Does that “iPhone design” hold up in reality?
Part 2 of the Tecno Spark Go review is live! See, the iPhone-styled camera layout may scream premium or attractive to some eyes but in practice, we saw only a few who actually cared, since this design is quite common in many other budget phones. Even our realme note50 took “inspiration” from Apple. Still, the gold color is a true stand-out color. The overall shape of the Tecno Spark Go is easily recognizable, which is the most important part.
This is the second budget phone we have that has a 13MP camera with an island shaped like the iPhone, the other is the realme note50 which would make some good comparisons. See which one is better for your money in terms of cameras.
The 13MP camera, according to DeviceInfoHW, is a Hynix Hi1336 and the front camera is a Samsung S5k4hy9x.
INTERFACE:
The camera interface is typical, akin to… an iPhone. The “Auto” option is labeled as “AI Cam” and there are other options to the left and right of the carousel. “Short Video” is an option to make Tiktok-styled videos, Beauty is the section where you can make Snapchat-like photos with your face smoothened out, and “Portrait”, as it says, is a portrait mode. The phone can zoom in up to 4x but that’s it.
The Tecno Spark Go has a “dual” camera setup consisting of a 13MP Primary and a 2MP depth camera. Meanwhile, the front is an 8MP snapper with an LED flash that lights up whenever you charge the phone too. This flash is useful at areas with little to no lighting, such as our front door neighborhood.
Also, unlike other phones, the settings menu is at the left-hand side. It is shaped like a nut so it is easy to find. Overall, the camera interface is easy to understand and work from. Probably because this is a lite version of HiOS. The most basic functions are here along with some few extras which may or may not be frequently used. We know we didn’t.
13MP Primary Camera Shots:
The 13MP camera of the Tecno Spark Go is “alright” in our books. It’s not particularly impressive. It’s more like a 6/10 at best. We find the actual images too sharp for our tastes and the colours somehow lacking. We’re not sure why the photos are overprocessed considering there’s little to process here. At daytime, the problems of this camera are not that obvious. It has good dynamic range for the price and will definitely do for the daily postings consumers might have in social media. The jump from the Vivo V30 Pro to the realme note50, to now this, is highly noticeable.
Due to this overprocessing, some details are lost such as small text. We also noticed a greenish tint for the image even though we took some of them directly during the noon, such as our image of Rizal Park and Monumento. During the afternoon hours, the camera starts to pale wherein there are areas that are too dark or too bright, and this even occurs with HDR enabled (you can’t do it manually, it’s always in auto mode).
NIGHT MODE? Don’t even
The Tecno Spark Go has a night mode dubbed “Super Night” that, theoretically, should have better results at night (obviously) than using the main “AI Cam” mode. It did have better results but not by much. The images are still messy with lots of noise, very slow shutter speed, lacking quality, and unbalanced dynamic range. The realme note50 handled night shots a lot better, and overall, is a better choice when it comes to budget photography. That phone felt like it had the DNA of the realme 3 inserted but at an even lower starting price.
8MP Front
Despite the selfie camera having better resolution overall against the realme note 50’s primary camera, the quality is only slightly better. At least this time, the colour reproduction is better and isn’t as pale, though still the images are pretty soft and the background is overexposed in some of them. The quality of it gets worse at night.
In the image comparison above, we took a selfie in the darkest part of our neighborhood, as in, pretty much with zero lights. After that, we took another selfie with the flash activated. The flash is really bright and my face is now visible. Due to the small sensor size of the front camera, it works terribly at night situations but with the help of the flash, at least you can see a face here. Still not of impressive quality, but we want to show you how really useful that flash is in certain situations.
In terms of cameras, the Tecno Spark Go is alright. It has its quirky features but we’ll let you explore them. Oh, if you wanna see us ’em, be sure to check out our TikTok! Not everything has to be in writing. See you in Part 3!
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