You will probably never use a Tecno phone. Until this week, I had never heard of the Chinese brand or its Camon phone line. Now, I’m unlikely to forget them.
The company recently held an elegant presentation of its new Tecno Camon Series 19 Pro Android 12 phones in New York, although the products will not be on sale in the US (or UK, for that matter). Honestly, I wondered what they were doing there and, more importantly, why I was there.
Tecno insisted on describing the phones as “designed for fashion people”. I couldn’t tell you what that means, but I admit I’m intrigued by the design, the specifications and, in particular, the price.
Key specifications include:
- 6.8-inch FHD + 120 Hz screen practically from edge to edge
- 32MP front camera with hole drilling
- 64 MP and 50 MP cameras on the back
- 2X optical zoom
- Optical image stabilization
- 5,000 mAh battery
- fingerprint reader
- Face unlock
- Some great photo tricks with artificial intelligence
- 3.5 mm headphone jack (!)
- Electric brick, cable and headphones (!!)
It is also a surprisingly attractive phone. There’s a diamond-plated back that repels fingerprints that look and look gorgeous. The range of dual-circle cameras (which contains three cameras – there is a 2MP lens that helps with bokeh) is large, but elegant, and its top look is supported by a crystal glass cover. The chassis is only slightly thicker than the iPhone 13 Pro Mac, but the phone is much lighter.
The Camon 19 Pro comes all this (and more) for $ 280. It’s a phone that you can pay off in five or six months (if you pay about $ 50 a month). The Camon Series 19 Pro 5G starts at just $ 320. That is, on both phones, with 128 GB of storage space and 8 GB of RAM.
To put it in perspective, the cheapest iPhone you can buy is the $ 429 Apple iPhone SE, which has only 64 GB of storage space.
There is a catch
There are, of course, huge warnings, and the biggest is global availability. These Tecno phones are available in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and South Asia, but not, as I noted earlier, in the US or Europe. Prices can also vary, and the $ 280 and $ 320 Tecno is still just an “estimate” for my market.
There are a number of limitations that are often associated with cheap phones, such as without a fingerprint reader under the screen. Instead, the power / wake button serves as an efficient fingerprint reader. The screen is still LCD, not OLED. There is no reported IP rating (you may keep it away from deep bars). It does not offer wireless charging.
Then there is the mobile CPU, the MediaTek Helio G96, which is probably the equivalent of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G. Its reference numbers are not even in the same environment as, say, the Apple A15 Bionic or the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.
So when I unexpectedly walked out of an event with a review unit in hand and decided to spend a day or more with him, I tried to match my expectations.
However, for the most part, this budget device has surpassed them.
Not bad at all
As I mentioned, it is an attractive phone with a large screen and a colorful screen which, of course, looks great indoors. It’s another thing outside. It was hard in bright light, but I could still see well enough to use his camera and the pretty rich settings for taking different shots. Everything from standard to 2k telephoto, and from portrait to slow motion, looked pretty good. Even in low light, the night shots were decent (nothing would qualify as extraordinary). There are no wide-angle lenses, let alone ultra-wide ones, but the included lenses capture sharp, colorful and precise images.
The portrait mode from the rear camera is good (the front camera had more artifacts), although you can’t adjust the bokeh level before or after the shot (how many people do that on their iPhone 13 or Samsung Galaxy?). There is an editing tool that allows you to add and adjust the bokeh effect on any image, but it is not directly related to the photo in portrait mode, which is a bit silly.
The camera with artificial intelligence and her efforts to identify objects in the scene were fun. At one point, I pointed the phone at my hand and “Five” appeared.
There are so many options for manipulating images that you may never find them or use them all. The body manipulation kit is, at best, problematic. It offers weight loss for the waist, head, shoulders, slender and elongated legs, “thick buttocks”, along with other cosmetic changes. Maybe that’s what Techno meant by “fashion” phone.
Honestly, it was hard to find those features and the phone certainly doesn’t impose them. Still, it’s weird that they’re there.
Hitting above your weight
For a phone under $ 300, the Tecno Camon 19 Pro is pretty good. He played tough games like Asphalt 9: Legends without a miss. I think maybe one or two frames fell out, and the sound could have been richer, but it was still a pleasant experience.
It’s an efficient productivity platform for viewing and managing files, and I like the list of applications in alphabetical order (Apple, Samsung, do this).
That 5,000 mAh battery is, by the way, an all-day champion.
Basically, this is an above-average phone at a ridiculously good price.
Will it ever arrive in the US and the UK? I don’t know and Tecno didn’t offer any guidelines. I’m not sure that matters. What Tecno Camon 19 Pro demonstrates to me is that all phone manufacturers can do better on the accessibility front. We pay as much as $ 999 for powerful big screen phones that probably do a lot more than we will ever need (at least for most of us).
Camon 19 Pro is a great example of budget options. I think it’s time for Apple, Samsung and others to respond in the same way.
#phone #lesson #accessibility #hope #Apple #Samsung #pay #attention