With the Pova 7, Tecno took a page out of Nothing’s book with the Delta Light Interface, a triangular strip of light with 104 LEDs. Now the company is going to the next level with the Alive Matrix Display. This is a small dot-matrix display in the third “lens” of the camera island (there’s only one actual camera on there, despite appearances).
The new Tecno Pova 8 is an upgrade over the Pova 7 in some respects, but a downgrade in others. It has a larger 8,000mAh battery (up from 6,000mAh). TÜV SÜD has tested the phone and found that it lasts 2 days on a single charge. That’s not all – the battery is rated for over 2,000 cycles (maintaining at least 80% of its original capacity), which works out to 6 years of use.
The battery has 45W fast charging and can go from 1% to 50% in 35 minutes. Reverse charging at 10W is an option too. However, the 30W wireless charging support of the previous phone has been removed.
And that is not the only cutback. The Pova 8 launches with the Dimensity 7100. While this chip was announced in January, making it newer than the Dimensity 7300 of the previous model, it actually uses an older semiconductor node – TSMC 6nm instead of 4nm.
The chipset has a 15,000mm² sheet of graphite to spread the heat. The Dimensity 7100 is connected to 8GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB of UFS 2.2 storage. Tecno says that the phone has been tuned to deliver stable 90fps gameplay on popular titles like Honor of Kings and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.
The triangular camera island on the back appears to have three lenses. However, only one of those is a real camera – it has a 50MP Sony Lytia 600 (1/1.95”) sensor with 2x in-sensor zoom and an AF lens. The “lens” below that is the Alive Matrix Display. The other camera on board is the 13MP selfie module.
This lives on the 6.76” IPS LCD, which has a 144Hz refresh rate and 1080p+ resolution. The display has a 240Hz touch sampling rate and Wet & Oily Finger Touch Recognition 2.0. The phone runs HiOS 16 (Android 16) out of the box.
Tecno Pova 8 in Arc White, Graphite Black, Helios Orange and Echo Green
The Tecno Pova 8 will be available soon in Arc White, Graphite Black, Helios Orange and Echo Green. Like its predecessor, the phone is rated IP64 (dust-tight, protected against water splashes).
