TECNO Camon X Pro smartphone is one of the latest additions to the line-up of TECNO smartphones available in Nigeria. Few days after the launch, we gave you a first impression article and a video where we briefly touched on the key specifications announced during the launch.
Now we have a full review detailing the experience with the camera, facial recognition, performance and functionality.
Design
TECNO have always tried to make an exception to the design of its recent devices with each successive smartphone taking a completely different design from the predecessor in the same category. The Camon X pro is made of plastic with a golden accent wrapped round the edge and except you get a hold of it, you won’t be able to tell it is made of plastic. The option of going for a plastic build is still unknown, compared to metallic material which offers a more premium look and feel. The Camon CX, which is the previous version, has a metallic casing and slim body.
The power button, volume rocker and SIM trays are on the right hand side of the device, nothing happens on the left and the top of the device but just at the bottom, you have the headphone jack, the USB charging port and the speaker. Moving to the back, you have the fingerprint sensor and the camera and flash compartment.
The Camon CX had its camera enclosed within the back case but the Camon X pro has a camera bump, a pretty obvious camera bump. Maybe it is safe to say TECNO just dipped in the design category. However, the position of the bump has little or no effect on using the phone while placed on a desk or flat surface.
The design allows the phone sit well in the hand and the impressive feat on the design is the slim bezel offering more screen real estate. Let me also add that the phone is light weight and very easy to handle
Display
The 6-inch display of the Camon X pro is well crafted to fit into the body. With full HD resolution on board, you get sharp crisp imaging. Colours look good with high contrast but depth of colours seem less intense; this isn’t so obvious anyway except you do a side by side comparison with other devices with balanced colour saturation.
Excellent viewing angle complement the multimedia experience alongside a loud audio. Visibility under the sun is also good even unless the screen brightness is set a minimum.
Camera
Many of us are aware that the camon devices are touted as camera phones with much emphasis on performance of the front camera. Successive device in the camon series have received bumped up front camera pixels but do this high pixel count actually translate into quality imaging….?, definitely photo quality is not only dependent on the huge pixel count. The rear camera is 16 megapixel, same with the previous version but the front camera on the Camon X pro has been bumped to 24 megapixel.
The front camera performs well under adequate lighting condition, pictures come out sharp, bright and colourful. Selfie lovers will surely enjoy their selfies as the camera allows more light come in to light the subject. This is also beneficial for taking pictures and recording videos in low lit environment. I tested the low light performance with an iPhone and the image quality and video quality of the Camon X pro came out better.
Moreover, pictures taken with the front camera gets over exposed under bright light which makes photos almost become white out. Perhaps this can be corrected on subsequent software update as experienced with the Infinix Zero 5 Pro.
Again TECNO has refused to include a manual setting on the camera which is an indication that that the company feels very confident with the default camera setting embedded on the device. There is no professional camera mode, no freedom to adjust ISO, shutter speed, white balancing among others and this really makes me wonder if the Camon devices can pass as an ultimate camera phone. You are only provided with option to adjust aspect ratio and picture sizes by switching megapixels of the camera.
The regulars are also present: HDR mode, beauty mode, panorama alongside a newly added super pixel mode. There is a live filter mode also which makes you select from various filter options before you take a picture. Many people will love filter addition to the camera just like me as I just couldn’t do away with the black and white filter option for taking most of my pictures.
Portrait mode is also available on the front camera, this gives a bookeh effect by blurring out the background of your selfie.
Performance and battery
The phone runs on Android 8.1 Oreo and powered by a Mediatek Helio P23, octa-core processor clocked at 2.0GHz with 4GB RAM. All of these translate into a smooth multitasking experience and great speed. It also handles heavy apps and HD games like Real racing 3 smoothly but with little drag when playing Street Chaser. Switching between apps is fluid except when you have huge RAM being used when too many apps are open at the same time, then you may experience little drag but this can be prevented by freeing up RAM by closing apps that are not being used.
Internal storage is 64GB, large enough to cater for your multimedia needs and this can also be expanded with the use of a microSD card. Interestingly, you can insert two SIM cards and a microSD card all at the same time.
Security function of the phone has been raised with the integration of facial recognition. The Face ID feature was one I hurriedly went to try out to know if it was going to be any different from the unpopular eye scanner that got its first feature on the Camon C9. I wasn’t disappointed and at the same time had my doubt cleared.
The Face ID works well by using the front camera to detect the registered face. It can be used to unlock the phone if out of sleep mode (PS: It doesn’t unlock the phone from sleep mode) and this even works in the dark with the option to turn the front flash on in order to provide adequate lighting for the face.
The Face ID can also be beneficial for privacy concerns. The Camon X pro has an option to lock individual apps and prevent unauthorized access to them, these locked apps can be unlocked with the facial recognition. This works quite well and the unlock speed is fast with very few fail attempts which may be due to insufficient lighting.
Battery capacity is 3750mAh may not give you juice for a full day if you get too busy on the phone with more screen-on time but if you are on a light usage, you are definitely not going to worry about a low battery for the rest of the day. Charging from 0-100% takes two hours or more.
Should you buy the TECNO Camon X Pro? I’d say yes if you are a fan of TECNO and you do not mind smartphones with plastic build. You get the perks of a having a sleek device with a remarkable ease of handling, quality front facing camera and the face ID for security. Overall, my best feature on the device is the face ID.
