Tecno Camon 30 Premier 5G review

Verdict

While the lack of wider availability rules out a definitive conclusion, the Tecno Camon 30 Premier 5G has enough camera smarts and design flourishes to make it an interesting mid-range ‘flagship killer’ candidate.

Introduction

If you’re based in the West, you probably haven’t heard of Tecno. It’s a Chinese tech brand aimed at emerging markets, with a particular focus on Africa.

Tecno has been dipping its toes into wider markets in early 2024, with a couple of notable showings at MWC in February. Now the brand has started offering an intriguing new smartphone around for review to European outlets in the Tecno Camon 30 Premier 5G.

We should note right off the bat that this phone isn’t available in the UK, European, or US markets at the time of writing, so we’re not going to be offering up a score. However, this is an interesting piece of kit, with some surprisingly high-end features at what appears to be a lower-mid-range price.

The Tecno Camon 30 Premier 5G launched in India at a price of ₹39,999, which works out to about £380. Direct currency conversions aren’t always useful, but it’s worth pointing out that the Pixel 8a launched in India recently for ₹52,999, which converts pretty directly to £499.

Suffice to say, with its flagship-killer pretensions and affordable pricing, we’re getting distinct early-OnePlus vibes. Can the Tecno Camon 30 Premier 5G live up to them?

Design

• Classic camera aesthetic with a red notification light
• Faux leather back
• IP54 rated

In case you missed it from the intro, I get the sense that Tecno is reaching for something bigger with the Camon 30 Premier 5G. That much is obvious the moment you grab it out of its box.

This is a phone that’s trying to nail an ultra flagship aesthetic for a fraction of the price, and you have to say it mostly pays off. It’s quite a large phone, with a weight of 210g and a thickness of 7.9mm, but it stops just short of feeling unwieldy.

The flat-edge metallic frame is pretty standard at this point, but the use of a “Tech-art Leather” back is a bold decision. It looks like some kind of cross between a bathroom floor tile and some kind of animal skin (it’s neither), and feels nice and textured in the hand.

Said back cover also curves out to encompass a thicker camera section. Talking of which, Tecno has gone for a showy ridged dial surround for the camera module, and there’s a metal-effect plastic strip alongside it that looks better than it feels.

As Tecno notes on its website, the intent is that the phone “feels like a classic camera”. Adding to that effect is a red notification light just next to the camera, which can be assigned to various functions like incoming calls and video recording.

All in all, it reminded me of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, which shoots for a similar vintage camera aesthetic – albeit with a much more premium feel. Indeed, if the slightly irregular bezels and less tight tolerances don’t tip you off to the Camon 30 Premier’s mid-range status, then its lower-tier Corning Gorilla Glass 5 front and IP54 rating probably will.

Screen

• 6.77-inch 120Hz OLED
• 1264 x 2780 ‘1.5K’ resolution
• 1400nits peak brightness

Tecno has equipped the Camon 30 Premier with a large, sharp 6.77-inch 1264 x 2780 (aka 1.5K) AMOLED display.

It’s got a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz, as you’d expect these days even from an affordable phone. It’s also an LTPO panel, which you most certainly wouldn’t. This means the screen can smartly scale down to a much lower refresh rate whenever the present task is appropriately static, and there’s an always-on function that capitalises on that while the phone is dormant.

You also get a respectable top brightness of 1400 nits in high brightness mode (HBM). You’ll need to keep autobrightness engaged for this however, and I didn’t always find this to be the most reliable example.

It’s not the most colour-accurate display either, and there isn’t the usual option to switch to a more natural sRGB-calibrated colour scheme in the Settings menu. It’s a good screen, but its tuning might be a little gaudy for some.

You get an in-display fingerprint sensor, and it’s a solid example that worked reliably for me. That much should be table stakes by now, but you’d be surprised how many phones on the more affordable end of the spectrum regularly refuse to recognise my thumbprint.

There’s a solid set of stereo speakers here that get plenty loud, and Dolby Atmos support ensures strong separation and depth in supported media playback. As is usually the case, they’re a little lacking in bass, but clarity is good.

Performance

• MediaTek 8200 Ultimate 5G
• 512GB storage and 12GB RAM
• Potent mid-range performance

The Tecno Camon 30 Premier 5G runs on a MediaTek 8200 Ultimate 5G chip, which is a pretty capable mid-range runner.

Especially so when that chip is paired with 12GB of RAM as standard, as it is here. It’s a more than solid spec.

In our benchmark tests, the phone scored somewhere in the region of the Pixel 7a and the Samsung Galaxy A55, though it falls well short of mid-range champs like the Pixel 8a and the Poco F6.

It also runs games well. I was able to crank the graphical settings right up high on Wreckfest and Genshin Impact, and everything remained nice and playable. Given that the chip has to drive a sharper-than-average 1.5K display, that’s pretty good going.

The Tecno Camon 30 Premier is ridiculously well equipped for storage too, with the sole model coming with 512GB straight out of the box. There are flagship phones that don’t even offer such an option, while most will only do so at a hefty premium.

Camera

• Triple camera system
• Shows are bright and extremely punchy
• Dedicated 3x telephoto
• Strong selfie cam with autofocus

Perhaps the most ambitious element of the Tecno Camon 30 Premier 5G, on paper at least, is its camera system. It points to a company that’s not content to concede any ground in securing that ‘flagship killer’ moniker.

You’re looking at an impressive-sounding triple-50MP camera set-up, led by a relatively large and capable Sony IMX890 1/1.56″ main sensor with an f/1.88 aperture and OIS. That’s the same sensor that you’ll find in the OnePlus 12R and the Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra, two capable flagship (or thereabouts) phones released in 2024.

Now consider that one of those sensors is a dedicated 50MP 3x telephoto. Such things aren’t common at all on more affordable phones like this.

Finally you have a 50MP ultra-wide with a relatively narrow 114-degree field of view, and a well-equipped 50MP selfie camera with autofocus and eye-tracking – another component you wouldn’t expect to find on anything less than a flagship phone.

Tecno has offered quite a lot of technical babble in talking up its camera system, but this gist of it is that it employs a dual chip set-up, including the Sony Imaging Chip CXD5622GG, to enhance its shots.

Whatever the process, the Tecno Camon 30 Premier takes bright, vibrant snaps in most conditions. In a side-by-side face-off with the Pixel 8a it seemed to be more aggressive at pulling out detail in shadowy areas and indoors scenarios (food shots look spectacular), though it also tended to punch colours up a little too much compared to Google’s mid-range champ. Fine detail often wasn’t as good either.

All in all, the Camon 30 Premier’s main camera is capable of obtaining good results, but Tecno could do with reining in its processing a little in future phones. Oh, and there’s an obnoxious watermark active by default.

Having that dedicated telephoto camera is a huge plus, though, and it captures nice, crisp 3x shots. Ultra-wide shots don’t attain the widest angle, but they pack a solid amount of detail, and the colour tone isn’t a million miles off the main sensor.

The front camera, too, is capable of capturing detailed selfies, aided no end by the inclusion of autofocus – another distinctly flagship-shaped flourish. Skin tones look nice and natural.

On the video front, the Tecno Camon 30 Premier 5G can grab 4K footage at a silky 60fps.

Software

• Android 14
• HIOS 14
• 2 OS updates, 3 years security patches

The Tecno Camon 30 Premier 5G runs a custom HIOS 14 UI on top of Android 14, and it’s very much of a piece with other such efforts from Xiaomi and Honor. That is, it’s perfectly smooth and functional, but somewhat ugly and overstuffed with extraneous apps.

The initial need to sign up for a Tecno account is immediately grating, while the inclusion of two large home screen widgets is also somewhat off-putting. One provides contextual app suggestions that almost never surfaced the app I actually wanted to use, while the other is a weather widget that sits needlessly separate from the clock widget.

Drag down from the top and there’s a split notification bar that screams MIUI/HyperOS, with notifications to the left and a screen full of chunky control widgets to the right.

Another somewhat disheartening touch manifests when you swipe left, where Tecno has replaced the Google Feed with its own selection of widgets (recently used apps, step count, RAM usage, and screen time by default).

The old issue of bloatware rears its head too. There’s the usual duplicate web browser, a bespoke voice assistant awkwardly running alongside Google’s, and a separate app store (ditto). There’s a radio app, a smarthome app, a Themes app, and so on. Facebook comes preinstalled, as is too often the case.

There are also a couple of annoying glitches here. None were too serious, but for example the battery settings screen initially refused to show me my screen on time figure, while I also noticed an instance of the sound not cutting back in on the Disney+ app for a good 10 seconds after I’d cranked the volume up.

Throw in the fact that Tecno is only offering two software updates and three years of security patches, and it all amounts to a fairly underwhelming software offering. That’s something that will ideally need to be addressed if Tecno is to expand into new markets.

Battery Life

• 5000mAh
• 70W wired charging
• 100% in 45 mins

Tecno has packed in a 5000mAh battery here, which is pretty standard for a large mid-ranger such as this.

I was able to get through a full day of light usage with well over 65% left in the tank, which suggests that two-day usage is a possibility if you’re not too heavy with the media apps.

Even then, an hour of Disney+ streaming sapped 6% of a charge, while 30 minutes of light gaming on Slay the Spire ate through 4%. That’s pretty good going.

The Tecno Camon 30 Premier comes bundled with a 70W charger, which is a solid provision. In my experience, it was able to get from empty to 52% in 15 minutes, while a full charge took around 40 minutes.

It’s with a little disappointment that I note there’s no wireless charging support here. Of course, this isn’t a common inclusion for a mid-range phone, but the Pixel 7a and Pixel 8a both include it, and its omission invariably breaks the flagship spell somewhat.

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