Tecno Pova 5 review: New budget gaming king?

in the Pova 5 series that’s set to be released with the Pova NEO 3 and the Pova 5 Pro probably in the next few weeks.

The Pova 5 Series is a special collaboration with the popular mobile Battle Royale game Garena Free Fire, which probably explains why it’s so optimized for the game, but we’ll get to that later.

again by Kelly, this time as your wallpaper. This Free Fire partnership also gives you a set of customized live wallpaper (Hayato/Kelly/Moco/Maxim/ Wukong), app icons, and a lot of customized ringtones for incoming calls and notifications—in several languages. My favorite tone is Unstoppable, but spoken in Indonesian. I just wished they had a couple of other Free Fire themes to choose from.

CONFESSION time: I almost missed my deadline this week because I was having too much fun playing Free Fire on the Techo Pova 5. “Fun,” meaning, I was finally racking some kill streaks and placing in the top five most of the time. And for someone who sucks at first-person shooters (I always lose to my nephew Tomi in Call of Duty—and he’s five), it’s given me back some dignity, enough to keep me playing the past few days.

The Pova 5 is the latest entry-level gaming phone from Tecno Mobile, a brand that has been getting quite the attention from gamers and tech enthusiasts for its streak of great-value smartphones. It is the first

‘SARI-SARI’

Enabler Packworks Welcomes New Advisory Board Member

PACKWORKS, a local startup that provides a business-to-business (B2B) open platform to sari-sari stores, recently welcomed former Lazada chairman and CEO Ray Alimurung to its Board of Advisors.

Alimurung joins the ranks of former Trade secretary Ramon Lopez; Angkas founder Angeline Tham; ZQR Corp. founder and CEO Simon Paterno, who is also a former president and CEO of the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP), and former executive vice president of the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), and Integrated Microelectronics Inc. CEO and vice chairman Arthur Tan, who is also president and chief executive office of AC Industrial at Ayala-View.

“Mr. Alimurung has been at the forefront of the e-commerce industry in the Philippines, and his addition to Packworks’ Board of Advisors brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to our pursuit of further unlocking the potential of our ‘saripreneurs’ and ‘nanaypreneurs,’” said Ibba Bernardo, cofounder and chief marketing officer of Packworks.

Alimurung is currently a general partner at early-stage investment firm Kaya Founders. Prior to this, he led Lazada’s Philippine expansion as its first Filipino CEO from 2018 to 2022. He also served as the CEO of Commerce Philippines and worked with Amazon.

“We are excited about what he will bring to the table towards our mission of enhancing the B2B open platform for sari-sari stores and driving the growth of the country’s e-commerce landscape,” Bernardo added. “We look forward to his invaluable insights as we continue to uplift MSMEs.”

Packworks started as a solution for multinational companies in the Philippines in 2018 with only a few sari-sari store partners.

After raising $2 million in seed fund last year, it launched its mobile enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform and now provides technology solutions to over 200,000 sari-sari stores across the Philippines. Through the Sari.PH Pro app, sari-sari store owners can access pricing tools, inventory management, sales and revenue tracking, and working capital loans.

Packworks will represent the Philippines at the Startup World Cup 2023 in Silicon Valley in December after winning Ignite 2022’s Startup World Cup (SWC) x Wildfire Pitch competition in October last year.

I was able to review the first couple of Pova phones a few years back, so I was quite curious how it’s improved and if it stood a chance in the very competitive budget gaming segment. Well, I’d say from the moment I got my hands on its oddly-shaped box, I was immediately impressed. The Pova 5 arrives snugly nestled within a triangular box, reminiscent of a giant Toblerone, setting it apart from the conventional brick-shaped boxes all other phones use, while also making me crave for some chocolate.

This “prism” box has an explanation behind it, as the Pova Series is committed to three performance selling points in every generation, namely, power system, processor, and high refresh rate. These selling points form the golden triangle for a smartphone, showcased by the unique product packaging design of the series. Since this is also a special edition collab with Free Fire, you get a special sleeve that features Kelly. I heard that this is just part of a bigger artwork, which will be completed once the Pova 5 Pro and NEO come out and we get to place the boxes side by side.

I also like how you can also use this prism box as a phone stand so you don’t need to lean your phone on a mug or bottle when you want to watch a video.

The box opens at the bottom. Inside, you’ll find everything you need to get you started. There’s the phone unit, paper documents, a 12+1 warranty card, a beefy 45W wall charger and USB-C cable, and some Free Fire stickers that you can use to personalize the plastic case. Techno also chucked in a Free Fire gift card, which you can redeem on the official website for some goodies. I was also surprised they included a pair of earphones, which is a rarity these days.

After the initial setup, you’ll be greeted

■ MECHA AWAKENING. As far as design goes, the Pova 5 is one of my top favorites and probably among the best-looking this year. I’m not much of a fan of its previous diamond-cut patterns, but this Turbo Mecha Design is hardcore cool. It’s available in Mecha Black, Hurricane Blue, and Amber Gold. The Black is too shiny and such a fingerprint magnet, while the blue doesn’t feel too mecha for me. The Amber Gold variant? Just fabulous. The 3D look, turbo stripes, and patterns remind me of armor plates and there are even some “screw” marks to add even more details.

I’m also a fan of how its camera module is flush with almost no camera bump.

The volume rocker and power button/fingerprint reader are on the right. On the left is a hybrid SIM tray slot, while on the bottom you’ll find the speaker grill, USB Type-C port, microphone, and headphone jack. The other speaker grill is located on the top. The Pova 5 is a big hefty device measuring 168.61×76.61×9.00 mm with a 6.78-inch Full HD display. The screen is crisp and vibrant and gives you a couple of color options to further personalize your display. This size is perfect for gaming and watching videos. It’s worth noting that you could watch HD streaming content on the Pova 5 as well. You also get a 120Hz refresh rate and a 240Hz touch sampling rate for responsive, smooth control, which is quite rare for phones at this price point. For audio, the dual speakers have both DTS and Hi-Res certification, which makes the entire viewing and gaming experience more immersive.

■ ON FIRE

PERFORMANCE: The Techo Pova 5 is powered by a MediaTek Helio G99 chipset, which allows for a smooth and fast experience. Besides Free Fire, I also tested out a range of games including, Asphalt Legends, Mobile Legends, PUBG, and Genshin Impact, as well as my favorite casual puzzle games. It comes with 8GB of RAM that you can further expand to 16GB via extended RAM. You can choose from an 8GB +128GB or 256GB configuration and The Pova 5 had no noticeable issues with any of the games. I was impressed by how well it ran everything smoothly with almost no lag or slowdown. Keeping things cool for the Pova 5 are the 10749 mm2 ultra-large Heat Dissipation Area and 1399.65 mm2 Vapor Chamber cooling + 9349.39 mm2 Graphene heatsink. With up to 10 layers of heat dissipation, chip temperature reduces by over 5°C while reloading game scenes, delivering 2x better cooling performance than the previous generation, according to the brand. vloggers and content creators. Beauty mode also comes with all the

The Pova 5 has a dedicated Gaming Center called the Panther Engine 2.0. This feature offers a lot of options to optimize your gaming experience, from blocking notifications to automatically rejecting incoming calls so you can play without distraction. With AI intelligent and real-time monitoring of frame rate, intelligent scheduling performance continues to stabilize frames, avoiding cliff drops and improving the stability of frame rate for long-time use applications, allowing you to run your games more smoothly and stably.Footfall Audio also helps a lot with those FPS games. It can be frustrating if you can’t hear the footsteps of approaching enemies. To enhance the sound effect of footsteps, the game provides improved audio effects, allowing you to clearly discern the direction of your enemies.

■ CAMERAS. While the Pova 5 isn’t made for photography, its 50MP main camera does not disappoint. You can still get excellent shots outdoors and with ideal lighting conditions. Indoor shoots can be a bit trickier. You can also get that bokeh effect on portraits, thanks to the secondary depth sensor camera. Worth noting are the 12 sky-themed filters that can help you create one-of-a-kind photos magically with just one tap and dual video that lets you shoot using both back and its 8MP selfie camera, a must for aspiring vloggers and content creators. Beauty mode also comes with all the filters and adjustment options and even an AI smart beauty effect feature to make sure you look your best. For those who like adding watermarks to their photos, the Pova 5 lets you add not only a customized text but also the brand, time, and city, and even arrange the order of your watermark.

MEGA BATTERY. To make sure that the Pova 5 can keep up with those marathon gaming sessions, it comes equipped with a 6000mAh battery with 45W smart charging capabilities.

You can get a 10 percent charge in 3 minutes, 50 percent in 21 minutes, and fully charge in just over an hour. It also supports 10W reverse charging so you could charge your smart watches, headphones, etc. In our tests, it was able to last us two days with light gaming and our usual social media and streaming their photos, the Pova 5 lets you add the ■ BATTERY. gaming it smart charging capabilities. charge our gaming and our usual social media and streaming apps.

Priced at P7,999 for the 8GB+128GB variant and P8,499 for the 8GB+256GB option, the Techo Pova 5 is an easy recommendation for gamers on a budget or those looking for a secondary phone for gaming. It has a huge and clear display, a very coollooking mecha design, snappy performance, and a long-lasting battery that keeps it going long after your hands tire out from those intense shootouts. ■

End-call button on the move? What to know about Apple’s iOS 17 change

NEW YORK—Hanging up that phone call? The location of Apple’s red end-call button is set to slightly move with upcoming iOS 17 updates to the phone app, so be wary of your thumb’s muscle memory.

As iPhone users know, the “End” button currently sits prominently away from other call options, in a center position towards the bottom of the screen. But with iOS 17, which officially launches this fall, the red icon will move the right—and other features will move down to join it.

While an iOS 17 preview guide from Apple showed this new setup in June, renewed attention has increased as some explore beta versions of the software upgrade. Images from iOS 17 beta versions shared by multiple news outlets this week show the small—but potentially frustrating—change.

Beyond the end button, there are additional changes to the placement of other call features seen on past iOS versions. The “Mute” and “Speaker” buttons, for example, have swapped—as have the “FaceTime” and “Keyboard” options. And it appears the feature allowing you to search for contacts has merged with the add call option.

The changes have already received reactions on social media, where some predict having some muscle memory errors, noting it could take some time to adjust.

It’s unclear if the call functions will change further before iOS 17 officially rolls out. The Associated Press reached out to Apple for comment on Wednesday.

As Apple notes on its website, the company’s beta program allows some Apple users to test out software before it’s released. Feedback from participants helps Apple identify issues and improve software programs before they’re commercially released.

Beyond potential tweaks to call icon locations, iOS 17 is set to bring an array of new features to Apple customers—including improved autocorrect, a new journal app and live voicemail transcription with the ability to pick up and answer as someone is leaving a message. AP