Tecno Spark 10 Pro review

HiOS 12 on top of Android 13

The Spark 10 Pro runs on Android 13 and Tecno's custom HiOS 12.6 on top of that. Tecno has been running and refining its own skin for some time now, which we've generally found to be quite good in the past, with a few on-and-off caveats here and there. These mostly come down to pre-installed bloat and ads., but the experience on the Spark 10 Pro is actually pretty clean, as the bloat and the ads are noticeably reduced.

That's not to say there aren't many pre-installed apps and utilities. Tecno is still sticking to its traditions of developing and deploying its own set of apps to cover the basic features. You get an in-house gallery and video player and an app store, even two depending on how you count them. These can still get annoying at times, but we can understand the angle Tecno is coming from.

Hi Browser • AI Gallery • Phone Master • Phone Master • AHA Games • Palm Store

If some of the third-party apps are bothering you with various notifications - you can disable those - either from within the annoying app or from the Notification settings.

Getting into the Spark 10 Pro is business as usual, with both fingerprint and face recognition available. You can have the fingerprint reader unlock with just a tap or require a press as well, and you can do that for face recognition as well.

Biometrics and security

The lockscreen has a single shortcut in the bottom right to access the camera. Once you're past that, you arrive at a standard homescreen interface. The leftmost pane, called the Zero screen, holds cards with suggested news, weather and quotes widgets and an app usage widget. You can disable the Zero screen in the 'Desktop settings'. There's an app drawer by default which you can access from the old-school A-Z orange icon at the bottom or with an upward swipe from the bottom.

Lockscreen • Homescreen • Zero screen • Folder view • App drawer • Task switcher

Themes are available as part of HiOS, and there is a dedicated Theme store for this purpose.

Hi Theme

Tecno has a long-standing selection of advanced features that generally get carried forward from older models. That includes the Game mode with all the settings, statistics and parental controls. There is also a Smart panel with slide-from-the-side shortcuts.

Special function menu • Game mode • Social Turbo • Smart Panel

Social Turbo toolset is rather interesting (a WhatsApp enhancer of sorts) - it can change your voice, enhance your face during video calls, record your WhatsApp calls, and allow you to read messages without marking them as Read.

MemFusion is Tecno's name for virtual RAM. The Spark 10 Pro has 8GB of physical LPDDR4X RAM chips on board and can extend that up to 16GB with another 8GB of virtual memory. By default, MemFusion is set to 5GB.

MemFusion

Ella - Tecno's own assistant is onboard. There is FM radio app, too, as the phone does offer support. You will need to plug in some 3.5mm headphones to serve as an antenna, as usual (there are bundles ones).

Ella

Performance and benchmarks

The Tecno Spark 10 Pro utilizes the 12nm Helio G88 chipset by MediaTek, a slightly upgraded version of the dated Helio G85 SoC.

The G88 version supports 90Hz at 1080p+ and can work with 64MP main cameras instead of 48MP. This was only possible with further OEM customizations. One caveat of this entry-level chip is the lack of UFS storage support, and that's why the Spark 10 Pro uses eMMC 5.1 memory.

The octa-core CPU has 2x Cortex-A75 cores ticking at 2.0 GHz and 6x Cortex-A55 clocked at 1.8 GHz. The GPU is Mali G52 MC2 working at 1 GHz.

The Tecno Spark 10 Pro comes with 8GB RAM and has two different storage options in existence - 128GB and 256GB. There is a dedicated microSD slot, too.

The benchmark scores are in, and they are okay for this class and price range, though hardly chart-topping.

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Poco X5
  2088
• Redmi Note 12 5G
  1998
• Nokia X30
  1920
• Redmi Note 12 4G
  1797
• Realme 10
  1762
• Motorola Moto G53
  1594
• Realme C55
  1452
• Tecno Spark 10 Pro
  1358
• Redmi 10
  1294

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Poco X5
  693
• Nokia X30
  663
• Redmi Note 12 5G
  588
• Realme 10
  567
• Motorola Moto G53
  557
• Redmi Note 12 4G
  440
• Realme C55
  374
• Redmi 10
  361
• Tecno Spark 10 Pro
  359

GeekBench 6 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Redmi Note 12 5G
  2017
• Motorola Moto G53
  1797
• Realme C55
  1413
• Tecno Spark 10 Pro
  1376
• Redmi Note 12 4G
  1341

GeekBench 6 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Redmi Note 12 5G
  763
• Motorola Moto G53
  733
• Redmi Note 12 4G
  469
• Realme C55
  425
• Tecno Spark 10 Pro
  424

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Motorola Moto G53
  29
• Nokia X30
  17
• Realme 10
  17
• Realme C55
  9
• Tecno Spark 10 Pro
  8.1
• Redmi Note 12 4G
  7.5
• Meizu M5
  3.7

GFX Manhattan ES 3.0 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• Nokia X30
  48
• Motorola Moto G53
  41
• Realme 10
  40
• Realme C55
  26
• Tecno Spark 10 Pro
  25
• Redmi Note 12 4G
  20
• Meizu M5
  5.2

3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Realme 10
  1320
• Nokia X30
  1214
• Motorola Moto G53
  981
• Tecno Spark 10 Pro
  756
• Realme C55
  740
• Redmi Note 12 4G
  652

AnTuTu 9

Higher is better

• Nokia X30
  403732
• Poco X5
  400895
• Realme 10
  385829
• Redmi Note 12 5G
  360745
• Redmi Note 12 4G
  319219
• Motorola Moto G53
  314195
• Realme C55
  257263
• Tecno Spark 10 Pro
  249938

We also ran the stress test, and the stability is excellent. While the CPU score was 63%, that's because of one minor drop around the 20th minute. The rest of the time, the CPU kept about 80% of its maximum performance. The GPU stability is superb, with a 99.6% rating.

CPU test • GPU Test

The Tecno Spark 10 Pro never became hot while benchmarking, just warm.

The Tecno Spark 10 Pro has a decent overall performance, though, obviously, there are faster phones in its class. The eMMC storage is slower than UFS and if you got used to working with faster memory, you will feel the slower loading times even if there is no visible lag.