Tecno CAMON 20 Premier 5G review

The Shenzhen company Tecno’s business model is a unique one, one which means you may not have ever heard of the company. It focuses on markets with big populations but the sort of income that makes a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra an extreme luxury. It has “won the African market”, as Forbes puts it, and has also reached out across India, Bangladesh, and Nepal now. So why the heck did Tecno give me a handset to review?

Well, maybe the company wants to push into the US market, considering it’s not just interested in budget handsets like the Tecno CAMON 20 Premier 5G. The company makes a pricy foldable – a phone which has its own separate website, weirdly. So, maybe Tecno wants to cater to a wider audience. And the CAMON 20 Premier 5G is an interesting proposition for that.

On paper then, it’s a well-rounded package. Plus, Tecno packs the box with some nice accessories – a charger, USB-C headphones, and a pretty slick case. All looking good so far, but let’s dive into the minutiae.

Build

The Tecno CAMON 20 Premier 5G is a lovely-looking phone overall. The screen on the front has tiny bezels, the rails are flat making for a robust, squared-off chassis, while the back is angular and modern, if a little over the top.

Tecno calls the design on the back of the phone “PUZZLE Deconstructionist Design”, whatever that means. You can get it in two colors, black and a pale purple-blue mishmash. The back is a sort of fake leather, but it doesn’t feel exactly luxurious. Not that it feels bad, I just prefer a glass back. Still, this leather option doesn’t attract any fingerprints, which is a bonus.

While squared-off rails are my personal preference, the Tecno’s are made of something that feels like plastic. But hey, this is a mid-range handset. Sacrifices have to be made somewhere, eh? Well, there’s one place they definitely didn’t skimp, and that’s the screen.

Display

The CAMON 20 Premier 5G’s display is ace. First off, it’s big and bright with barely any bezels, making it feel like a premium proposition. Combine this with the high-refresh-rate screen and the excellent pixel density and it’s very pretty. (But then again, it’s only matching the competition in this regard; both the Redmi Note 12 Pro and Samsung Galaxy A54 offer almost identical screen specs).

High-refresh-rate screens are a little life-changing if you’re used to an old iPhone or something. Scrolling through Twitter, browsing the web, and just using the phone feels so much slicker. That should also be the case for gaming, but that’s also where the new MediaTek chip comes in.

Performance

The Tecno CAMON 20 Premier 5G features a MediaTek Dimensity 8050, the Taiwanese company’s new mid-range chip. And, overall, it’s impressive. Navigating menus, playing around in the photos app, and using various apps is zippy. It’s nice.

But here at Pocket Tactics, we obviously have one key thing in mind when trying out a new chipset: gaming. And this is where things become a bit surprising. While MediaTek promises the chip offers “supreme gaming with reliable, fast FPS”, this isn’t what we found in our testing.

We started off with a few easy ones. Candy Crush is a breeze, as you’d expect. Meanwhile, F1 Clash feels exactly the same as it does on a $1500 flagship. Casual and less graphically intensive games are not going to be an issue for the CAMON 20 Premier 5G.

What is a surprise to us, however, is Genshin Impact. Now, we’re experts on Genshin at PT, and we obviously know it’s a big, graphically-intensive open world. But on medium settings, running around Teyvat isn’t the smoothest experience.

Throughout our testing, we had strange stutters, almost at regular intervals. Things get a bit smoother if you close all the other suspended apps, but you shouldn’t have to do that, and it doesn’t completely fix it. The even more surprising thing is that bumping Genshin down to its lowest graphical settings doesn’t fix it either, which makes me think something strange is going on.

Of course, we can’t know what that is, so we decided to test some other graphically-intensive games to see if we had the same issues. And well, our conclusion is that there’s something weird going on with Genshin. Call of Duty Mobile is incredibly pretty, while PUBG Mobile looks as good as it can. So, aside from Genshin, the Dimensity 8050 is good. And it also doesn’t seem to decimate the battery too.

Battery

Now, a 5000-mAh battery is standard in phones nowadays. Sometimes you see a little lower, sometimes a little more, but that’s normally what you get. What this means, then, is that looking at a spec sheet is completely useless. Battery life is dependent on the processor that’s drawing power from it and how well-optimized the phone is.

So, we do some normal real-world testing. And the CAMON 20 Premier 5G has good battery life. For our first test, we checked the battery drain while on standby. We plonked the CAMON next to the latest Xiaomi flagship and waited, just to see if there was a big difference. There isn’t. On standby, the CAMON drains at about the same rate as a phone three times the price. Not really sure what we’ve learned from that, but there ya go.

Now it was time for me to take it on the go, and this is where the CAMON 20 Premier 5G is impressive again. I got a little under two days of general use – phone calls, photos, messaging apps, YouTube, gaming, etc. – before I had to charge the phone, far better than it has any right to be at this price. Combine that with the included 45W charger and it’s an ace battery experience. That same thing can’t be said, however, about the cameras.

1/4

Cameras

On the back of the CAMON 20 Premier 5G, there’s a standard 50MP lens and 108MP wide lens. Big numbers, right? Well, even bigger lenses, it would seem. There’s some weird member-measuring going on with phone manufacturers at the moment, seeing who can make the biggest lenses and how many they can fit on the back of the device, and Tecno’s diving in handily with this one.

Anyway, in terms of cameras, they may be good on paper, but we all know that camera processing is how phones get accolades nowadays, and for a smaller company in the market, Tecno has done an alright job. Not amazing, mind you, but not bad either.

Let’s start with the bad stuff. Look at the comparison of the daytime shots in the photos above. The iPhone keeps everything quite muted and straight-faced, while the Tecno blows everything into comically contrasty unreality. Look at the comparison of those two trees and zoom in – the Tecno makes the tree look like it’s flat, superimposed, and really, really green. Too much interference from the processing for my liking.

At night, however, the CAMON 20 Premier 5G may be more to your liking. You can see a comparison shot of a dog above – sure, the Tecno’s still look a little hyperreal, finding light where it isn’t really there, but the iPhone is a little too honest for the nighttime in some situations. It comes down to personal preference, but the CAMON 20 Premier 5G definitely does a good job (it’s not until you zoom in, on the dog’s hair, for example, that you can see the Tecno’s loss of definition).

Features

Meanwhile, the Tecno CAMON 20 Premier 5G runs Android 13 with the HiOS skin over the top. It’s fine and slick, just like the majority of Android phones nowadays, but given the competition from the Samsung A54, there are better options out there. Tecno also promises to upgrade the CAMON 20 Premier 5G to Android 14 when available, but we don’t recommend buying anything awaiting the promise of a software upgrade.

Other than that, there’s a fingerprint sensor underneath the screen that’s a little fiddly. I often had to get it to read my finger twice before unlocking. This is the sort of thing that sets it apart but obviously isn’t a dealbreaker.   You also don’t get a load of random apps automatically downloaded when you first set up the phone, which is nice (the system still tries to download a load of random gubbins, but at least it asks).

Beyond all that, there’s not really anything to set the Tecno apart. It’s not got any truly killer feature that makes it a standout piece of tech. It’s an appliance, a tool for everyday life. And it’s a good one. But it’s not something you’re going to fall in love with.

For more tech goodness, check out our Apple WWDC 2023 preview and our guides to the best rugged phones and portable gaming consoles for expert buying advice. If you’re reading Pocket Tactics from the US, check out the best cell phone providers in your area.