You’ll probably never use a techno phone again. Until this week, I had never heard of a Chinese brand or its Camon line of handsets. Now, it’s unlikely I’ll forget them.
The company recently did a great New York City launch for its new Tecno Camon Series 19 Pro Android 12 phone, even though the products won’t be for sale in the US (or the UK, for that matter). I honestly wondered what they were doing there and more importantly, why I was there.
Tecno insisted on describing the handset as “designed for fashionistas”. I can’t tell you what that means, but I admit to being concerned with the design, specifications, and especially the price.
Main specifications include:
- 6.8-inch FHD+ virtually edge-to-edge 120 Hz display
- drill-hole front-facing 32MP camera
- 64MP and 50MP cameras on the back
- 2X optical zoom
- optical image stabilization
- 5,000 mAh battery
- Fingerprint reader
- face unlocking
- Some Nifty AI-Infused Photo Tricks
- A 3.5mm headphone jack (!)
- A power brick, cable, and earbud (!!)
It’s also a surprisingly attractive phone. There’s a fingerprint-rejecting diamond-coated back that looks and feels lovely. The Dual Circle camera array (which houses three cameras – a 2MP bokeh-assisting lens), is large but elegant, with its premium look backed by its crystal glass covering. The chassis is only slightly thicker than that of the iPhone 13 Pro Max, but the phone feels quite light.
The Camon 19 Pro comes with it all (and more) for $280. It’s a phone that you can pay for over five or six months’ time (if you pay about $50 per month). The Camon Series 19 Pro 5G price starts at $320. That is, with 128 GB storage and 8 GB RAM in both phones.
To put that in perspective, the cheapest iPhone you can buy is the $429 Apple iPhone SE, which has just 64GB of storage.
there is a catch
The big caveat, of course, is the greatest global availability. These Tecno phones are available in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Southern Asia, but not in the US or Europe, as I mentioned earlier. Pricing may also vary and the $280 and $320 Tecno offers are still just a “guess” for my market.
There are many limitations often associated with budget phones such as no fingerprint reader under the screen. Instead, the power/wake button doubles as an effective fingerprint reader. The screen is still LCD and not OLED. No reported IP rating (maybe keep it away from deep puddles). It does not offer wireless charging.
Next up is the mobile CPU, the MediaTek Helio G96, which is probably on par with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G. Its benchmark numbers aren’t even in the same neighborhood as, say, the Apple A15 Bionic or the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.
So, when I unexpectedly walked out of the event with a review unit and decided to spend a day or so with it, I tried to level my expectations.
For the most part, though, this budget device surpasses them.
not bad at all
Like I mentioned, this is an attractive big-screen phone with a vibrant display that, naturally, looks excellent indoors. Outside is different. It struggled in bright light, but I could still see well enough to use its camera and rich settings to take a variety of shots. Everything looked great from standard to 2x telephoto and from portrait to slow motion. Even shots in low light and night were good (nothing notable would happen). There’s no wide-angle lens, let alone the ultra-wide, but the included lens captured sharp, colorful, and accurate images.
Portrait mode from the rear camera is good (the front camera had more artifacts), although you can’t adjust the level of bokeh before or after the shot (how many people do this on their iPhone 13 or Samsung Galaxy anyway?). There’s editing tools that let you add and adjust bokeh effects to any image, but it’s not directly tied to portrait mode photography, which is kind of silly.
The AI-powered camera and its attempts to identify objects in a scene were amusing. At one point, I pointed the phone in my hand, and it came up with a “belly.”
There are so many options for image manipulation that you may never find or use them all. The set for manipulation of the body is, at best, problematic. It offers to slim the waist, head, shoulders, slimmer and longer legs, “fat butt” among other cosmetic changes. Perhaps techno was meant to be a call for “fashionists”.
To be fair, those features were hard to find and the phone definitely doesn’t push them. Still, it’s weird that they’re there.
punching above your own weight
For a sub-$300 phone, the Tecno Camon 19 Pro is quite a performer. It played taxing games like Asphalt 9: Legends without missing a beat. I imagine it might have been dropping a frame or two, and the audio could have been richer, but it was still a pleasant experience.
It’s an effective productivity platform for browsing and file management, and I love the alphabetically ordered app list (Apple, Samsung, please do this).
Well, the 5,000 mAh battery is the all-day winner.
Basically, it’s an above average phone at a ridiculously good price.
Will it ever reach the US and UK? I don’t know and Tecno didn’t provide any guidance. I’m not sure it matters. What the Tecno Camon 19 Pro demonstrates to me is that all phone makers can do better on the affordability front. We’re paying as much as $999 for a phone with a powerful big screen, which is probably more than we need (at least for most of us).
The Camon 19 Pro is a good example for budget prospects. I think it’s time for Apple, Samsung and others to respond.
