ICYMI: Tecno Launched the Spark 20 Pro Plus, a Star-studded Budget Phone!


This time, it mimics the Realme 11 4G design instead of an iPhone. What a change.

It’s been a while since we got a Transsion phone that does not look like an iPhone. For once, one of Tecno’s smartphones looks more unique as it should be. Because the Spark 20 Pro Plus is the epitome of what the budget SPARK line is, in all of its glory!

The phone pushes a thin line between the Camon 20S and the Spark series as the two are getting more and more related to each other. We’re just hoping Tecno is not competing with itself like what Xiaomi is doing with their phone lineups. Transsion isn’t also the best at keeping things consistent but they are doing a way better job than most contemporary brands.

This top-of-the-line smartphone features a 6.78″ 120Hz Curved AMOLED screen (remember this is a budget phone, not a flagship) with a very bright 1000nit display and 1.07 billion colours! What’s the catch? That’s for us to find out soon. We’re hoping it’s L1 Widevine certified because if it isn’t, that could potentially be a dealbreaker.

Transsions’ love for the MediaTek Helio G99 really knows no bounds, even its top-of-the-line smartphone in the SPARK series uses this chipset. We would have not minded a 5G chipset but a slightly higher price point. At least that makes it even more unique than its lower-end siblings.

Wait… we heard this is no ordinary Helio G99 chipset, no, this is actually the Helio G99-ULTRA. MediaTek has made its chipsets customizable for the needs of manufacturers and so the Helio G99 Ultra is customized to meet the needs of the Spark 20 Pro Plus. It’s quite intriguing and we want to see how does it fair against a regular G99 chip. However, based on its specs, it’s identical to the regular G99 so we’re not sure where the Ultra is in this.

There are four colours for this phone. The Green one (named “Magic Skin 2.0 Green”) uses synthetic leather that is 100% recycled. The other three colours are Temporal Orbits Black, Lunar Frost White, and Radiant Starstream Beige. The phone also can survive some splashes and dust thanks to its IP53 rating.

The Spark 20 Pro Plus features a 108MP Primary camera, like the Spark 20 Pro does. The large pixel count allows for detailed zoom-ins without the need of a telephoto sensor (but a telephoto sensor will have a more natural result instead of a sharpened one). No, Tecno did not mention the other two cameras but we suspect it’s just a 2MP + 2MP combo. A 32MP selfie camera is also present, safely at the middle of the AMOLED screen.

There’s a reason for that. Remember when Apple launched the iPhone 15 series with a new Dynamic Island (well, not exactly new since Honor did come up with this about three years before)? Tecno has it too, called “Dynamic Port” and it shows you different notifications in the shape of the dynamic island!

Finally, the Spark 20 Pro Plus features a standard 5000mAh battery and 33W fast charging. Its chipset, unspecified secondary and tertiary cameras, and the battery are what’s keeping this phone from touching lines with the Camon series as that line is truly more entailed with photographers and comes with better features such as using an RGBW sensor with OIS (the Spark 20 Pro Plus has none of these).

It is not out yet in the Philippines but we’ll update our fellow techies once it is out. We’re still mindblown to how cheap Transsions phones are but are feature-packed. This has a downside though, see the software? Yeah, it’s laid with ads everywhere. You also don’t get a lot of software support to boot but the company is trying as some of its phones are upgradable to at least 2 years worth of major Android versions.

Source: Tecno