My dear friend gave me a call late last year and asked me if I had heard of Tecno. He went on to describe what, then, I could only describe as impossible. Tecno wey we know? Trademarked and dubbed as chinko? Haba na! But I listened and as I did my curiosity was piqued. Here was a smartphone with an even smarter price tag. There had to be a catch...I mean, na tecno na. I was using a Blackberry device back then and was really looking for a change, all the while considering a move to the android team. I ran the idea past a few of my colleagues just to get a feel of the general mood to what I had just discovered and boy did I get a mood. One even went as far as telling me "Surely you of all people can't be that stupid". That ended it for me. Tecno was joining the android bandwagon but not one anyone with his right mind would consider jumping onto.
A few months later I got an android phone...no...not Tecno. I got a Sony Xperia Go, a budget dual-core smartphone which was really a beautiful device and a welcome experience after the fading giant that used to be blackberry. By this time I had seen the Tecno N3 and I must confess that I was impressed by the effort. The final product might have been dated but seeing that brand name on a device powered by the android OS was just ground-breaking. In the months that followed, the name grew. More people discovered the potential was a lot bigger than the price and like sharks sensing a wounded person in the sea, they rushed at it.
Today, there are a lot of android devices carrying the
mark of the bea...I mean brand. What seemed to be a joke has turned into one of the biggest brand revolution since perhaps even OMO or GALA or maybe even INDOMIE. It's everywhere. Used by every class. I can say this because I have set this phones up for different people in places as reputable as NNPC.
The brand has faced serious criticism and has fortunately continued to thrive amidst it all. The pros far outweigh the cons and that can be seen by the sudden rise of other "chinko" brands boasting the same specs in different designs. Like I said earlier, it has its cons and critics will be the first to point out that it runs on
an inferior a budget-saving chipset and doesn't churn out the same performance/benchmark scores as that of the recognised brands. I've even heard someone claim that the Tecno brands expose people to a dangerous amount of radiation because of it's low standard of production. This last point however is untrue and in respect to the former argument, i have this to say; if it meets your needs there is no reason to go for a more expensive option with features you don't need.
This is not saying that the Tecno brand is better than the bigger and more recognised brands...they are, afterall, recognised for a reason. This is just to acknowledge a brand that has put smiles on the faces of a lot of nigerians in less than a year and that is something no other brand, recognised or not, has been able to do in that same window.
Tecno: Be smart. Be yourself.
