Tecno Camon 20 Premier 5G: Price in India
Tecno Camon 20 Premier 5G has been launched in only one variant – 8GB RAM and 512GB storage, which is priced at Rs 29,999. It is offered in Dark Welkin (Black) and Serenity Blue color options, of which we had the latter variant for review.
Tecno Camon 20 Premier 5G: Design & Display
In terms of design, at first glance Camon 20 Premier may attract many people. Going away from the trend, a unique camera island has been included in it, which comes with a gloss black finish. Consisting of two large camera rings and a smaller ring surrounded by LEDs, the island is placed atop a back panel made of hard rubberized material with a texture similar to vegan leather. Pastor style blue color gives a very good look. A geometric pattern is made with ridges on the panel. Although looks are a personal preference, I found the design of the Camon 20 Premier to be unique and attractive.
Not just the looks, Tecno has given it a boxy design to improve the overall feel, with a flat display and frame the phone was easy to grip and due to the textured panel it does not slip from the hand. At the same time, the rubber-like material also does not catch fingerprints. The frame is made of polycarbonate, which includes the volume rockers and power and lock/unlock buttons on the right side. At the bottom, there is a Type-C port along with a speaker grill, SIM tray and a primary microphone, and at the top, a secondary speaker and microphone are included for stereo output and noise cancellation respectively. The volume and power buttons were easy to reach during single-handed use. The phone was definitely on the heavy side at 202.5 grams, but the phone didn’t feel too heavy in everyday use. Tecno has done a good job of distributing the weight here.
Camon 20 Premier has a 6.67-inch FHD+ (2400 x 1080 pixels) AMOLED display, which supports refresh rate up to 120Hz. There are thin and almost uniform bezels around the display, which works to improve the experience of watching content. The display was quite bright indoors, but when there was direct sunlight on the display outdoors, there was sometimes difficulty in reading the text. However, it produces quite sharp and vivid colors. The phone comes with HDR10+ playback certification, but during the review I found that videos on the YouTube app streamed with HDR, but the Netflix app was not detecting it. The phone has stereo speakers, but they were a little less loud than I expected. However, these will not spoil the fun of watching a movie in a small room.
The fingerprint sensor is placed below the display, which was fast and accurate. However, it is fitted quite low, which sometimes makes it a bit inconvenient to reach while using the phone with one hand. The display supports refresh rates up to 120Hz. Tecno has given a total of four options here, in which the refresh rate can be set to 60Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz and Auto-Switch. In auto-switch, the refresh rate automatically changes according to the content playing on the screen. The display performance was quite smooth during my use. In auto-switch mode the refresh rate was switching between 60 to 120Hz.
Tecno Camon 20 Premier 5G: Specifications and Software
Tecno has provided octa-core MediaTek Dimensity 8050 SoC in Camon 20 Premier, paired with 8GB RAM and 512GB storage. During review, my unit was running HiOS 13 based on Android 13 and had Android security update version July 2023, which was out of date as of September. I had not received the latest security update at the time of writing this review.
With Android 13, Tecno has significantly improved the software experience of HiOS. However, you still get a lot of bloatware in First Boot. Most of these apps can be uninstalled and some can be disabled. The good thing was that during my usage, the native apps gave me only one or two notifications throughout the day.
There are many customization options in the software. I personally liked some of its features, one of which was the option to blur any minimized app in the Recent Apps screen. Additionally, the smart panel that pops up from the side of the screen is also a nice add-on, giving you shortcuts to essential features and apps and apps opened from here open in small multi-windows. Peek Proof shows only the area you select and blackouts the rest.
The phone includes features like NFC, wired FM, AI Subtitle (which generates live subtitles during calls or streaming) and PC Connection for easy PC connection.
Tecno Camon 20 Premier 5G: Performance and Battery life
Camon 20 Premier has Dimensity 8050 SoC, which was launched in May this year. Camon 20 Premier was the first phone to come with this chipset. The new chipset is built on 6nm process and is a capable chipset for everything from daily tasks to running graphics demanding games. Be it switching between apps or everyday tasks like scrolling through social media, this chipset handled everything with ease. Even graphics demanding games ran very smoothly at default settings. BGMI ran like butter without lag or frame drops even in ‘Ultra’ framerate and ‘HDR’ graphics. At the same time, there was no problem in playing titles like Asphalt 9 and Call of Duty: Mobile.
The phone scored 7,25,792 points in AnTuTu and 1118 and 3322 points in Geekbench’s single and multi-core tests respectively. Whereas, in GFXBench’s T-Rex, Manhattan 3.1 and Car Chase tests, the phone got scores of 120 Fps, 75 Fps, 40 Fps respectively. All these scores were slightly lower than other competitors in the price range. But still, I had no complaints with the performance of this phone in everyday tasks.
The battery life of Camon 20 Premier was quite good. This smartphone with 5,000mAh battery provided one day’s backup very comfortably even after one to one and a half hours of gaming, few hours of calling and using social media apps for the rest of the time. If you use less social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, then the battery of this phone can last for one and a half days. In our HD video loop test, the phone lasted 18 hours and 25 minutes, which was a good backup.
The smartphone supports 45W fast charging and the good thing is that it also comes with a 45W charging adapter in the box. With the help of this charger, Camon 20 Premier was fully charged from 0-40 percent in 30 minutes and in 1 hour 20 minutes.
Tecno Camon 20 Premier 5G: Cameras
The camera setup of Camon 20 Premier 5G will look no less than that of a flagship smartphone. The smartphone comes with a triple camera unit, which houses a 50-megapixel primary sensor with sensor-shift stabilization. Let me remind you that sensor shift technology was till now available only on iPhones in India. Not only this, another USP of the camera unit here is the 108-megapixel ultra-wide angle camera. The third camera is a 2-megapixel depth sensor and on the front, there is a 32-megapixel sensor with dual LED flash hidden under the bezel.
Starting with the camera app, Tecno has made a lot of improvements in the camera app with HiOS 13. The app is quite simple and easy to navigate. I did not feel any kind of delay or lag in the processing of shots. There are also some special modes, like Sky Shop, which lets you change the sky in the scene in real-time, as well as an AR Short, which turns you into an avatar. Apart from this, there is also Pro Mode and Dual Video Mode.
Usually I start with the primary camera, but here I’m starting with the Camon 20 Premier’s signature 108MP sensor. The sensor performs well in daylight, colors are crisp and photos have good contrast levels. There was no lack of sharpness in the pictures and the dynamic range also worked well in all the shots. However, colors and contrast appeared washed out at the edges in almost all shots. The app also offers a 108MP mode, which gives you photos at full resolution without pixel binning, and it worked as I expected. In this mode the photos had plenty of details and there was no loss in color, contrast and sharpness. I have to say that the wide-angle sensor of the Camon 20 Premier performed much better than its primary sensor.
Talking about its 50-megapixel primary camera, it also did not disappoint me in daylight, but here the results in photos were not uniform. Some shots were meant to be uploaded directly to social media, but some shots taken at the same location lacked details and accuracy of exposure. Additionally, the red color in many shots became over saturated after processing. However, the camera kept other colors natural. There was no lack of details and sharpness in the shots taken from the main camera and the dynamic range in the pictures was also good.
At the same time, with the decrease in light, the camera performance also started decreasing. The primary and ultra-wide angle cameras capture good photos in low-light, but here I noticed a huge drop in details. Night mode works well thanks to sensor shift OIS and the ‘Super Night Mode’ present in the app does a great job of enhancing shots. However, here too the performance was not consistent and in some shots the images were overexposed and the sharpening was too much.
There are many smartphones in this price range which offer excellent rear camera performance, but their selfie camera performance is a bit disappointing. However, Camon 20 Premier can capture some of the best selfies in its segment. Skin tones were natural in every shot I took in daylight, and overall selfies had good colors as well as sharpness and dynamic range. At the same time, the results in portrait mode were also good, the camera recognizes the edges of the subject well and the Bokeh effect also came out quite natural. At the same time, lack of sharpness starts appearing in the photos in low-light. Camon 20 Premier has dual flash, which works to add extra exposure to photos in low light.
The rear primary camera of the Camon 20 Premier 5G can shoot up to 4K video at 30fps. Activating sensor-shift OIS sets the resolution to 1080p, which is a bit strange, as I expected this feature to be in use at 4K. Yet even without sensor shift, the primary camera recorded largely stable videos.
Tecno Camon 20 Premier 5G: Verdict
Depending on the specifications you get at your price Tecno Camon 20 Premier Comes very close to being an all-rounder. The smartphone comes with a unique and attractive design that is away from the trend. Camera setup equipped with sensor shift OIS can give you good shots. Also, long battery life along with stereo speakers and bright display make it a good multimedia device.
If you want an attractive design and good camera performance under 30 thousand, then you can go with Camon 20 Premier. If performance and smooth software experience is your first choice, then you Motorola Edge 40 And Nothing Phone 1 Can also consider.