To a lot of us, the most important factor we consider when choosing a smartphone is the battery capacity. In a country like Nigeria where power supply remains epileptic, adding a power bank to the list of gadgets we carry around daily is a necessity. Tecno L9 Plus solves this problem by sporting a pretty huge battery.
We unboxed this device couple of weeks ago. If you care to know what our first impressions were, you can have a look at the article here. If you love it big, Tecno L9 Plus comes with a 6.0-inch. Even though the battery is the main selling point of this device, the front camera still manages to get an LED flash for night selfies.
For navigation, Tecno Mobile arranges three capacitive soft keys just below the screen. These are not backlit though. A screen this big is supposed to pack at least 1080p resolution, but the L9 Plus comes with a 720p resolution. While it’s not the greatest display I’ve seen on mobiles devices within its price range, it still looks very acceptable nonetheless.
At the bottom is the microUSB port. The phone comes with Quick Charge and it took about two hours to complete a charge cycle from 0% to 100% (with the phone turned off). On both sides of this port are the speaker grill and microphone opening.
On the left side is an interesting button called the Super Button. I thought it was the shutter button for the camera at first, but a look at the settings showed that this button can be configured to do different things. It can be customized to control the torch, activate the camera, trigger ultra-power mode or control music play. Above this is the dual SIM tray.
The right side of the phone holds the separate microSD slot and below are the volume rocker and power button.
The top of the phone holds the earphone jack.
The original Tecno L9 didn’t come with a fingerprint sensor but this upgrade has one at the back. That’s a major upgrade. The rear camera unit too comes with a 13MP sensor, another major difference between this and the first Tecno L9 that had an 8MP camera.
The bigger a battery is, the heavier and thicker a phone gets. Considering that Tecno L9 Plus packs a 5,000mAh ‘transformer’ and a 6-inch screen, the weight and thickness are pretty reasonable.
The battery on Tecno L9 Plus is the amazing. Tecno Mobile claims it can last for 72 hours (3 days) and this is true. There’s catch though; we have different pattern of use and as my secondary device during the period of testing for this review, the battery lasted for 3 solid days. I made sure WiFi and 3G were turned off when not in use and I didn’t perform any long-term gaming.
To put things in perspective, I carried out a video loop test and the L9 Plus came out pretty strong. The result beat every single phone I’ve reviewed on this blog. With the battery at 100%, volume at 50%, brightness at 50% and Airplane Mode activated, the device played videos on VLC for exactly 16 hours 48 minutes before shutting! Now that’s a record.
As mentioned at the beginning of this review, if the biggest feature you care about on a mobile phone is a long-lasting battery, Tecno L9 Plus has got you covered.
Just as you don’t expect the battery performance on Tecno L9 Plus to be the same as the Camon CX, you also can’t expect the camera to be the same. The 13MP camera beats what’s on the previous L9 model though and surprisingly, I was able to take some pretty good shots. Here is one of the unedited pictures taken with the phone:
I was expecting a barebone camera app, but the settings look even more robust than what is available on the Camon CX camera app.
Here are more unedited sample photos taken with the L9 Plus.
You won’t be able to use your 4G SIM on the Tecno L9 Plus and that’s disappointing. It comes with only standard 3G and 2G connectivity.
The device runs Android 7.0 Nougat which is slightly customized. Unlike recent releases from Tecno with full UI customization, some parts of the the user interface still retain stock Android look.
There’s a 1.3GHz quad-core processor (MT6580) onboard, and there’s a 2GB RAM to aid multitasking. Normal operation is fine, light apps run okay. The case is different for resource-hungry heavy games though. I guess Tecno decided to go for a low power chip on this smartphone to further conserve battery life. Whatever the case is, we still ran it through Antutu benchmark and here is the result:
It comes with 16GB internal memory out of which a little bit over 9GB is usable. However, you can expand the memory via the external storage slot without the need to sacrifice using a second SIM.
Verdict
As mentioned before, this phone’s greatest power is not the performance, it is the battery life which is simply amazing. It’s a device you should use for two straight days without charging (but again, this depends on your pattern of use). If you use and abuse your phone a lot, 24 hours is still guaranteed.
Nonetheless, 4G connectivity is becoming pretty fundamental and this may be a dealbreaker unless you live in (the larger) parts of the country where network providers are yet to bless with 4G coverage.
Still, we have different needs and Tecno L9 Plus sure satisfies those who want an awesome battery life.
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