch tablet at 7000mAh. When we unboxed the device, the Tecno Pova 3 showed 65% battery, and after full setup and a bit of camera usage and downloading apps, games, and using the phone the battery only dropped 10%. Usually, during the first setup, phones tend to lose battery fast, because of downloading backups from the cloud and apps, etc. The supplied 33W charger can charge the device up to 50% in 40minutes but keep in mind the charger has to charge 7000mAh of battery.

We even tried to binge-watch a TV series over the week and the battery easily outlasted us, Tecno Pova 3 is one of those devices that easily go two days without charging and this is with heavy usage. Impressed yet? Well, it also offers reverse charging at 10W.

So should you get the Tecno Pova 3? Currently priced at INR 13,499 for the 6GB/128GB (review unit) variant and INR 11,599 for the 4GB/64GB variant, It's a no-brainer, just go for it, there is no other phone that provides so much bang for the buck. Tecno Pova 3 gets a solid thumbs up from us.