After 2 years in the dark, TECNO Mobile awaked its flagship series with the Phantom 9 unveiled in Uganda earlier this week. While we thought the Phantom series had followed the Boom series path, TECNO Mobile decided to turn its odds into a key on detail top tier dressed Phantom 9 smartphone pimped with a bunch of improvements from its Phantom 8 predecessor.
As per the rumor drill teasers, the Phantom 9 brings to play industry standard AR tweaks, a waterdrop notch display craze and a first of its kind for a mid-range tier in-screen fingerprint sensor. Luckily, we received a review unit from TECNO Mobile recently and here is a shot of our unboxing and first impressions take.
Unboxing the TECNO Phantom 9 and its first impressions
With a solid grey box, the Phantom 9 is housed under premium shields proving its flagship status and a straight out of the box clean attention to detail. Well, here is a shot of what you the box components that share the same premium box with a single Phantom 9 unit.
Box Contents
- USB 2.0 cable
- Charging brick
- Premium Phone cover (rubber)
- 3.5mm audio earphones
- SIM-InjectorPin
- User manual
- Warranty Card
After breaking your Phantom 9 box seal (always pay attention to its presence), a user manual, warranty card, SIM-Injector pin, and the rubber phone cover are housed in a silver packaging on top of the device.
Below the Phantom 9 unit, a charging brick, USB cable, and earphones occupy well-curated space slots at the base of the device box. In a flip, the device box is well organized with a premium touch to detail.
Phantom 9 Impressions
As the first TECNO release to feature a waterdrop notch display type, the Phantom 9 brings to play a full display norm with lesser bezels to its design as a shiny backplate adds a delicate spice to the same craze.
Impressively, the device houses all accessibility ports to the bottom giving it another beauty on the rail standard since the volume and power buttons also swing in from the right as the SIM plate further shares the left-wing of the device.
Unlike the Phantom 8, we’re excited to see an upgrade in the display notion from an IPS LCD to a super pixels AMOLED screen emitting a 1080 x 2340 pixels resolution and 19.5: 9 aspect ratio riding on a 6.4 Inches screen size. Similarly, the Phantom 9 ships a triple-lens rear camera as double soft lights also support the lone 32MP selfie version on the Smartphone.
However, we don’t like the fact that a flagship like the TECNO Phantom 9 is gifted with a plastic rear cover other than glass. But then, that doesn’t affect the performance and we hope to trail the highs and lows of the Phantom 9 in our upcoming review.
The TECNO Phantom 9 Specs sheet
| Display | Type | AMOLED Display with water drop notch |
|---|---|---|
| Size | 6.4” | |
| Resolution | 2340 x 1080 Full HD+ (19.5:9 aspect ratio) and 83.4% screen-to-body ratio | |
| Protection | Corning Gorilla Glass 4 + 2.5D Curved Glass | |
| Platform | OS | HiOS v5.0 on top of Android 9.0 (Pie) |
| Chipset | MediaTek MT6765 Helio P35 | |
| CPU | octa-core processor clocked at 2.35GHz | |
| GPU | PowerVR GE8322 GPU | |
| Memory | RAM | 6GB |
| Internal | 128GB | |
| External | MicroSD upto 512GB | |
| Network | Technology | 4G |
| SIM | Dual SIM | |
| Camera | Main | Triple setup -16MP main sensor -8MP wide-angle lens – 2MP depth sensor Other features: Quad-LED flash, Face Beautification, HDR+, AI scene recognition |
| Front | 32MP with dual-LED flash | |
| Battery | Size | 3500mAh |
| Type | Li-Ion | |
| Colors | -Lapland Aurora | |
| Extras | In-display fingerprint reader | |
| Price | $240 ( approx UGX 919,000 ) |
Price and Where to buy from
The TECNO Phantom 9 price in Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and in major Sub-Saharan African countries is more of the same as the phone retails at $240 as the basic flat rate and UGX 919,000 in Uganda. You can buy the Phantom 9 from authorized TECNO VIP shops or online via platforms like Jumia, Kilimall, Jiji among others.