TECNO Camon 15 Review: A good camera phone that needs some slight adjustments
TECNO Camon 15 Review: TECNO mobile launched the TECNO Camon 15 a few weeks ago in the Kenyan market. The device is available countrywide at a retail price of Ksh 17,999 and you can also buy it on JUMIA and Transsion’s e-commerce platform XPARK with the company offering FREE countrywide delivery.
The device comes with some really interesting features with one of the key selling points being the 48-megapixel camera. The selfie camera, on the other hand, is composed of a 16-megapixels lens. We will be sharing some images taken with the phone in this short review article. I need to also mention that we’re getting two devices, the Camon 15 and Tecno Camon 15 Pro or Premier as the company calls it. Both devices, as we mentioned in the first teaser article we did on TechTrendsKE follow the company’s mission that targets the lower end of the market, budget-oriented you could say. The two devices adopt popular design trends on the market, like the punch-hole selfie (seen in last year’s Camon 12 Air) and the pop-up selfie designs bringing them to a lower end on the market.
Other features include a 6.55-inch touchscreen display, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage that can be expanded via microSD card (up to 256GB) with a dedicated slot. The Camon 15 runs Android 10 and is powered by a 5000mAh non-removable battery.
The TECNO Camon 15 runs HiOS based on Android 10. The phone is a dual-SIM smartphone that accepts Nano-SIM and Nano-SIM cards and it is available in Shoal Gold, Fascinating Purple, and Dark Jade colours. You can check out the specs sheet here.
Our TECNO Camon 15 review unit was sent two weeks ago, and here are our thoughts.
Design
The overall design looks good. Honestly, TECNO really did put some work here. The design is completely different from all the Camon devices we have seen from the company. At the front, you have the 6.55-inch HD display with a punch-hole camera cutout. Glad we’re not getting the notch but the camera cutout really looks good. This display panel is quite good, accurate colour reproduction and very responsive although I wish TECNO gave us a FHD+ display.
At the back, TECNO decided to add a linear gradient of two colours with a rectangular camera, which well, does not look really bad. It is here that we also have the fingerprint scanner which does a pretty good job, it’s fast and very responsive.
At the bottom, we have the USB port, the speaker grills and the headphone jack.
On the right, we have the volume and power buttons while the left houses the card slot for dual nano sim cards and MicroSD card.
Cameras
The Camon 15 is a camera phone and features a quad camera setup that includes a 48-megapixel unit, two extra 2-megapixel sensors and a fourth QVGA lens. The selfie camera, on the other hand, is 16 MP.
Camera modes include video (set to 1080p, but can be scaled down to 720p or 480p), AI Cam, Bokeh, Super Night, Panorama, AR shot which has a number stickers to make you look cool, a Beauty Mode, 2x Zoom and a Macro shooting mode.
Images produced are good, at least in good lighting for both indoors and outdoors. The selfie camera also does a good job although it keeps losing focus at some point. Check sample photos below (click to expand).
We also shot the interview below using the Camon 15. Remember as we said, the camera system is capable of 1080p video at 30 frames per second.
More sample images are available on our official TechTrendsKE Instagram page.
Software, battery and overall performance
TECNO Camon 15 runs HiOS based on Android 10 and comes with so many features like the smart panel to make you easily access your apps, HiOS Lab which allows you to set new features and products whenever they are introduced, dark mode which I really love using among others. The features are so many they probably just need a separate post.
We have always loved HiOS apart from those annoying ads that appear on the lock screen as well as pre-installed bloatware which includes third-party and in-house apps. We are still getting that on the Camon 15. As we keep saying, hopefully, TECNO is one day going to do something about them. If you want to enjoy a good user experience then just get a launcher, I use Nova all the time.
The battery is huge – 5000 mAh and does a pretty good job. The huge battery is actually why the phone is quite heavy. The battery life is excellent, and guarantees you more than a day of use, if you’re a moderate user you can pull even three days easily.
The phone does not support fast charge, I wish it did. You will have to wait for close to three hours for the phone to fully charge.
Under the hood of the Camon 15 runs an octa-core Mediatek Helio P22 (12 nm) chip complemented with PowerVR GE8320 GPU. Everything runs smoothly so don’t expect any lags if you’re not a heavy user.
Connectivity options on the Camon 15 include Wi-Fi, GPS, Micro-USB, FM radio, 3G, and 4G (with support for Band 40) with active 4G on both SIM cards. Sensors include accelerometer, ambient light sensor, compass/ magnetometer, gyroscope, proximity sensor, and of course the fingerprint sensor we talked about earlier. The TECNO Camon 15 also supports face unlock.
Should you buy the Camon 15?
The TECNO Camon 15 is a good phone and we love the fact that TECNO is introducing new designs trends. The camera is good, the battery does an excellent job
For Ksh. 18,000. The Camon 15 delivers on its promises and its a phone we would really recommend especially for those looking for a good Camon camera phone. The phone is available on Jumia and XPARK and the company offering FREE countrywide delivery. This is good especially now that movement in the country has been restricted due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
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