While having properly defined database elements, you have to also set your connection to use UTF-8 ecoding. As of Phalcon makes use of PDO, you can try to modify your connection alike to:
$di["db"] = function() {
    return new \Phalcon\Db\Adapter\Pdo\Mysql(array(
        "host" => "localhost",
        "username" => "root",
        "password" => "1234",
        "dbname" => "test",
        "options" => array( // this is your important part
            PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_INIT_COMMAND => 'SET NAMES utf8'
        )
    ));
};
Example from Phalcon Forum.
As of I'm working with Polish language, my DB collations are mostly set to utf8_polish_ci or sometimes to utf8_universal_ci. You have to test it out because of result sorting issues.