With so many manufacturers in the smartphone market, the Indian market is gearing up for newcomers that have decent specs for a very good price. The latest entrant in the market is the ‘Tecno’. Tecno is not really new in the smartphone business, they’ve been in the market for a long time now in the Hong Kong and have launched some decent smartphones.
Last year, Tecno mobile unveiled five new smartphones for the Indian market and their latest device is called the Tecno Camon I which is going to be priced at Rs 8,999. Tecno is entering the budget smartphone segment to compete with the Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and similar brands. In this review, we will talk a little about the device and some of its specifications like the display, storage, and other specifics.
Specifications
The Tecno Camon I comes with a 5.65-inch display at HD+ resolution and is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek MTK 6735 processor and has 3GB of RAM. The internal storage on the device is 32GB and can be expanded to up to 128GB microSD card. The rear camera on the device is a 13-megapixel device with a quad flash setup, the front camera is also a 13-megapixel and has a LED flash. The battery on this device is a non-removable battery and has a capacity of 3050mAh. We have sensor like the G-Sensor, Ambient Light Sensor, Proximity Sensor, Fingerprint Sensor in the device to help with the flow. The device is based on HiOS v3.2.2 which is a modified version Android Nougat 7.0.
Design and Build
The Tecno Camon I is a well-built phone for the price with a polycarbonate body. The edges are well curved and blends into your hand giving a good fit. The device is surprisingly light in weight and feels comfortable over extended periods of use. On the right hand side is the volume rocker with the power buttons and the left hand side has the SIM card tray and which has two dedicated SIM card slots and microSD card. The bottom side has Speaker grill and a MicroUSB charging port while the top has the 3.5mm audio jack.
The front side has 5.65-inch Full View display and depending on the color variant you will get either a white or black front panel. There are no hardware buttons on the front and the front-facing camera is aided with a dedicated LED flash while the rear of the phone has the primary camera along with the QUAD LED flash. The back of the screen is a fingerprint cum smudge magnets and you can easily see the fingerprints in a while. This can be avoided using the TPU case included in the case.
Display
The Full View display on the front is a HD+ display that is protected using the Corning Gorilla Glass and the Screen has a 2.5D curved screen. The sensitivity on the screen is pretty good but the display greatly struggles in outdoor viewing conditions. Even in the brightest conditions the text is difficult to read.
User Interface
The Tecno Camon i runs on the skinned version of Android Nougat that the company likes to call as HiOS. Just like the other devices that come with a skinned version of OS, this smartphone has a ton of customization inbuilt and the launcher doesn’t have an app-drawer. There is a Micro intelligence feature that allows you to perform various gestures to open apps. Fortunately, the Tecno Camon I doesn’t come with a lot of bloatware and only has the standard Google apps that are enough to get you started.
Performance
The device is powered by a MediaTek quad-core process at 1.4GHZ that is paired with a 3GB RAM, the internal storage on the device is 32GB which can be expanded to up to 128GB via a microSD card slot. The overall user experience on the device is a little sluggish and the apps take a lot of time to load in some cases. We did experience a few hiccups while navigating through the user interface without any apps installed. We ran a few benchmarks and the Antutu returned a score of 35,121 while Geekbench returned 578 on single-core and 1633 on Multicore. These results are far from impressive if you compare it with the competition that the device is facing.
Camera
The Tecno Camon I comes with a 13MP primary sensor and has a Quad LED design on the rear. The samples below do the talking themselves. The camera is decent but there certainly is a lot of scope for improvement. Although it is not a bad performer, the picture quality could have been worked upon for improvement. The exposure on the camera is difficult to manage and goes wrong very often and even when you tap on the viewfinder to adjust the exposure, it automatically goes back to the default settings and thus ruin the picture in certain lighting conditions. This isn’t fixed even when using the third party camera apps but it can easily be fixed by an OTA update.
The front camera otherwise is quite a decent one with well retained details and the support given by the flash light does help sometimes with the captures in low light, though the yellow light there makes it a bit unnatural with the colors when the flashlight is being used.
Check full-res camera samples: Link
Battery Life
Coming to the battery life, the device comes with a 3050mAh battery and although it isn’t the best battery in a smartphone at this price range, it gets you through a day. Even with heavy usage during our review, the battery life wasn’t as bad. There is also a battery saver or an Ultra-low power mode that adds several hours of usage to the device.
Conclusion
The Tecno Camon I is entering a market that is already packed with competitors like Xiaomi. In the Sub 10,000 range, there is less scope for improvement and to be honest, the Tecno Camon I misses to set a mark. Even when we compare it to relatively new entrants of the market like the 10.or D or the Smartron t.phone P, the Tecno Camon I fails to garner the attention that it wants to.
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