TECNO POVA Curve 2 5G debuts in Manila at PHP 16,999 with curved AMOLED, Dimensity 7100, and 8,000mAh. Kenya pending

TECNO Mobile has officially launched the POVA Curve 2 5G in the Philippines, pricing it at PHP 16,999 (about KES 35,800 at current rates). The device first appeared at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year and went on sale in India in February. The Philippines is the latest market to get an official rollout. TECNO Kenya has not announced a local launch date.

The phone’s main selling point is straightforward. It runs an 8,000mAh battery inside a body that’s only 7.42mm thick and 195g. That combination is unusual. Most phones with batteries this large are noticeably chunkier and heavier. TECNO is calling it the world’s slimmest curved-display 5G phone with an 8,000mAh cell, which appears to be accurate as of launch.

What you actually get

The display is a 6.78-inch curved AMOLED panel, 1.5K resolution (2364×1080), 144Hz refresh rate, and 4,500 nits peak brightness. Corning Gorilla Glass 7i sits on top. Under the hood is MediaTek’s Dimensity 7100, a 6nm chip that posts roughly 850,000 on AnTuTu. That’s solid mid-range territory, not flagship.

Storage tops out at 256GB UFS 2.2 with up to 8GB of physical RAM (extendable to 16GB using virtual memory). Cameras are a 50MP main shooter, a 2MP depth assistant, and a 13MP selfie camera. The software is HiOS 16 on top of Android 16, with TECNO promising two major Android updates and three years of security patches.

Charging is rated at 45W wired, getting the phone to 50% in around 36 minutes. There’s also 10W reverse wired charging, so the phone can top up earbuds or another device. Other extras include IP64 splash resistance, SGS-certified 1.5-metre drop protection, Dolby Atmos stereo speakers, an in-display fingerprint sensor, and FreeLink 2.0, which lets two POVA Curve 2 units talk to each other over short ranges without a cellular network.

Where this sits in the POVA line

POVA has always been TECNO’s battery-and-gaming sub-brand. We already covered the POVA Slim when it launched in September, where TECNO went thin-first with a 5,160mAh cell. The Curve 2 flips that thinking: keep the slim profile, but stuff in the biggest battery the chassis can hold.

The Kenya question

There’s no TECNO Kenya launch event scheduled, but the device is already on the local grey market. Listings on retailers like Smartphones Planet Kenya and Phones and Electronics Africa range from roughly KES 25,000 to KES 42,000, with no warranty backing. That’s the gap an official launch would close.

For now, if you’re buying one through a parallel importer, confirm the variant (RAM and storage) and check that it supports the 5G bands used by Safaricom and Airtel Kenya. The Dimensity 7100 supports the right sub-6GHz bands on paper, but band-locking varies by region.