The Tecno Camon 20 series was launched in Kenya a few months back. This is the latest mid range smartphone from Tecno and I have been using it for a little over a month. This being the successor to the Camon 19 Pro, I was curious to see what it has to offer and if there are any upgrades that make it worth upgrading to.
You can get the Tecno Camon 20 Pro in Kenya for Ksh 32,000. The price varies depending on where you get it from so make sure you shop around for the best price you can get. The review unit I have was provided by Tecno toi use and I used it for a few weeks as my primary phone.
Before we get into the review, let us look at the key specifications of this phone.
- Display: 6.67-inch (1080 x 2460 pixels), AMOLED, 120Hz.
- Processor: Mediatek MT8781 Helio G99.
- Rear Camera: 64MP + 2MP + QVGA
- Front Camera: 32MP
- RAM: 8GB
- Storage: 256GB
- Battery Capacity: 5,000mAh, 33W charging
- Android 13, HiOS 13
Design and Build
The Tecno Camon 20 Pro comes with a sleek and modern design. This is the design that won the Muse Design Awards. The back is unique in its own way as it has a crystal like look with different sections absorbing light differently. This makes the phone look very different from most of its competitors.
The phone has a plastic back cover and side panels. It does feel well-built and premium. We do get the usual ports and buttons including the power and volume keys on the right and the SIM tray on the left. The speaker grille, USB-C port and headphone jack are at the bottom. At the top section we do have another speaker grille. As you can tell, this phone has dual speakers that provide an immersive audio experience. If you watch movies on your phone, the experience will be very good. I did notice one issue with these speakers, the bottom facing one is louder than the top one. The sound does not feel balanced and when watching movies, you do feel like audio just comes from the bottom section.
Overall, the Camon 20 Pro is well built and does look the part. The gradient design looks really good and sets it apart from some of its competitors including the Redmi Note 12 Pro and even the Infinix Note 30 Pro.
Display
The Tecno Camon 20 Pro features a 6.67 AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate. Using an AMOLED display is always commendable and the experience has been good so far. This display is perfect for media consumption and gaming too thanks to the use of AMOLED and the high refresh rate. You get smooth scrolling animations as well as a responsive touch experience.
The display has very sharp visuals and vibrant colors. It does feel punchy and this is perfect for everyday use and especially media consumption. I could also use this display outdoors under direct sunlight without any issues.
The Camon 20 Pro also has the always-on feature that is quite nice to have at this price. This is the first time I have used always-on on a Tecno Camon device and the implementation is great.
Performance and Software
Under the hood, the Tecno Camon 20 Pro comes with the MediaTek Helio G99 processor. This is not the latest processor on the market but it is still capable of handling all tasks. I had no issues with performance and even managed to play some games with no issues. I did play PUBG on a regular basis and the experience was smooth. The Helio G99 is a powerful and capable processor for any task you have in mind. It is the processor we see on a number of smartphones within the same price range as the Camon 20 Pro.
The Helio G99 is favored by phone manufacturers as it delivers a balance between power efficiency and high performance. This is evident when you use the phone, it is powerful, very efficient and is not aggressive on the battery. Gaming and graphics aspects of the phone are handled by the Mali-G57 MC2 GPU. This is what delivers smooth gaming experiences.
The Camon 20 Pro comes with 8GB of RAM as standard and this helps with multitasking without any lags. The phone also supports RAM expansion (using part of the 256GB of storage) so you will have plenty of RAM for all your needs. The phone does not aggressively kill applications in the background so I could easily switch between applications without them restarting all the time.
Camera
We all take lots of photos these days and the Camon 20 Pro is good enough for that. Tecno Camon phones are camera-centric phones and the Camon 20 Pro is not any different. Even though the cameras are good, I did compare this with the Redmi Note 12 Pro and noticed some key differences. The Camon 20 Pro tends to add a lot of saturation and colors do not appear as natural as they are. In isolation, the camera quality is good but when compared to the Redmi, it does feel just average. This is not something I was expecting on a Camon device. Tecno should try to balance the saturation and ensure the camera quality is good in different lighting conditions.
The primary camera at the back is a 64MP main sensor that is paired with a 2MP depth sensor and a QVGA sensor.
For selfies, the Camon 20 Pro has a 32MP camera that is really good. It does produce very detailed shots with very accurate color reproduction. If you do record videos and take photos with the front facing camera, you will not go wrong with this. It works great in different lighting conditions too.
Battery
Even though the Camon 20 Pro is a powerful phone, its battery lasts long. This is a 5000 mAh unit that could easily get me up to 7 hours of screen-on time on a single charge. With this, I had no issues using the phone for an entire day and was not in a hurry to charge it at the end of the day. I mostly use my phone for calls, online meetings, social media, watching a few videos and occasional work. With this, I could still get the battery to last the whole day and this is impressive. The phone has a number of battery saving features that can extend the battery life when it is running low.
For charging, the Camon 20 Pro supports 33W charging. These are not the fastest speeds and I would have hoped for 45W or even faster if Tecno wanted to set this phone apart from competitors. 33W is still decent but you will need a little over an hour to fully charge this phone from 0%.
Verdict
The Tecno Camon 20 Pro is quite a good upgrade and a nice addition to Tecno’s family. The phone has some upgrades compared to its predecessor from last year. It is well built and the unique back cover design is the best within its price range. Smartphones can be boring with their designs and Tecno has spiced things up a bit.
The phone has a very good and sharp display that you will enjoy in different lighting conditions. Tecno using an AMOLED display with an always-on feature at this price range is something I did not expect but one that I appreciate.
Performance of the Helio G99 has been good and at par with the other phones it is competing with. This phone can handle all you throw at it without any issues.
The camera performance is also great, not the best Tecno could have implemented, but still good. I feel like there is a bit of over processing of the photos which should not be the case. Tecno could really tone down on this or process the photos differently to get accurate colors as I did when I compared this phone to the Redmi Note 12 Pro.
Battery life is amazing as you will have no problem using this phone for an entire day or even more on a single charge. Tecno should try and implement faster charging speeds just to differentiate this phone from competitors.
All in all, the Camon 20 Pro is a good buy if you are looking for a new phone within the 31 to 35k price range.
Also Read: Top 5 Reasons to Buy the Xiaomi Redmi Note 12S
