CAMON 17 Pro Review: Good Performance, Solid Camera

TECNO CAMON 17 Pro is among the three CAMON devices unveiled in a fashion-focused live launch a couple of days ago in Nigeria. The CAMON 17 Pro is the best among the CAMON 17 series as it comes with the best specs ever found on a CAMON phone.

We have got the device for a week now and we will be taking you through all you need to know about the phone in this review. Some of the angles we will cover include the design/display, the software, hardware, camera, and battery life. Also included in the review is the latest TECNO Buds1, does it sound better than the previous Buds from TECNO? You get to know this and more in the review.

What you get inside the box:

The CAMON 17 Pro comes in a well packaged box and when you open it, these are what you get inside the box plus the Buds1. Nice right?

• CAMON 17 Pro
• a pair of earphones
• 25W power brick and USB-C charging cable
• Sim ejector tool
• a transparent cover case
• warranty card

TECNO Buds1

The review unit we have comes with TECNO Buds1, which is a nice-looking pair of wireless Bluetooth earbuds. It is quite easy to connect with the CAMON 17 Pro. To pair it, toggle on Bluetooth on your phone, open the box housing the Buds1, and it will immediately pop up on your CAMON 17 Pro, tap to pair and you are good to go.

The buds1 comes with 300mAh battery and when fully charged, it can last you up to 12 hours of constant music playing. When it comes to sound quality, the buds1 produces clean and rich bass with efficient noise cancellation.

You can adjust the volume by long-pressing on the left or the right buds. You can also pause or next a song by double tapping and triple tapping on the buds respectively.

With that aside, let continue with the review of the CAMON 17 Pro.

Design

As far as the design of the TECNO CAMON 17 Pro goes, we have nothing to complain about here. It is a sleek-looking smartphone and one of the best-crafted smartphones from TECNO. It is slim and lightweight with the chamfered edges which make for an easy grip and one-handed use.

It is available in two fashionable colours; California Dream silver and Malibu Blue. The unit we have is the Dream Silver colour which looks premium with a glossy touch at the back. The back is made of plastic, surprisingly, it doesn’t attract a lot of fingerprint smudges. Nice job on the design.

At the back, you have a quad-camera system with a quad LED flashlight which comes handy when shooting in low light. Beneath it, is the boldly inscribed CAMON branding and quite visible from all angles of the phone. Oh! lest I forget, there is a transparent back cover included in the package to protect the phone from scratches and not hiding the beauty of the phone.

Moving to the button placement, the device has its volume controller buttons and the power which also doubles as the fingerprint scanner at the right-hand side. I have always preferred the fingerprint scanner to be placed at the right-handed side over the rear side, I am glad TECNO implemented this on the device. The button is tactile and unlocks the device pretty fast too. There is Face unlock as well, but I hardly use that. However, it is a nice option to have for those who love to use it.

On the left-hand side, you only get the SIM/Micro SD card slot which can house 2-nano sized sim cards and a microSD card.

The top of the phone has a noise cancelling microphone [it helps to improve voice clarity when making calls or recording an audio] while at the bottom, you get 3.5mm audio jack, another microphone, USB type C charging port and the speaker grille.

As far as the design is concerned, you aren’t going to miss anything.

Display

At the front, the CAMON 17 Pro features a 6.8-inch FHD Dot-in display with a resolution of 1080 by 2460 (395 ppi). According to TECNO, it has an 82% aspect ratio and 500 nits in terms of brightness. Indeed, the display is bright enough outdoor with good sun legibility.

The panel is an IPS screen, no doubt we would have preferred an AMOLED display over this, however, TECNO tossed in a 90Hz refresh rate to sweeten the deal. With this high refresh rate, you get a smooth mobile experience when switching apps, browsing the web, and most importantly when gaming.

The device comes with dual stereo speakers, there is an additional speaker at the front just above the front facing camera. This is a nice thing to have as it helps to improve the audio experience when listening to music, gaming or watching movies.

Sound comes out of both speakers and the audio quality is good as well. But in case you don’t want to play out sound from the speakers, you can use the bundled pair of earphones preferably the Buds1 which completely immerses you into whatever song you are listening to. Call quality is clear, no disturbance with background noise and we had no problem hearing our conversation partners audibly well.

Software and Performance

TECNO CAMON 17 Pro ships with Android 11 and HiOS 7.6 out of the box. Android 11 is still Google’s latest mobile operating system although Android 12 is already in the beta stage.

Google Android 11 offers lot of cool features including Nearby Share, ability to pin apps in the share menu, improved security and privacy, better and fast Multitasking panel, biometric authentication, among others.

Baked with Android 11 on the CAMON 17 Pro is HiOS 7.6 which is now more revamped with better and intuitive icons. There are couple of new features like Peek Proof which enables you to hide the content on your device from prying eyes. There is App Twin which makes it possible to run two apps like WhatsApp and Facebook on your device.

We also have social Turbo, Video Assistant, Improved Smart scanner and a host of others.

However, ads and other bloatware are still present, although some of these bloatwares can be uninstalled.

When it comes to performance, the CAMON 17 Pro is no slouch. From the moment we set it up, it hasn’t disappointed us. It handled pretty smoothly everything we threw at it. From running our normal social media apps to browsing the web and playing games, the CAMON 17 Pro shows no sign of lagging and was able to keep many apps in memory.

We weren’t that surprised as the device is powered by MediaTek Helio G95 processor which is an octa-core gaming chipset. The chipset has two powerful Arm Cortex-A76 processor cores clocked up to 2.05GHz, plus six Cortex-A55 efficiency-focused processors. In terms of graphics, you are getting an Arm Mali-G76 MC4 with speeds that boost to 900MHz.

On the CAMON 17 Pro, there is an 8GB of RAM and 256GB onboard storage and you can even extend it further to 512GB of storage via an external microSD card. This is by far the best specs on a TECNO device, interesting times we live in!

To make switching between apps and playing games buttery smooth, TECNO tossed in a 90Hz refresh rate. I played PUBG, which is a graphic-demanding game, and it played smoothly at medium graphics. No doubt, the CAMON 17 Pro held its own when it comes to performance, no complaint here.

Cameras

One of the strongholds of the CAMON 17 Pro is the camera. At the back, the device boasts a 64MP quad-camera setup which includes a 2MP bokeh camera, 8MP wide-angle camera and a 2MP monochrome sensor. There is also a quad-LED flash for illuminating the darkest of scenes.

Up front, the dot-in notch houses the 48MP selfie camera which is being aided by dual-LED flash tucked in the tiny bezel at the left top corner.

The whole camera system both front and back is being aided by AI technology to enhance user’s photography and videography experience.

The camera app is pretty simple and easy to use. There are couple of useful features such as beauty mode, AR shot, portrait, super Night mode, Time-lapse which can shoot up to 4K@30fps for both the back and the front camera, Slow-Mo at 960fps, film mode and others.

Videography is another aspect TECNO brought in their A-game on the TECNO CAMON 17 Pro. You can shoot 4K content at 30fps from both the rear and the front camera. However, at 4K, there is no stabilization, you have to downscale to 1080p at 60fps if you want your video to be stabilized.

Not many flagship devices can shoot 4K content on their front camera, the fact that the CAMON 17 Pro has this option will go a long way for content creators who are looking for an affordable smartphone for vlogging. There is also an option to blur out the background when recording video as well using the video bokeh mode feature. Personally, this is one of my favourite features as it comes handy when having a Facebook or IG live video.

We were really excited with all the camera specs, so we took it out for a camera shootout to see how the camera performs in day light and during lowlight scenarios.

Battery Life

TECNO CAMON 17 Pro comes with a 5000mAh battery that supports fast charging. With the bundled 25W fast charger, it takes about 1hour: 45mins to fill up the battery from 0% to 100%. From our test, the battery can last up to a day of constant use before you have to charge it again, which is pretty cool.

Verdict

The CAMON 17 Pro offers a lot of upgrades compared to its successors. We have a faster processor, an improved camera, and above all, a slimmer design. If you are thinking of buying a TECNO phone under 125k, the CAMON 17 Pro is highly recommended.

Price and Availability

The CAMON 17 Pro with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage retails for around N125,000. There other versions of the CAMON 17 series include the CAMON 17 with 4GB RAM and 64GB of storage and CAMON 17P with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage which cost N74,000 and N95,000 respectively. You can get any of these devices from TECNO’s authorized retail stores or from online stores in Nigeria.