TECNO Camon 18 Review: The Tecno Camon 18 succeeds the Camon 17 that Tecno mobile launched in May last year. There are three devices in the Camon 18 series – The standard Camon 18, then we have the Camon 18 Premier which is the big brother and Camon 18P.
Tecno officially made these devices available in the local market back in October.
The company is selling the Tecno Camon 18 for Kshs 22,199 and the Tecno Camon 18P for Kshs 27,699 while the headliner Tecno Camon 18 Premier will be available for Kshs 39,099.
In this article, our focus will be on the Camon 18. Our unboxing video is already up on our YouTube channel; in case you missed it you can check it below.
Tecno Camon 18 Design and Display Review
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, the Camon 18 is the successor to the Camon 18. Nothing much has changed, just some slight improvements. The phone comes with a 6.80-inch touchscreen display with a resolution of 1080×2460 pixels and an aspect ratio of 20.5:9. The phone has a 90hz LCD screen.
This display size is pretty good considering that we use our phones for almost everything these days. Be it streaming or favourite videos or watching movies, the huge AMOLED display is a good fit.
The Tecno Camon 18 is actually one of the cheapest phones we’re getting with a 90hz refresh rate. This refresh rate makes using the phone more enjoyable. Scrolling through the display is smooth, switching through apps is also quite good and for those who enjoy playing games, the display offers quite a sleek experience.
The volume buttons are on the right and right below them is where you have the power button which also serves as the fingerprint sensor. The top edge is completely empty with the top left side housing the triple slot tray for your two sim cards and SD card.
At the bottom edge, we have the headphone jack, a USB-C port that supports 18W fast charging and some speakers.
At the back, we have a small camera bump that houses a 48-megapixel primary camera; a 2-megapixel camera, and a 2-megapixel camera. The color gradient design at the back looks beautiful but as you can notice from our unboxing video, it picks lots of fingerprint smudges but the good thing is Tecno added a plastic case in the box to cover this.
Tecno Camon 18 Performance and battery life review
When it comes to performance, the Tecno Camon 18 does not disappoint. It is powered by an octa-core MediaTek Helio G88 processor and comes with 4GB of RAM with 128GB of internal storage. The phone runs Android 11 and HiOS version 8.
This specs configuration handles everything pretty well. Multitasking and switching between apps makes the user experience really good.
Tecno has also made some slight updates to HiOS. Previously we have complained how annoying it was especially with the pop-ups unnecessary notifications. The settings toggles on HiOS 8 on the Camon 18 are a bit bigger. Tecno has also revamped the notification shade. If you’re keen enough, you will also notice some changes with the shapes, colours of HiOS elements.
I also need to mention that the Camon 18 is among the TECNO devices that will receive the Android 12 and HiOS 8.5 update when it rolls out to the series
The battery life is also one of my favourite features of the Camon 18. The phone is powered by a 5000mAh battery, slightly bigger than what we have on the Camon 18 Premier. The huge battery does a good job able to last you the entire day.
The 18W fast Type-C charging also charges the phone pretty quickly. You can juice up the phone from 1% to 90% in just around 40 minutes.
Tecno Camon 18 Camera review
When it comes to the cameras, the Tecno Camon 18 packs a rear triple camera setup featuring a 48-megapixel primary camera; a 2-megapixel camera, and a 2-megapixel camera. The selfie camera is a 16-megapixel sensor.
The camera is one of the key features that Tecno always pushes with the Camon series.
We are getting a number of camera modes including Super Night Mode, video bokeh mode, wide selfie, portrait, short video, film among others.
The camera also allows you to shoot videos at 2K resolution other than for bokeh mode and video beauty mode whose videos are capped at 720p.
Check sample shots below under different modes.
Should you buy it? – Pricing and availability
For Kshs 22,199, the Tecno Camon 18 is a good buy and you can grab one from TECNO retail stores across the country including e-commerce sites like Jumia.
Tecno has made some slight improvements to this device compared to the Camon 17. HiOS features some interesting tweaks, and we are also getting some great cameras. The overall performance is quite good. This, combined with all the other interesting features we have highlighted in this review article makes the Tecno Camon 18 a good option.
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A very decent option
I recommend this device
The camera quality is good