Tecno Pova Curve 2 Review: 8000mAh Battery in a Slim Phone?

The latest battery tech and processor improvements, as well as good software optimisation have made it possible for high-capacity batteries to be not necessarily the hour. Silicon-carbon batteries in lithium-ion batteries have also been used to ensure faster charging and allowed squeezing in higher capacities into compact devices. But yet we saw the launch of a large-battery smartphone like Realme P4 Power in 2026, which shockingly squeezed into ‘powerbank-sized 10,001mAh battery to normal size smartphone’.

In our review, we concluded that while the Realme P4 Power was clearly superior for the casual user, it was overkill. So, here’s the Tecno that has somehow squeezed an 8,000mAh battery into a visibly slim design of this now-day . While there are minor downgrades, little else has been added over the previous Pova Curve. Does this big-battery smartphone make sense? Are competitors better for the money? Read on to find out!

Tecno Pova Curve 2 Design: Slim and Stylish

• Dimensions – 162.68 x 77.15 x 7.42mm
• Weight – 195g
• Durability – IP64

A brand new design is also added to the new Tecno Pova Curve 2 that was released last year’s Pva CurVE. Curve 2 rounded corners with wider radii and is also just 0. slimmer 08mm – . It has a sharp-edge display with aggressively curved edges on the left and right sides of it. The same applies to the rear panel, and this gives the phone a slimmer profile or appearance than it is actually.

The Tecno Pova Curve 2 has a slim profile for a big-battery smartphone

With its curvy and rounded design, the large phone is very comfortable to hold. And, despite the matte finished polycarbonate frame and rear panel of it being quite slippery, its is also very slippery. Although the matte finish of its rear panel makes it a clear-cut, the fingerprints are collected from the rear panels. But these are hard to spot on the brighter Melting Silver review unit we were given.

A back-panel cyber theme is also present, with some outlines, the ‘Pova’ branding and layered (almost holographic) circuit-like graphics in the bottom-right corner of the panel that complements odd but cool, triple-camera module neatly placed into the top-left corner. Also visible is a orange accent next to the ‘Pova’ label and the ridged power button.

The Pova Curve 2 has some cyber-themed design elements and graphics

With the slim profile, the camera module is quite thick (although its triangular shape does not make the phone wobble when placed on a flat surface). Despite the use of polycarbonate, the Curve 2 has an basic IP64 rating for dust and water, but do not forget that damage caused by water ingress is covered under warranty.

Although it is a very cool design-wise, the Tecno Pova Curve 2 also has an even larger battery than usual 8,000mAh (not of the silicon-carbon variety)? Given that this battery is big and takes up a lot of space inside the slim body, I saw some compromises in performance too. It means there are also several corners on which to say Tecno has cut off?

Tecno Pova Curve 2 Display: A curvy affair

• Display size – 6.78-inch, 1,208 x 2,644 pixels, 439 PPI
• Display type – AMOLED, 144Hz (60-90-120Hz)
• Display protection – Gorilla Glass 7i

It has uniform borders all around the curved-edge display, which curve aggressively on the left and right sides of the exhibit. It is a very bright outside panel; images and text are clearly visible in direct sunlight after activating the Extra brightness option in Display Settings. Colours are a bit punchy at the default Original Colour setting. For example, text and images are sharp for a 1 . Resolution panel 5K resolution panel .

The curved-edge display is bright enough for watching video outdoors

This is a fake claim of 144Hz high-refresh rate, which s call as the 143Hz. default, display only goes from 60-90Hz to a low level of the display. if you need it to refresh at 120Hz, but the system does not have any way of forcing it into running at 144Hz. The display refreshes at a slightly higher 120Hz only when playing games is the time it does, . I did so, but even if I was doing that the touch sampling rate for fast-paced FPS titles came down a bit.

Widevine L1 playback is available at full HD resolution via OTT apps for widevine lar? There’s no HDR certification, although there is a lot of bright outside the sun but it looks sharp enough in OTT apps. It has one bottom-firing speaker on the phone. I think that it’s a bit loud and sounds very good, just because it is one-sided.”

Tecno Pova Curve 2 Software: An iOS 26 look-alike

• Android version – 16
• Software – HiOS 16
• Software commitment – 3 years OS + 3 years SMRs

The Tecno Pova Curve 2 is an interesting software experience that’s also unique in some ways. The design of HiOS is very iOS 26-inspired, but it adds new UI elements to make things interesting. Several Chinese smartphone brands are now offering their latest lock screen wallpaper depth-effect implementations of the new locks after iOS 26, we have seen all these. HiOS (using an ‘H’ sure makes a difference) adds things up by adding depth effect to its homescreen and also offering it ‘homescreen-based’.

When a character or object in the wallpaper gets into the way, it sounds fun and admittedly looks cool but when your icons move around (or get shffled) while they are being moved by their respective icon’s movements.

HiOS offers a depth-effect wallpaper on the homescreen as well

But other than the Homescreen Party Trick on HiOS, it is surprisingly likeable and user friendly. It’s plenty of customisation, icons and themes, fonts or even an AI theme generator to fiddle with. But there is a real consistency in the app’s UI elements that doesn’t appear on other Chinese skin types, and also exists true consistency. The other features are the usual collection of AI tools baked into HiOS native apps. The AI image editor is fine at removing objects in a clean, discreet manner. This is also a good application for the AI translator app (Hi Translate) which, in turn, unsurprisingly supports many Indian languages. HiOS had a lot of preinstalled apps and games, which I disliked about Hios. But thankfully, these could be removed from their place of installation.

Tecno Pova Curve 2 Performance: Not up to the mark

• Processor – Mediatek Dimensity 7100, 2.4GHz, 6nm
• RAM – 8GB (LPDDR5X)
• Storage – 128/256GB (UFS 2.2)

Although the 90Hz cap is enough for software operation, it seems smooth to run smoothly but I noticed some random micro stutters when running third-party apps. It’s also pretty smooth and easy to multitask like the experience of .

The Tecno Pova Curve 2 literally provides half of the raw performance for its rivals in terms of synthetic benchmarks, as does the tecnor purve 2. The most important thing is to do with its 6nm chipset and its focus on delivering better battery life.

| Benchmarks | Tecno Pova Curve 2 | OnePlus Nord CE 5 | Motorola Edge 60 Pro |
| — | — | — | — |
| Display resolution | 1.5K | FHD+ | 1.5K |
| Chipset | Dimensity 7100 (6 nm) | Dimensity 8350 Ultimate (4nm) | Dimensity 8350 Extreme (4 nm) |
| AnTuTu v10 | 7,69,455 | 14,12,373 | 14,13,220 |
| PCMark Work 3.0 | 11,152 | 13,435 | 19,111 |
| Geekbench 6 Single | 993 | 1,317 | 1,368 |
| Geekbench 6 Multi | 2,918 | 3,989 | 4,466 |
| Geekbench AI CPU (Quantized) | 2,070 | NA | NA |
| Geekbench AI GPU (Quantized) | 606 | NA | NA |
| 3DM Wild Life | 2,524 | Maxed Out | Maxed Out |
| 3DM Wild Life Unlimited | 2,528 | 11,038 | 11,148 |
| 3DM Steel Nomad Light | 279 | NA | NA |

The phone can play casual games easily with no cooling mechanism and dated 6nm chipset, but struggles to maintain a steady frame rate when playing fast-paced FPS titles or heavy 3D games without any clock. Call of Duty Mobile was tested and the game defaults to a rather ‘bysmal Medium graphics setting, Max frame rate (all effects save for anti-aliasing greyed out) mode. At default settings, the game is playable and begins to lag with frequent slow-downs during fast-paced matches (indicating that the processor just can’t keep up with itself). While the phone also warms up internally when playing games, it does not feel heat on the rear panel but only a display (not in front of the back panel) is felt. This can be achieved by turning on the Image Stabilisation feature, which is not as effective as it should and reduces the overall resolution of the game (which already has low) to achieve this.

But I know this is a very thin device, but with its current price tag, it’s certainly going to be better for gaming even though the software chugs along smoothly now. After capture, images after capturing also take an extra second or two to process pictures.

Tecno Pova Curve 2 Cameras: Gets the job done

• Primary camera – 50-megapixel, f/1.79, AF
• Selfie camera – 13-megapixel, FF

The Tecno Pova Curve 2 has only one user-accessible rear camera

A slacky appearance can be misleading, and in the case of the Pova Curve 2, they sure are. What looks like a triple-rear camera setup that only allows one user-accessible camera? In the budget segment, it is more at home to have basic image performance than the mid-range camera has a low-budget one.

Tecno Pova Curve 2 primary camera samples (tap images to expand)

A bit less detail is the binned 12-megapixel images taken in daylight, especially for landscape photos. There is a good Dynamic range, but there’s also some noticeable purple fringing in the brighter parts of any given photo. This doesn’t process fine details such as foliage, which appear flat and textureless in a bit flat to the eye when processed into finer. noise, and the 2X digitally zoomed crops are usable (albeit less detail) in daylight but can sometimes be soft at times.

Tecno Pova Curve 2 low-light camera sample (tap image to expand)

A low-light shots taken from the main camera come out softer than those captured in daylight. A good dynamic range is a bit contrasty with slightly different images, but the crushed blacks lack much detail in their respective context. In the Super Night (or the dedicated Night mode) it forces the camera to take (stacked) images with longer exposures, although the results are only slightly sharper in comparison.

Tecno Pova Curve 2 primary camera samples (tap images to expand)

Taking close-ups of objects leads to better results, with more resolved detail. Same for the Portrait mode pictures – good detail but short on dynamic range and slightly more contrasted, similar to those of portrait mode photos.

Tecno Pova Curve 2 selfie camera samples (tap images to expand)

In the daytime, selfies are very detailed. Aside from the average edge-detection, be prepared to see ears, hair and random background objects being cut out or added to your face in the software bokeh (along with other features) that are not on parody. Details are very soft, and in low light the photos appear flat (even with the software bokeh switched on), showing little separation between subject and background.

Phone only records 1080p video at 30 fpm and 60fps. When recording in daylight, it’s well-stabilised but a bit soft and lacks detail even when recorded. It also has problems with a lot of highlight clipping and Dynamic range. It doesn’t have 4K recording resolution (it is a mid-range device) but the phone has 2K 30fps. At the cost of stabilisation (it is shaky even when panning) 2K 30 fps resolution shows more detail and a noticeably wider field of view. The best low-light video recordings sound soft and noisy at the top of a .

Tecno Pova Curve 2 Battery: Good for casual users

• Battery capacity – 8,000mAh, li-ion,
• Wired charging – 45W
• Charger in the box – YES

If we have a big battery in slam phone, is it true? Well PCMark’s Work Battery Life test scored 20 hours and 12 minutes. The high-capacity battery (even if it is a basic lithium-ion one) we expected to see performance improvement as the batteries were so powerful. But Tecno’s move of pairing this battery with a dated 6nm chipset was not good. But I could easily extend the phone’s battery life to about 1 with casual use. Paraphrasing 5 days ago. That’s why I didn’t have to plug the phone in overnight, as is . But when it is heavily used, it also has a 5,000mAh battery device (delivering just one day with about 20-30 percent left). Given that it provides basic gaming performance and average cameras, most users will use it casually.

The 8,000mAh lithium-ion battery offers good battery backup for casual users

It was surprisingly fast for a high-capacity battery to charge the battery with the bundled charger. The phone charged 36 percent in 30 minutes, touching 73 per cent in an hour and completed the charging process in 1 hour (and 24 minutes) of its own time.

Tecno Pova Curve 2 Verdict

The buyer is automatically forced to put value on everything else that he or she wants when the smartphone prices (in each segment) are rising. Is it really hard to sell, in the case of Tecno Pova Curve 2? You have a cool phone that gives you slick software experience, but the raw and imaging performance of cheapest device. Despite that large battery, the Curve 2 is far less than expected for a mid-range device so even with that.

But for those who are buying mid-range devices, 2026 has plenty of options to choose from. The Realme P4 Power is the one to choose if you are looking for a truly big-battery smartphone experience, i.e. This is an impressive (almost powerbank-like) 10,001mAh battery with sufficient raw performance, good cameras and software updates that will keep the phone working just fine for the next few years.

Do you think it’s worth looking for better cameras? Look no further than Motorola’S Edge 60 Pro, which has 3 capable cameras (including a proper telephoto camera) all packaged into an attractive IP69-rated model from Rs. 27,999 onwards. So this is mainly for the camera bugs, as it has a decent battery life like that of Pova Curve 2, so I think there’s.

iQOO Neo 10 (Rs) will be more likely to see the gaming crowd drifting towards the. Onwards, it provides dual-chipset, gamer-friendly hardware and a 7,000mAh battery at the same price point (27999 onward) with an identical cost.

The Motorola Edge 70 offers a solid mid-range experience with upscale design and good cameras at Rs. If you really want something slim and you can stretch your budget little, then what is the best option? Paraphrasing 29,999999.