Tecno Phantom X2 and X2 Pro Review: flagship ghosts

Content

1. Video review
2. Equipment and design
3. Software
4. Camera
5. Performance and Benchmarks
6. findings

In 2021, Tecno released its, relatively speaking,the first flagship smartphone is the Phantom X. Everything was good there: AMOLED with a hertz, a Samsung GN1 sensor at the base, a 48-megapixel front camera, a telephoto lens, fast charging, a fingerprint scanner under the screen and a stylish glass-metal body. The only thing missing was a top-end processor, because the Helio G95 is by no means a flagship chip. And now, a year and a half later, at the very end of 2022, the company is showing the world the Phantom X2 and X2 Pro based on the Dimensity 9000. Well, is Tecno now “in the game”? Let's see if the company was able to make a real flagship.

	Specifications
	Tecno Phantom X2	Tecno Phantom X2 Pro
Network	2G, 3G, 4G, 5G
Firmware	Android 12 with HiOS 12
Screen	6.8", 2400×1080 dots, 20:9, AMOLED, 120Hz, 800 nits, Gorilla Glass Victus
Chipset	MediaTek Dimension 9000, 4 nm CPU: 1 x X2 x 3.05 GHz + 3 x A710 x 2.85 GHz + 4 x A510 x 1.8 GHz GPU: Mali-G710MP10
Ram	8 GB	12 GB
ROM	256 GB
SIM and memory card	Two nano-SIM slots
Camera	Main: 64 MP, 1/1.72", Samsung GWB, f/1.65, autofocus, 5G 1P, OIS, video recording 2160p@60fps wide angle: 13 MP, 1/3", Samsung 3L6, f/2.2, autofocus, video recording 1080p@30fps Additional: 2 MP, 1/5", GC02M	Main: 50 MP, 1/1.3", Samsung GNV, f/1.85, autofocus, 7P, video recording 2160p@60fps wide angle: 13 MP, 1/3", Samsung 3L6, f/2.2, autofocus, video recording 1080p@30fps telescopic: 50 MP, 1/2.76", Samsung JN1, f/1.49, autofocus, video recording 2160p@60fps
Selfie	hole in the center, 32 MP, fixed focus, f/2.5
Battery	5160 mAh
Charging	USB Type-C, 45 W
Wireless interfaces	Wi-Fi Bluetooth 5.3
NFC	there is
Biometrics	Fingerprint scanner (on screen)
Sound	Mono
Water protection	Not declared
Dimensions and weight	146.6 x 72.7 x 8.9mm

Video review 

Equipment and design 

Tecno Phantom X2 and X2 Pro come inidentical black boxes with the same set of accessories: 45-W charger, USB cable, documentation, SIM needle, wired headphones and case. The headphones seemed quite comfortable to me and quite acceptable in sound; it is curious that although they connect to a smartphone via USB Type-C, they are completely analog, that is, they use USB in analog mode. You can do that too, just imagine!

Deserves even more attentioncomplete cover. This is not cheap silicone, but a high-quality plastic case made of materials that are very pleasant to the touch (much better than any frosted glass or ceramics). They completely protect the camera and protrude slightly above the screen from top to bottom, but leave the ends open. I think this is done on purpose, and towards the end of the review I will explain why. The ring around the camera can rotate and become a stand for the phone. Very cool feature! It is clear that with an iPhone or Galaxy you can easily find such a third-party case, but consumers of Chinese flagships are often deprived of this happiness.

However, let's remove the covers and see whatmade by the Phantom X2 and X2 Pro themselves. Glass on the front, aluminum on the ends, a glass insert on top for some reason, and plastic on the back. But do not rush to swear - this is not glossy deshmanism, but excellent material, barely distinguishable from frosted glass to the touch. Yes, and looks too. But the camera block is made of really cheap glossy plastic, also without oleophobic – it gets dirty just like that. There are two colors: black and blue for the X2 and black and orange for the X2 Pro. The orange X2 Pro is made from recycled plastic collected from the Indian Ocean. Great initiative, but why aren't all the other X2s from it? Is plastic so expensive in the Indian Ocean?

I rarely like the ergonomics of curvedsmartphones, but the Phantom X2 and X2 Pro lie in the hand like a glove. In this they are very similar to the Infinix Zero Ultra; Apparently, they were developed together. I can only complain about the narrow buttons on the ends. Well, the classic problems of curved screens are in place: glare at the edges, difficulties with sticking films and all that. By the way, there is no factory film on the Phantom X2, so you will have to solve this problem right away.

More about the screen: 6.8", 2400×1080 dots, 20:9, AMOLED, 120 Hz, 800 nits, Gorilla Glass Victus.It sounds cool, it looks cool.PWM is small over the entire brightness range (mostly up to 15%, sometimes it reachesThere are a few hertz jambs typical of Transsion smartphones: even at forced 120Hz, some apps (YouTube, Telegram) workat 60 Hz; The frequency is also forcibly cut when the battery charge is below 20% (there is no way to turn this off).Gradually, the problem is being fixed in new Infinix models, maybe someday the Phantom X2 and X2 Pro will be fixed.Hidden under the screen is an optical fingerprint, which works accurately, but, like all similar sensors, not very fast.

And now about two significant disadvantages.Firstly, smartphones do not have a stereo, and even the only multimedia speaker is of very poor quality. For Camon or Pova, such a sound would be normal, but this is unacceptable in a flagship. Secondly, Tecno for some reason squinted at the linear vibration motor and installed a buzzer here. Good, powerful, loud buzzer. Of course, a couple of years ago we lived without a tap in most models on the market; but now, in this parameter, Tecno has lost to everyone around.

Software 

Tecno Phantom X2 and X2 Pro come with Android12 and HiOS 12. The Tecno shell has already reached the point where it does not cause dissonance with the expensive smartphone on which it is installed. Pleasant, modern, functional, nimble, rarely buggy. I won't go into details, I'll just use screenshots.

There is only one moment where I would like tostop in more detail. These are updates. As of January 22, 2023, the smartphone is still sitting with the security patch for September 5, 2022, that is, outdated by 3 months by the time the device was announced. I did not receive any OTA during testing. Promised updates to Android 13 and Android 14, but their timing is not called. And it may take a long time to wait: the Tecno Camon 18 Premier camera phone (review), released at the end of 2021, received an update to Android 12 only in January 2023. We hope for the best, but be warned.

Cameras 

That's where we get to the main difference between smartphones: the cameras.The only thing the two models have in common is 13MP wides with autofocus, built on the basis of a 1/3" Samsung 3L6 sensor.The base Phantom X2 also uses a 64-megapixel main camera with OIS based on a 1/1.7" Samsung GWB sensor (similar to the GW1 with an RGBW filter) and a 2-megapixel GC02M1 earplug, while the flagship uses a 50-megapixel base based on a 1/1.3" Samsung GNV sensor (analogue of GN1) and a 50-megapixel retractable telephoto lens based on a 1/2.76" JN1 sensor.It is the telephoto lens that has become the main feature of the X2 Pro, so we will dwell on it in great detail, but a little later, but for now look at the photo examples.

Phantom X2

Phantom X2 Pro

Let's start with the main cameras.The Phantom X2 Pro shoots amazingly - soft natural color reproduction, excellent detail, minimum noise. Even at night, the large sensor pulls out shots, although OIS would have been much better. OIS is in the younger model, but it shoots weaker; even the superiority in detail that you would expect from a 64-megapixel camera is not felt. Instead, there is an oversharp and a more aggressive palette. The widths are shot exactly the same, if you do not take into account one defective example from the X2 Pro - I don’t know what kind of stereo photo he took. During the day, Shirik shoots cool landscapes and macro; at night it tries to pull out frames due to ISO, but this leads to an abundance of noise. The Phantom X2 Pro telephoto allows you to zoom in well, as well as take interesting object photos and portraits, and this is worth dwelling on in more detail.

"Why did Tecno make a retractable telephoto lenk in the first place?There are a lot of normal telephoto lenses on the JN1!" Well, in fact, nothing is "complete", there are only two of them: the Xiaomi 12/S Pro and the Tecno Camon 19 Pro.And both are very weak – 2x versus 2.5x here." Oh well, there is a light on JN1Yes, a lot, but most of them are based on very small sensors: 1/3.4" in the iPhone 14 Pro/Max, 1/3.5" in the Xperia 5 IV, 1/3.75" in the Xiaomi 13, 1/3.94" in the Galaxy S22/ , 1/4" in the iQOO 11, 1/4.4" in the OnePlus 10 Pro."Why is that, I wonder?" because if you zoom in on the sensor,This increases the angle of view, and it is necessary to make the module "thicker" in order to increase the focal length and, as a result, return the previous angle of view.And you can't increase the thickness of the smartphone indefinitely. Xiaomi's 13 Pro managed to make a 50MP telephoto lens with 3.2x – but only thanks to the fact that they already had a huge blob from1" cameras, and you could go all out.

But there is another problem.We usually want the subject we are photographing to stand out from the background. However, if we make the sensor half as small and move twice as far from the object, without changing anything else in the camera design (a la digital zoom), then the depth of field will double (that is, the bokeh will become twice as bad). And if we also reduce the optics in proportion to the sensor, as manufacturers usually do with smartphone TVs, then it will be four times. For subject and portrait shooting, this is not at all suitable. Therefore, Tecno decided to equip the telephoto with incredibly large optics (hole diameter 6.2 mm versus 3.7 mm for the main camera or, for example, 4.5 mm for the Xiaomi 12S Ultra base) to make the depth of field almost the same as on the main camera! For this, of course, a very large module was needed, a smartphone without mechanics that did not fit into a thin case.

“Okay, what about the portraits?Why should I go away and then shoot on a TV set? I can shoot with the main camera!” You can, of course, but do not forget that the perspective depends on the viewing angle - the wider it is, the larger what is close (nose, eyebrows, cheeks) and the smaller what is far away (cheekbones, ears, hair). People are more proportionate and banally more beautiful if you shoot them on a telephoto. And besides, you don’t have to worry about the huge landscape in the background: only a small part of it is visible. So the fast telephoto Tecno Phantom X2 Pro is a one-of-a-kind portrait camera in a smartphone that handles this scenario better than any other camera in any other phone. True, you have to pay for this with a mechanical design, the reliability of which, to be honest, raises certain doubts.

Enough about TV. A few words about the front camera: 32 MP, fixed focus, f/2.5. I liked the selfies, worthy of a flagship level.

Video can be written in 2160p@60fps on maincamera and telephoto, 1080p@60fps in front and 1080p@30fps in wide. Switching between cameras in the course of shooting is not available at all. In the absence of OIS and with such limitations, video recording is clearly not the strong point of the X2 Pro. There are only two microphones, so you are not supposed to have any audio zoom or windswitch.

Performance and tests 

Hardware basis of Tecno Phantom X2 and X2 Prothe same - last year's flagship MediaTek Dimensity 9000 chipset. Not a plus, but the difference between 9000 and 9000+ is minimal, so there is nothing to worry about in this regard. Both models are sold with only 256 GB of internal memory (there is no microSD slot), but the amount of RAM is different: 8 GB for the X2 and 12 GB for the X2 Pro. The filling is excellent, but it must be taken into account that smartphone manufacturers switched to glass and metal in their flagships for a reason. Plastic does not remove heat well, so all cooling in the Phantom X2 is carried out through the ends and the screen, which heat up very much under load, it becomes unrealistic to hold a smartphone in your hands. They didn’t close the ends with a complete cover, I think, for the same reason: if you block the heat sink also through the sidewalls, the smartphone simply won’t be able to cool down.

Phantom X2

Phantom X2 Pro

Throttling would also be weaker, put Tecnoglass or metal cover. However, even with this level of performance on a smartphone, any heavy games are great for a long time (I checked SuperTuxKart, Genshin Impact and ARK: Survival Evolved). Everything is fine in Genshin Impact, if you forget about the lack of stereo, but in SuperTuxKart and ARK there are problems: the smartphone gets very hot, dims the brightness (in STK - by 70% in 12 minutes), and it becomes not very comfortable to play. Strange situation.

Phantom X2

Phantom X2 Pro

The battery capacity of the Tecno Phantom X2 and X2 Pro is 5160 mAh.This is one of the largest batteries among flagship smartphones(100% brightness, 120 Hz frequency): in an hour in SuperTuxKart, the smartphone discharged by 29%, in an hour in the browser - by 13%, in an hour of video display - by 6%.With "light" use, you can expect up to 8 hours of screen, which is very cool; And here's theUnder heavy load, the Phantom X2 Pro can discharge to zero in 3-3.5 hours.I'm calling the numbers with the X2 Pro, which I tested without a SIM card; An X2 with a SIM card and an enabled VPN runs out of battery a little faster.

What about charging speed?The complete 45-W unit, according to the manufacturer's promises, should fully charge the smartphone in an hour; we got 70 minutes (in an hour - up to 95%). The difference can be explained not only by cunning on the part of Tecno, but, for example, by the fact that our test samples come with blocks with some kind of overseas plugs. We tested charging with an adapter, and theoretically this could introduce a certain error.

Conclusions 

Did Tecno make it into the big leagues? I think yes.It was not without jambs - in the older model they forgot OIS, in both - a stereo and a linear vibration motor, the use of a plastic cover became a controversial decision. However, Tecno has delivered top-end hardware, good cameras and a screen, as well as excellent design and ergonomics. At the same time, Tecno did not forget another important component - chips: an awesome complete case and a unique fast telephoto lens (so what if I spent three paragraphs explaining its meaning?).

There remains the question of price.Phantom X2 is sold in Russia for 41,990 rubles; X2 Pro can be found from 59,990 rubles. These are not stunning prices that make the product much more attractive than competitors, but not an “overprice” either. Not cheaper, and not more expensive than devices of similar level. Therefore, if you liked the Phantom X2 chips and do not bother with its jambs - welcome. And we are waiting for the Phantom V Fold - only a few days before the announcement!

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© Oleg Lazarev.