Tecno Phantom X2 Pro Review – Good Phone, Bad Pricing?

Tecno has been making phones in the budget category for quite some time. Now the company has decided to enter the premium phone segment with its latest phone launch, Tecno Phantom X2 Pro. Coming at a premium price, the phone does pack a bunch of features and good specs.

The Tecno Phantom X2 Pro has been launched in Saudi Arabia. The phone starts at SAR 3,499 (around Rs. 76,700) for the 12GB RAM and 256GB storage variant.

The phone is available in two different colour options: Mars Orange and Stardust Grey. Phantom X2 Pro is expected to launch in India soon and the Indian pricing is yet to be revealed.

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The Tecno Phantom X2 Pro packs the following items inside the box:

• Phone
• Type-C cable
• 45W charger
• Wired earphones
• Hard case
• Sim ejector tool
• Documentation

Before we talk in detail about the Tecno Phantom X2 Pro, let’s see what the on-paper specs look like:

• Display: 6.8 inches AMOLED
• Chipset: MediaTek Dimensity 9000
• RAM & ROM: 12GB RAM 256GB Storage
• Software: Android v12
• Rear camera: 50MP + 50MP + 13MP
• Selfie camera: 32 MP
• Battery: 5160 mAh
• Weight: 201 grams
• Dimensions: 164.6 x 72.7 x 8.9 mm

Tecno Phantom X2 Pro will catch your eyes from far. It’s a big punchy looking phone which is hard to forget. The main highlight is that big camera unit at the back. You will see large camera lenses and one of them has a colour accent around it.

I have the Mars Orange colour variant with me for the review, but the phone is also available in Stardust Grey. Well, I love the orange colour variant, it’s very eye catching and got the striking looks. The grey variant is for those who want a more aesthetic and clean look.

The Phantom X2 Pro has a sturdy and solid feel to it. I can appreciate the fact that its chassis exhibits little to no flex. The Phantom X2 Pro’s back side is made of plastic, which Tecno claims is all recycled. You’ll notice a Phantom branding on the backside which looks very subtle.

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The frame is made of metal, while the front is protected by Gorilla Glass Victus. All this ruggedness, still the phone doesn’t feel so comfortable in my hands. That’s mainly because of the big display and weight of 201 grams which doesn’t put it under the lightweight category.

Talking about ports and button placements, the right side has the power button and volume rockers, while the left side is clean. The top just has a microphone hole and the bottom side holds the type-C port, SIM card tray, and a speaker grill.

The button feels nice and gives good tactile feedback. Overall, the design of Tecno Phantom X2 Pro will make you say WoW at the first glance. Yep, it’s that good.

Let’s now talk about the camera on Tecno Phantom X2 Pro. It packs a triple camera setup on the back which includes a 50MP primary camera, a 50MP portrait lens and a 13MP ultrawide lens. The front side has a 32MP camera housed inside the punch hole cutout for taking selfies.

The 50MP camera takes excellent photos in daylight. The images were sharp and detailed with punchy colours. The dynamic range was also wide. The phone takes 50MP photos quickly, which adds a further reason to consider using the mode.

The Phantom X2 Pro captured fabulous portraits that made the subject stand out while also providing a natural bokeh effect. The subject appears sharp in contrast to the background, thanks to the camera’s shallow depth of field.

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Even though Tecno made a big deal out of its portrait lens, the image quality doesn’t really set it apart from other flagship phones, even though the bokeh effect is admirable.

Although the ultrawide lens is not really up to par, it often manages to produce usable images. There’s a dedicated night mode which makes a significant difference for night time shots, and it activates automatically if the camera app detects insufficient light levels.

The Phantom X2 Pro has an incredibly impressive 32MP selfie camera. It captures a lot of detail and sharpness, resulting in stunning selfies with natural-looking skin tones. You can also take portrait selfies which were good as well.

Coming over to videos, the Phantom X2 Pro can record 4K videos at 60fps using the main camera and 1080p videos at 30fps using the selfie camera. The main camera shoots superb 4K videos. There is a ton of detail, and the colours look natural and appealing.

The Tecno Phantom X2 Pro packs a big 5160 mAh battery which, umm is a bit rare number to see but it delivers a good battery backup. It has enough juice to last you a full day of usage, even if you play games a lot.

If you are a light user, you might still leave some juice for the next day. I got a little more than six hours of screen on time, which is pretty good. My usage involved playing some games, watching episodes of Lucifer, and scrolling through the reels on Instagram.

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All that good battery life, but ultimately, you have to charge the phone. And the Phantom X2 Pro comes with 45W fast charging support to juice that big battery. I would have appreciated if Tecno offered better charging speeds, like 80W or 120W, similar to what other brands offer at this price.

The company claims the 45W fast charger can charge the phone to 50 per cent in just 20 minutes. But realistically speaking, it took about 45 minutes to reach there. Nonetheless, the 45W fast charger takes about an hour and a half to fully charge the phone from 0 to 100 per cent. Do note that there’s no support for wireless charging.

The Tecno Phantom X2 Pro features a big FHD+ 6.8 inches AMOLED display with a resolution of 1080 x 2400 pixels. It comes with a refresh rate of 120Hz and a peak brightness of 500 nits. You can choose between 60Hz, 120Hz and Auto mode in the settings.

The animations, app opening, app switching, everything feels super smooth on the screen. I loved scrolling through my Instagram feed and playing games on this display. However, there was one issue – the brightness. 500 nits of peak brightness is less, considering it’s a flagship phone.

Things are fine indoors and you won’t face any issues until you step outdoors. It gets pretty tough and annoying to read texts and see icons properly in direct sunlight.

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Thanks to the AMOLED panel, the display quality is great. The blacks are deep, the contrast is good, colours are punchy and vibrant. I watched some movies on Netflix and my experience was amazing. Viewing angels was good as well.

There’s no HDR support but thankfully, it comes with Widevine L1 certification which means you can stream high-quality content on OTT platforms like Netflix and Prime Videos. The bezels are pretty thin on all the sides and there’s nothing to distract you away apart from the small punch hole cutout on the top.

Tecno Phantom X2 Pro is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 9000 chipset which is paired with 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of internal storage. The processor itself is extremely powerful, with ample power to go around. I faced no issues in performing day to day activities.

Opening and closing apps, taking pictures, and even multitasking, everything went on smoothly. The RAM management was also quite good. It has plenty of RAM to keep apps running in the background. I tried it and the good thing is that the apps opened from where I left them.

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The Phantom X2 Pro is a powerful performer that can handle graphically demanding games and render graphics with ease. Talking about games, I tried some graphic intensive games like Genshin Impact, Apex Legends Mobile and Call of Duty Mobile. I am pretty confident in saying that all the games ran on high settings with no issues.

I played death matches on CoD Mobile and some battle royals in Apex Legends for straight one hour. Trust me, there were no lags, no frame drops or any other kind of hiccups. It’s safe to say that you can play any kind of game on this and it won’t let you down.

Practically speaking, I had no performance issues at all with the Phantom X2 Pro. From casual tasks to gaming, the phone easily consumes everything I throw at it.

The Tecno Phantom X2 Pro runs on HiOS 12 which is based on Android 12. HiOS isn’t really my favourite Android flavour. You can see notifications by swiping from the top left corner, and quick action controls by swiping from the top right corner, just like in MIUI.

HiOS includes a lot of features, such as edge panels, floating windows, and duplicate apps. The alphabetised listing makes the app drawer appear cluttered, and there is no way to change this arrangement. There is a lot of bloatware pre-installed on this device, most of which can be disabled, but Tecno’s own apps cannot.

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There were times when the third-party apps were bombarding me with notifications which got irritating to the point I had to disable them from the app settings.

Along with an always-on mode, you also have a good range of clock styles to choose from, just like ColorOS and MIUI. Given Tecno’s track record, it appears that the device will have to wait a long time for Android 13.

The Tecno Phantom X2 Pro features a single bottom-firing speaker which is just average. Generally, we see a stereo speaker setup at this price, but Tecno fails to provide that. The audio quality is nothing special or worth a flagship phone.

The phone has 5G connectivity. The phone is yet to launch in India, so we don’t know what bands it will support. Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth v5.3, GPS, and NFC.

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Talking about biometrics, the phone features an in-display fingerprint sensor. It’s both snappy and reliable. I didn’t have to tap multiple times to unlock the phone. You can also use the face unlock feature but it’s less secure.