Tecno has launched its third smartphone in its Pova-series lineup in India this year, and it is a looker. The handset in question is the Tecno Pova Slim, and it shouldn’t take you a second to guess why. The smartphone boasts a sleek form factor, further enhanced by its curved display, which sets the stage for the company’s claim to be the slimmest 3D curved display smartphone. The Tecno Pova Slim measures just 5.95mm in thickness, which is slim but not as thin as the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge’s (review) 5.8mm thickness. However, Tecno can be credited for offering a bigger battery.
The Tecno Pova Slim packs a 5,160mAh battery, compared to the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge’s 3,900mAh unit. The battery’s performance in everyday use is something we’ll address in our full review, so stay tuned. For now, Tecno has managed to fit the larger battery while keeping the phone impressively slim by using the latest silicone-carbon technology, which stores more power than a regular lithium-ion battery without adding bulk. This has also contributed to the phone’s 156 grams of weight, which is lighter than the S25 Edge.
Tecno has achieved this without compromising on durability. We tried bending the device, and the smartphone passed with flying colours. Moreover, the Pova Slim offers military-grade Mil-810H durability, sports a Corning Gorilla Glass 7i protection, and is IP64 resistant to minor splashes of water and dust.
The OEM is also ensuring that, despite the Pova Slim’s big battery, users don’t have to spend hours charging the device with a 45W wired charging solution. To further sweeten things up, Tecno includes a compatible charger right in the box, saving you an extra purchase.
The Pova Slim features a distinctive design, marketed as Dynamic Mood Light. The name seems to be derived from the LED stripe that is there on the elongated camera module at the top edge. The stripe joins the two camera sensors that are positioned on either edge of the module and lights up for calls and notifications. This can come in handy, especially when the phone is on silent and placed face down on a table, ensuring you don’t miss important alerts.
The display on the Pova Slim is a 6.78-inch 1.5k 3D curved AMOLED panel that bears a 144Hz refresh rate, 4,500 nits peak brightness, and 92.6 percent screen-to-body ratio. This is pretty incredible for an affordable smartphone, ensuring a top-notch viewing experience. However, the audio setup tells a different story; the device comes with just a single speaker, albeit tuned with Dolby Atmos. While acceptable for the price range, it may lack the depth and spatial effect of a stereo speaker setup, which would have made media consumption truly complete.
At the core of the Tecno Pova Slim lies the MediaTek Dimensity 6400 SoC, which is relatively sub-par for the price range. The MediaTek chipset has appeared on phones priced under Rs 15,000, where it has been praised for satisfactory day-to-day performance. It will be interesting to see where this will place the Pova Slim in its segment, especially with the likes of Infinix GT 30 and OPPO K13 5G offering more powerful chipsets.
Moving on, the Tecno Pova Slim runs Android 15-based HiOS 15 out of the box. It would have been nice to see Android 16 pre-loaded, but it can be excused for its budget price tag. The custom Android skin brings a few practical features, as well as AI tools for call assist, writing, image generation, Circle to Search, and privacy blurring. The smartphone also gets the OEM’s in-house voice assistant, Ella AI, with support for Indian languages.
There is no word on the software support yet, but going by the Pova-series smartphone introduced earlier this year, one can expect one year of major OS and two years of security updates on Pova Slim. This is shorter than the standard two years of major OS updates within the segment.
That said, the camera optics appear on par with the competitors. The Pova Slim sports a dual-rear camera setup, comprising a 50MP primary and a 2MP auxiliary lens. The front camera is a 13MP sensor in the punch-hole setup for selfies and video calling. We will be testing the cameras out in different scenarios in our full review, so keep watching this space.
In the current scheme of things, the Tecno Pova Slim has done well to offer a slim form factor, which is a growing industry trend aimed at making devices sleeker and more comfortable to use without compromising on battery capacity. However, for its asking price of Rs 19,999, the handset’s chipset, of all things, feels somewhat underwhelming. Moreover, the limited software support may put off long-term users.
The Tecno Pova Slim is available in a single 8GB RAM + 128GB variant, and it will go on sale on September 8th via Flipkart and Amazon.
If your priorities are design, comfort, and battery, the Pova Slim deserves a look, but if performance and longevity top your list, alternatives from Infinix or OPPO may suit you better.
