The Tecno Spark 50 5G is a sleek budget phone and an exercise in patience

Tecno is known for creating low-cost smartphones for emerging markets, and its latest offering, the Tecno Spark 50 5G, borrows design cues from recent flagships while remaining easy on your wallet. I've been testing it for a couple of weeks now, and while I didn't expect much from a smartphone priced under $300, the Tecno Spark 50 5G managed to surprise me in a few ways.

That said, a larger battery and some useful AI features are compelling in a smartphone at this price point, but they unfortunately can't make up for its many other shortcomings. And while budget phones like this are known to make a number of compromises, the Tecno Spark 50 5G doesn't really make a strong case for itself.

A better-looking budget phone

One of the first things I noticed about the Tecno Spark 50 5G is that it's a very good-looking phone. The design is very similar to recent Pixel phones, such as the Pixel 10 series, thanks to the long, metal camera bar. It actually does a good job of hiding the fact that there's only one rear camera, which is a pretty good fakeout if you ask me.

Latest Videos From

Watch full video here:

The matte finish all around is a nice touch as well, helping it avoid picking up a ton of fingerprints.

The only sore spot of the design for me is the display, which is a very reflective 6.78-inch LCD panel. The bezels are very large, particularly the chin under the display, which is indicative of its budget pricing, while the panel itself is only 720p. At such a large size, the minimal resolution is very obvious, even with the help of the 120Hz panel.

It's also not a particularly bright display, so outdoor visibility isn't great, and its high reflectivity doesn't help.

On the plus side, the phone is surprisingly light, weighing just more than a Pixel 10, which is quite a bit smaller by comparison. It's also thinner than the Pixel 10 at just 8.2mm. That isn't exactly paper thin, but considering it's powered by a 6,500mAh battery, it's still impressive.

There are also some really nice color options, including the vibrant Fantasy Purple and Mint Green. The Champagne Gold color of my review unit is rather subtle and looks more like silver.

Mostly a struggle, with a few highlights

The Tecno Spark 50 5G may have the looks of a flagship phone, but it definitely doesn't perform like one. The MediaTek Dimensity 6400 seems to struggle with even the simplest of tasks, even when paired with 8GB of RAM. My daily use is fraught with constant stuttering and delays, and doing literally anything takes longer than it should to register with the device.

You might see a performance boost with additional virtual RAM, but don't expect a miracle. That goes for gaming, which somehow isn't as bad as everything else, but you won't be playing games like Honkai: Star Rail on the highest settings. You can probably get away with medium settings at 60 fps, but even then it feels like the phone is reaching its limits, though it only gets noticeably warm around the camera bar.

Speaking of the camera, performance issues extend to the single rear camera, which lags quite a bit when the viewfinder turns on. And don't expect the Tecno Spark 50 5G to capture particularly impressive images; you can get decent shots in good daylight, but photos generally lack detail and are often very noisy or overexposed. It doesn't get any better with low-light photos either.

Image 1 of 13

The bright side is that the camera comes with a neat Vlog feature that lets you create stylized videos via a series of clips. The camera will guide you on which type of clip you should capture for each scene and then stitch them together into a nice video ready for social media.

Fortunately, battery life on the Tecno Spark 50 5G is one area where the phone performs well. I easily manage well over a day with a single charge, and the phone also supports 45W charging and comes with a charger in the box. With it, you can go from 0-100% in roughly an hour, which isn't too bad given the battery's size.

AI for less

Since the Dimensity 6400 isn't a particularly powerful chip, you won't find much in the way of AI on the Tecno Spark 50 5G. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and Tecno manages to squeeze some useful and interesting features into the phone. For instance, the Gallery app still features the AI studio, which houses several AI-based editing features, including a shadow remover, reflection remover, AI eraser, and AI extender.

You shouldn't rely on on-device AI for any of these, so the quality of the features will depend on your network connection. AI eraser is decent, although reflection remover can never seem to find clearly defined reflections in images. Overall, they're pretty hit or miss, but you can always fall back on Google Photos AI editing features if need be.

The camera also has an AIGC Portrait feature that turns photos of people into AI creations, although the results are hardly ever flattering or particularly good.

Aside from the Gallery app, the Ella assistant is the main AI presence on the phone. You can access Ella pretty much the same way you'd trigger Gemini, and you can swap between the assistants if you prefer. In fact, Tecno makes it easy to switch AI models directly in the Ella overlay, including ChatGPT, Copilot, and Meta AI.

It's a useful feature at a time when consumers are using multiple AI models for different reasons, and switching between models even reveals how they respond differently to the same question. Even so, I still prefer Gemini and mainly use that as my default assistant app.

Ella also includes other useful features, like MindHub, which can save screenshots in a special folder alongside an AI summary of the content features in the image, allowing you to recall it later. It's similar to what we've seen in other devices, like recent Nothing Phone models, although the lack of a dedicated AI button means you have to tell Ella to remember the contents of your screen, which feels admittedly awkward.

You can also tell Ella to control aspects of the device. You can say something like "boost the performance" or "raise the brightness of the screen," and it will execute them almost instantly. It even responded with "Brightness goes up!" after increasing the screen brightness, which I found kind of amusing.

And of course, Circle to Search is built-in, so no matter which AI assistant you choose, you can access Gemini with a quick long-press of the home button/bar.

Verdict

Tecno hasn't specified pricing or which markets the Tecno Spark 50 5G is available in, so I recommend checking your local retailers and Tecno's website for more details. In India, for example, the phone is available for roughly under $300, depending on the configuration.

That said, the Tecno Spark 50 5G is a phone for everyone, even if it isn't the phone for everyone. Performance and camera quality leave a lot to be desired, but battery life, capable AI features, and a strong design almost make up for it, so long as you can navigate through some bloatware. However, if you can splurge for something much better, you might wanna consider the Tecno Camon 50 Ultra instead.