Tecno Camon 20 Pro 5G review: worthy of attention

Here's my take on Tecno's new Camon-series smartphone - Camon 20 Pro 5G

• By Ashish Kumar
Published On: 29 June 2023 | 15:18 IST Last Updated On: 9 August 2023 | 09:51 IST

The Tecno Camon 19 Pro (review), launched last year, was a decent choice for its price, but it lacked 5G. Taking note of this, Tecno has introduced the new Camon 20 Pro with a 5G-capable chipset. But that’s not all. The handset also promises improvements in the camera and performance departments. Moreover, the Camon 20 Pro 5G flaunts an interesting design, which has apparently won it the USA Gold Muse award.

In this review, we delve into the real-life performance of the device and determine whether the Tecno Camon 20 Pro 5G is worth its price. Read on to find out.

Verdict

The Tecno Camon 20 Pro 5G is a camera-focused smartphone that impresses with its design and display. The phone’s battery life is good too; however, its charging speed feels a bit on the slower side compared to its competitors.

Design and display

• I really liked the design of the Tecno Camon 20 Pro 5G which is in line with other contemporary Android smartphones. Marketed as a puzzle deconstruction design, Tecno claims that the design has been inspired by postmodern architecture. The handset flaunts a textured leather back with a unique pattern and a pentagon-shaped camera module, which is hard to miss. The design hides the fingerprints and smudges really well and offers a luxurious look and feel, despite the smartphone’s plastic frame.
• The handset sports flat edges instead of curved ones, which makes the device comfortable to wield. The right spine of the phone is home to a volume rocker and power button, while at the bottom it has a USB Type-C port for charging, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a speaker grille. There is another speaker on the top edge for a stereo sound output. The SIM-ejector tray, which has a dedicated slot for a microSD card, can be found on the left edge.

• The Tecno Camon 20 Pro is equipped with a vibrant 6.67-inch, FHD+, centred punch-hole AMOLED display. The display offers up to 120Hz refresh rate, which is the snappiest you can get in the segment. The refresh rate applies seamlessly to both the UI and supported apps, ensuring smooth and fluid interactions. Furthermore, users have the flexibility to adjust the refresh rate dynamically or choose from fixed options of 60Hz and 120Hz, as well as 90Hz, which is something you won’t find in many mid-range smartphones.

• Besides this, the display has thin bezels and excellent viewing angles. The brightness level is impressive too, making the text legible under direct sunlight. Additionally, the handset is Widevine L1 certified, allowing you to stream content in FHD resolution from OTT platforms. To enhance the audio quality, the phone packs stereo speakers, which are loud and sound good, even at maximum volume.

Cameras

• The Tecno Camon 20 Pro 5G is marketed as a camera-centric smartphone. The handset ships with a triple camera setup at the back, which comprises a 64MP RGBW (G+P) main sensor. This main sensor is equipped with a large f/1.65 aperture lens and OIS, which is said to enhance light sensitivity and improve lowlight performance. Additionally, the setup includes a 2MP depth sensor and a 2MP macro unit. The performance remains satisfactory as long as you don’t plan to use the cameras with AI. The AI feature enhances colours, resulting in unnatural-looking images and a loss of details and dynamic range.

• While some may find the resulting pictures appealing for social media, I personally preferred the Camon 20 Pro camera performance with the AI feature turned off. The images looked more balanced, with sharp details on the smartphone screen, realistic shades, and well-preserved highlights. In low light, cameras tend to introduce some noise, but the exposure to details remains acceptable. The phone has a dedicated night mode for the main 64MP sensor, which, like any other smartphone, smoothens out the details at the expense of reducing graininess.
• Up front, the Camon 20 Pro 5G packs a 32MP snapper in a punch-hole setup. The sensor is capable of capturing decent selfies with good detail and skin tones in daylight. However, indoors or in a dimly lit environment, the details appear soft, and the colours appear a bit pale. While the portrait mode on the smartphone adds a nice blur effect in the background, the edge detection could have been better.

Performance and software

• The Tecno Camon 20 Pro is powered by MediaTek Dimensity 8050 SoC, which features a 6nm manufacturing process and a clock speed of up to 3GHz. I did not face many issues with the smartphone while performing day-to-day tasks. The handset even handled multitasking and gaming well. I was able to play BGMI with ‘HD’ graphics and a ‘High’ frame rate without any stutter or frame drop issues. The game remains playable even after increasing the graphic settings to ‘HDR’ and the frame rate to ‘ultra’. However, the handset heats up a bit under strenuous loads. The Camon 20 Pro performance throttled up to 74 percent of its maximum performance, which is a tad low.
• On the benchmarking tests, the handset netted respectable scores. It secured 6,05,882 on AnTuTu, and on Geekbench, the Tecno smartphone scored 837 and 1,953 points in single-core and multi-core tests. The phone comes with a couple of RAM and storage options: 8GB+128GB and 8GB+256GB. The storage is further expandable with a microSD card up to 512GB. Apart from this, the Camon 20 Pro has an in-display fingerprint scanner, which works exceptionally well, swiftly unlocking the device with ease.

• Talking about the software, the Camon 20 Pro runs Tecno’s custom HiOS 13 skin atop Android 13 out of the box. The skin comes with its own share of bloatware, most of which you can’t uninstall, as well as notifications. Be that as it may, HiOS 13 has all the functions and abilities that you would expect from other custom Android skins. It boasts call recording, screen recording, dark mode, One Hand mode, theme store, Peek Proof, and similar to Apple and Xiaomi phones, separate shades for notifications and quick settings panel, among other things.

Battery and charging speeds

• The Tecno Camon 20 Pro has a decent 5,000mAh battery on board. It scored 10 hours and 42 minutes on the PCMark battery test, which is respectable. Depending on your usage, you can enjoy 5 hours or more of screen-on-time. The phone managed to last nearly a day, with my usage involving browsing, social media, Gmail checking, and video streaming.
• As for the charging speeds, the handset takes anywhere between 70 and 75 minutes to fully charge from 0-100 percent using its 33W fast charger.

Final verdict

The Tecno Camon 20 Pro 5G is priced in India starting at Rs 19,999, which puts it in direct competition with the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite (review). In comparison, the OnePlus smartphone has relatively clean software and a 67W fast charging solution. However, its looks and display are not on par with the Tecno smartphone, which boasts a leather finish back and an AMOLED panel instead of glossy polycarbonate and LCD screen respectively. The Nord CE 3 Lite’s performance, per AnTuTu score, also feels a bit underwhelming compared to the Camon 20 Pro 5G. The camera capabilities of the two devices are pretty much the same. They both deliver some likeable shots in daylight but lack an ultra-wide camera. If the wide-angle camera is what you are after, then the Lava Agni 2 (review) is worth checking out. The handset is retailing in India starting at Rs 21,999 and comes with a near-stock version of Android.

Who should buy the Tecno Camon 20 Pro 5G? The handset seems like a good investment for anyone looking for a smartphone under Rs 20,000 with a gorgeous design, impressive display, competent primary camera, and respectable performance.

Editor’s rating: 3.5 / 5

Reasons to buy

• Tecno Camon 20 Pro 5G feels luxurious with its leather finish at the back.
• The handset boasts a 120Hz refresh rate AMOLED display for an immersive viewing experience.
• The performance of the device is good for day-to-day tasks, multitasking, and some gaming.
• The cameras offer satisfactory performance without AI.

Reasons not to buy

• The software has some pre-installed apps.
• The handset may heat up and experience a drop in performance when handling heavy tasks.
• The camera setup lacks an ultra-wide lens.