Tecno Phantom A – Great Phone At Amazing Price Point

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Tecno has introduced a new phone in the Kenyan market which has the potential to disrupt the local smartphone market the way Huawei Ideos did sometime back. Tecno Phantom A, a phone Tecno is seriously comparing with Samsung Galaxy S3 will retail at Ksh.20,000 in Kenya.

The Phantom  runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean on a 1GHz dual-core CPU, 1GB of RAM and 4GB of internal memory. External memory of up to 32GB can be added via a microSD card. The other notable features of the phone include a dual SIM feature, a 5inch touch screen, 8 mega-pixel rear camera with flash
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According to Tecno, Phantom A has been made in collaboration with TECNO’s French designers and Korean engineers. I can see what they did right there with the Korean Engineers. Of course Samsung is a Korean company, known for the quality . Tecno going for the share of Samsung market went for people who probably have  idea of what Samsung is doing. At the same time the combination of French Designers and Korean Engineers would put to rest any argument based  the quality. Chinese companies still have image problem here because of the number of electronic  counterfeits products from China.

To their credit Tecno has tried. I have used the phone in the last one and half weeks, and I think it is an awesome phone especially given the price range. Believe me from a company purely known for the dumb phones and low end smartphones, Tecno Phantom A is something. Well, the next question would be, how will it fair in the Kenyan market. At this point I think the phone has the potential to be a success in Kenya, but looking at the history, there are some cases and facts which I hope Tecno is aware of.  I have mentioned Ideos sales success in Kenya and I know many companies trying to take on the stronghold of the likes of Samsung and Nokia would definitely look at what Huawei did. But there is one question I keep on asking myself, was the success based on the price alone. To some extent I think there were other factors involved. It should be noted that Ideos was the first Android phone especially on the low end to be introduced in Kenya. The excitement about the new platform which was marketed as the entry to smartphone world worked on their favor. At that time, Kenya was a Nokia Nation and  I can remember many people who bought the phone at the time had no idea how typical android phone works. On top of that Huawei used Safaricom. Safaricom in turn used the Digital Media including the blogs to spread the word. The benefit of using Safaricom at the time was the validation it gave Ideos phone. Safaricom made it look ok and cool to buy a phone from a Chinese company.

And if you still think it is about the price alone, then you may need to take a look at the failure of Ideos successor, Huawei Ascend Y100. Ascend Y100 was priced at the same level as the original Ideos plus 1.5GB of data from Safaricom. Despite all that , it failed to fly from the shelves.

Another classic example is LG L7. By all standards, L7 is a great phone, and it  was brought in the Kenyan market at a very good price level ( Ksh.24000). But still LG did not make any much progress with L7 in Kenya. In fact,  LG L7 is as good as Samsung Galaxy  S3 and since Tecno is aiming at that market, I hope they would look at what happened to L7 seriously.

Ok…breath in, it is not all doom. In the recent times, we have seen Intel Yolo doing quite well in the market. Intel combined the quality, low pricing and smart entry strategy to conquer the market. I think Tecno has already started quite well . So far quality and the pricing are taken care of nicely. So now let us wait and see how they take it forward.

Comparing Tecno Phantom A to Samsung Galaxy S3

I was not thinking of doing the  direct comparison with Samsung Galaxy S3 but someone asked on Twitter about that. Although, Tecno is aiming at the Galaxy S3 market,  I don’t think the phone should be compared with Galaxy S3 directly. May be S2.

Camera

Both phones have 8 Megapixel Cameras but there is slight difference when come to Front Cameras. Samsung Galaxy S3 has 1.9 MP Front Camera  while that of Tecno Phantom A is 1.2MP.

Resolution

They both have 720 x 1280 pixels resolution

Storage

Tecno Phantom has internal storage space of  4GB, with microSD card slot up to 32GB , while Samsung Galaxy S3 comes in 16/32/64 GB internal storage variations. S3 also has microSD card slot, expendable to 64GB.  To improve the storage issue,Tecno will sell Phantom A with 8GB microSD Card.

Processor

Samsung Galaxy S3 has Quad-core 1.4 GHz Cortex-A9 processor while Tecno Phantom A has 1GB
1.0GHz dual-core Processor

 

 

As you can see above Samsung S3 has a little bit of an edge on Phantom A but not Galaxy S2….see the pic below
TecnoPhantom

Features

    • 8 mp rear camera with flash.
    • 1.3MP front facing camera.
    • Android 4.1 jellybean OS
    • 1GHz dualcore processor.
    • 1GB RAM.
    • 4GB internal memory.
    • 8 GB external memory expandable to 32GB.
    • 5 inch captive touch screen
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Comments

  • Interesting that you chose to use Huawei Ascend P6 image up here. That said, Tecno Phantom F7 could best compare to two year old technology, the Galaxy S 2 which would still beat it because that important factor that is internal storage.

    But it all depends on how Tecno packages it really from this point on.

    Martin Gicheru July 16, 2013 15:40

  • Changed, the image was meant to be for Huawei Ascend Y100. Thanks for that

    kachwanya July 16, 2013 15:50

  • what is the current price of phantom A+ in nigeria

    jamaal December 7, 2013 16:50

  • Rubbish. Internal storage is not worth it. Bought one and am planning to dispose it at throw away price. Storage space is pathetically limited!

    George March 25, 2014 11:17
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