Chinese smartphone company Tecno has slowly but surely established the brand in South Africa, coming out with products playing in the midrange to lower end of the price spectrum. One of its first 5G devices is the Spark10 5G, which retails in the region of R5 000 – one of the cheapest 5G smartphones in South Africa.

Having used the device for a few weeks, it’s clear that overall, the Spark10 5G is a solid offering from the brand, if you can forgive it a few sins. 

To start, the good - the interesting styling on the device, featuring a rectangular pattern sprucing up the back that adds a bit more than just the regular, run-of-the-mill solid colours. Moreover, the smartphone also provides a straight-edged design, as opposed to the rounded edges of many other Android devices, which some might find more comfortable to hold. 

Tecno also included a solid 5000 mAh battery for the Spark10 5G that’s capable of powering it for more than 24 hours, depending on usage of course.

When it comes to the display, on offer is a 6.6” IPS LCD to do business with, however, here the specs start to reflect a lower mid-range experience. This screen has a resolution of 720 x 1612, instead of a denser, full HD pixel count, plus you do have quite a thickish border around the screen - not something you see anymore on higher priced units.

 Powering this 5G phone is the decent octa-core Mediatek Dimensity 6020 chipset which is no slow poke and keeps things running fairly smoothly. Money was saved on RAM though, with only 4 GB doing duty on the Spark10 5G. This shows when using more intensive apps, with the shutter sound for example on the camera just lagging a split-second between touch and capture.

64 GB of storage space should be enough for most, with one space saving tip to turn down the megapixel count when taking pictures. Talking of which, Tecno provides a 50MP camera that does well in most circumstances. The 8 MP front facing camera also does the job, with the three adjustable levels of flash brightness for selfies an interesting drawcard for those in it for the ‘Gram.  

One letdown was the volume of the onboard speaker, with this being a bit too low when listening to YouTube videos or audiobooks, even perhaps for certain phone calls.

For between R4 500 - R5 000 depending on where you look, the Tecno Spark10 5G can get you 5G connectivity at a decent price. If that’s your foremost requirement, then you must forgive the Spark10 5G for a few shortcomings on the specifications side.