Dummy camera lenses are useless, but this phone gives them a cool purpose

We’ve seen phones from Xiaomi with secondary displays on the back, and Nothing has experimented with the Glyph Matrix on the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro. But it’s not every day you come across a phone whose camera array looks packed with lenses, only to find most of them aren’t cameras at all.

Tecno’s Pova 8 is exactly one of those phones that makes you stop for a second, stare at the back panel, and try to make sense of what you’re actually looking at. From a distance, it looks like a pretty standard triple-camera setup — you get the familiar triangular layout. But get closer, and the illusion starts to fall apart, because only one of those cameras is real.

The actual shooter here is a 50MP Sony LYT-600 sensor (1/1.95-inch), with autofocus and 2x in-sensor zoom. That’s your entire imaging system. Yes, just one camera doing all the work, while the other two circles exist for symmetry. That does sound like a compromise. And honestly, it is. But Tecno has clearly decided that if it’s going to lean into a bold-looking camera island, it might as well add something playful rather than leave it as empty design filler.

That’s where the Alive Matrix Display comes in. One of those “lens” spots is actually a tiny dot-matrix LED panel. It can light up with icons for notifications, show animations when you get a call, trigger visual effects while gaming, and even be customized for different looks.

Is it a bit gimmicky? Sure. However, the bigger question is: why go for a triple-camera illusion at all? Tecno, are we mimicking iPhone Pro models? Why add fake camera lenses in the first place when there’s no real need to? Step away from the camera area, and things get a lot more straightforward. The Pova 8 packs a massive 8,000mAh battery with 45W charging support, which Tecno says is good for over 2,000 charge cycles — that’s pretty good.

It is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 7100, which is built on a 6nm process rather than the newer 4nm chips. It’s not necessarily a deal-breaker, but it’s definitely a trade-off. Up front, there’s a 6.76-inch IPS LCD with a 144Hz refresh rate, along with a 240Hz touch sampling rate and improved wet and oily touch recognition. The software is Hi OS 16, based on Android 16 out of the box.

So yes, the back of the phone still plays a bit of visual trickery. But instead of pretending, Tecno has turned that illusion into something that at least reacts, responds, and does a bit more than just exist.