Tech News

Tecno Camon 19 Pro – a new top for your money

August 3, 2022
1:09 PM

Despite the fact that Tecno has been present on the Russian market for 4 years already, I met the smartphone of this manufacturer for the first time – the more interesting it was to study the functions and features of both the phone itself and the HiOS shell.

Based on a recent presentation, the entire Tecno lineup is now divided into 4 lines: Phantom flagships, Camon camera phones (short for “Camera is always on” – “The camera is always on”), balanced Spark smartphones and long-lived smartphones with a capacious Pova battery. Accordingly, the review is the top camera phone of the current line. Let’s find out what he can boast of.

Characteristics

System: Android 12, HiOS 8.6.
Chipset: MediaTek Helio G96, 12nm.
Graphics: Mali G57 MC2, 950 MHz.
RAM: 8 GB, LPDDR4X, 2133 MHz.
Built-in memory: 128 GB, UFS.
Display: 6.8″, IPS, 2460×1080, 395 ppi, 120Hz, 20.5:9.
Main camera: 64 MP, f/1.65, 1/1.7″, 0.8 µm, PDAF, OIS.
Telephoto camera (2x): 50MP, f/2.0, 0.64µm.
Depth sensor: 2 MP, f/2.4.
Front camera: 32 MP, f/2.5.
Battery: 5000 mAh, 33W fast charging.
Slot: triple, 2 × NanoSIM + MicroSD.
Wi-Fi: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (Wi-Fi 5).
Bluetooth: 5.
Sensors: NFC, light sensor, accelerometer, compass, gyroscope, fingerprint scanner.
USB: Type-C, 2.0.
Navigation: GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo.
Dimensions: 166.8 × 74.6 × 8.6 mm.
Weight: 204 g.

Equipment

The compact cardboard box contains a kit that is not available to modern flagships – in addition to the smartphone itself, there is a high-power charging block, a wire, a silicone case, a screen film (although I would prefer it to be pasted at the factory) and several brochures.

Appearance

Let’s start with the fact that the Tecno Camon 19 series received the prestigious iF DESIGN AWARD 2022, a debut for the company. At the back, the smartphone looks unbanal – the eye immediately clings to two impressive wells that rise above the lid by a good 2 millimeters. The case smooths out this protrusion a bit, but even with it on the table, the phone wobbles during operation. The matte plastic panel is non-slip and does not collect fingerprints, and even plays interestingly in the light, shimmering from blue to black. By the way, the phone itself is rather dark blue, although the manufacturer calls this color “Eco Black”.

The edges are flat, made of plastic, but already glossy – all together this does not add convenience when lifting the phone. The smartphone lies quite comfortably in the hand, of the minuses, I would note only the proximity of the power and volume buttons, at first I sometimes missed. By the way, a fingerprint sensor is hidden in the power key.

Almost the entire front panel (more than 88%) is occupied by the screen, the width of the frames is minimal: a little more than 2 mm on the top and sides, and 6 mm on the bottom. Of the interesting, it is worth noting the earpiece speaker grid, located right on the edge. Unfortunately, this speaker is not used when viewing multimedia – the sound here is mono. But there is a mini-jack for connecting wired headphones, which is already becoming a rarity.

The slot is triple – you can simultaneously put 2 nanoSIMs and a MicroSD memory card.

Display

The smartphone received an impressive 6.8-inch IPS display with FullHD + resolution (2460 × 1080) and a high refresh rate (up to 120 Hz). Hertz can be configured manually by selecting 60 or 120 Hz, or you can entrust it to your smartphone – in this case, battery consumption will be lower, but there will no longer be an increased frequency in games. The maximum brightness exceeds 500 nits, the image remains quite readable in the sun. Viewing angles are good, colors are not distorted.

Performance and Software

Tecno Camon 19 Pro is based on MediaTek Helio G96 octa-core chipset. In an hour-long throttling test, it performed very well – the performance level practically did not drop, while the smartphone only slightly warmed up in the area next to the camera block. In the AnTuTu benchmark, the device scores a little less than 350 thousand points – this is one of the best results for this chipset.

The smartphone is available with 128 GB of internal and 8 GB of RAM, and the latter can be expanded by 2, 3 or 5 GB internal memory, but I did not notice the need for this during use.

The device received Android 12 with its own HiOS 8.6 shell. The shell is highly customizable, there are a lot of unusual features inside, and I’m not sure that I found them all, although I studied every item of the settings. It is worth noting that there are many pre-installed applications, and not all of them can be removed or “frozen” – there is a special application for this.

Of the interesting, I note the pre-installed online radio (with the ability to listen and FM radio when headphones are connected) with many playlists from around the world, as well as a translator that can translate both the entire text visible on the screen and individual fragments.

There is also a quick access panel called by a “swipe with a delay” from the edge of the screen – you can put the necessary tools and applications on it.

In general, I constantly came across convenient functions in different parts of the system, after which you think “why other manufacturers don’t have this?”.

The system left the most positive impressions, lags, which you have to periodically encounter on other phones of this level, were not noticed.

cameras

In two “wells” there are 3 modules:

main 64 MP, with autofocus and optical stabilization;
50MP telephoto lens with 50mm “correct” focal length, autofocus and 2x zoom;
2 MP depth sensor.

The main camera produces good pictures in any light thanks to optical stabilization. Long exposure in night mode pulls out photos well. In the daytime, the frames come out bright and saturated, especially if you activate intelligent scene recognition – then the built-in algorithms will improve the resulting picture.

The first photo was taken in automatic mode, the second – at night

The telephoto lens does not have stabilization, so night shots are not as spectacular. But with good lighting, high-quality and detailed photos are obtained. Further in the galleries, the first photo was taken on the main camera, and the second on the zoom camera.

The front camera can also be praised – the frames are colorful, the blur is correct, there are several lighting modes and beautifiers.

The camera interface is quite ordinary, all controls are located in the usual places, but, unfortunately, I did not find an option that allows you to quickly turn on the camera without unlocking the phone (usually double-clicking on the power button) – sometimes it is necessary.

A fun feature is changing the sky, there are several options.

Battery

The battery capacity is already established 5000 mAh. At the same time, after a day of active work, another 25-30% remains, that is, in an unloaded mode, a fully charged smartphone will quietly last 2 days. In our test with the adaptive display mode, it showed almost 23 hours of operation:

Trashbox.ru battery test results:

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