Shenzhen-based phonemaker Tecno might not be the most popular smartphone brand in the market but that has not deterred it from unveiling handsets for the budget segment. And now it is refreshing its lineup for this year with the likes of Camon 17 Pro.

Today, I am going to review the Tecno Camon 17 Pro, one of Tecno’s most recent additions to their camera flagship line. I have had it for around three weeks now, been using it for that period of time and in this review, I will cover all of the specs, features, pros and cons – everything you should know before you buy or probably if you have bought and didn’t know. The Camon 17 Pro is one of the successors to the Camon 16 Premier line and how were they able to get Wizkid last year and Chris Evans this year? Who do you think Tecno will grab next? Anyway, without further ado, let’s get to the review!

The Tecno Camon 17 Pro has a couple of selling points, most notable being its 48-megapixel clear selfie-camera, the Helio G95 processor, 90Hz refresh rate among other features. If I am correct, this is actually the first device from Tecno sporting a center hole punch selfie camera style and it’s a most welcome improvement. What I hope to see next is a super AMOLED display, fingers crossed for that one.

What’s in the box?

The device comes with complete accessories in the box. You have your 13 months warranty card. There’s a transparent soft gel case and it fits in firmly on to the device. In a smaller package, you will find a sim ejector tool attached and within you have your USB-A to USB-C cable and a pair of earphones (the phone has a headphone jack) which is nice to see. Most devices at this price point currently do not have earphones in the box. The last item in the box is a 33W charging brick. There’s a screen protector already pre-installed on the device.

Design

The Tecno Camon 17 Pro has quite a solid design and build with Gorilla Glass on the display. The rear feels like plastic but Tecno calls it “organic glass” and drop resistant. It has a nice feel, close to a frosted or matt finish and it is going to repel smudges and fingerprints to a good extent. If you look carefully at the design of the Tecno Camon 17 Pro, you will notice a little detail underneath its rear finish. It has a linear pattern. You have the shiny and reflective CAMON branding boldly to the bottom left. I had the Arctic Down colour variant.

Its quad rear cameras are arranged vertically to the left of the rear in a two-level camera bump, with the first level housing its LED flash. There’s also a single front-facing flash atop the display. The frame of the Tecno Camon 17 Pro is plastic and it houses its ports and buttons. During set-up, I got to set-up the finger print reader to the side which also doubles up the power button. It is easy to reach and pretty fast to unlock your device, also mostly accurate. Above it is the volume rocker, which is on the right side. To the left, we have got the SIM and Micro SD card slot, capable of handling 2 nano sims and one micro SD card. Up top is where we get a secondary microphone, and at the bottom, we have the headphone jack, microphone USB C port and the speaker. Keep in mind that this has a stereo speaker set up that gets really really loud and it should meet your expectations. The second speaker is at the earpiece area and this would aid for better phone calls and playback when you are watching a video. The Tecno Camon 17 Pro stands tall at 6.8-inches, it is not one you should consider for one handed use but its curved rear edges makes it a little bit comfortable to hold on one hand.

Display

The display here is a 1080 by 2460 LCD display with 500 nits of brightness, 395 pixels per inch and 84 per cent screen-to-body ratio. While most of us would have preferred an AMOLED display for all the right reasons, this also works.

With the selfie camera centered, you will enjoy watching and streaming content especially with the stereo speakers to compliment. The 90Hz screen refresh rate makes operating this device a fluid and enjoyable experience. There is no stutter when scrolling through the UI and in my experience so far this is not your random 90Hz experience, it is actually pretty good. Of course as standard you get dark mode.

Performance

The software on the Camon 17 Pro is HiOS 7.6 on Android 11. The MediaTek hello G95 is the system on chip or the processor and Tecno ensured that they at least maxed out of the features of the G95. Of course, it’s a processor capable of 10GB of RAM, but Tecno tops it out at 8GB of RAM and a 128GB of internal storage. There’s also a bigger 256GB of storage version but I got the smaller 8GB + 128GB version. With 8GB of RAM, it is able to handle whatever apps or multi-tasking you throw at it. I haven’t had any issues with multi-tasking or resuming any tasks. I found it plenty enough for me. It brings a lot of new and improved features alongside a lot of unwanted apps that you may have to go through uninstalling and disabling.

Though not by much, it has a 5 per cent better GPU performance. Its benchmark scores are very impressive on the likes of AnTuTu and Geekbench and this puts it toe-to-toe with the likes of the Redmi Note 10 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy A52 when it comes to performance.

It has the Mali-G76 for its GPU and smooth gaming performance is expected. I played Battlegrounds Mobile India and was able to do smoothly on high graphics and maximum frame rates without lags.

Camera

The camera of the Tecno Camon 17 Pro is one of its major selling points. It is dubbed “The Clearest Selfie Camera”. It has a 48-megapixel selfie camera placed on the display. On the rear, we have the quad camera combination of a 64-megapixel main camera, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide camera, 2-megapixel depth sensor and a 2-megapixel sensor called black or white, not sure what that is going to do.

Its cameras certainly do not disappoint and it has been up to expectations from the few pictures that I have shot. To access high resolution mode from either its selfie or rear camera, you can swipe up from the camera menu and select ultra HD. With this mode, you can shoot high resolution photos from either its selfie or its rear cameras. The Tecno Camon 17 Pro also shines with its regular selfie shots, it looks sharp and actually quite impressive. It does good job of blurring out the background, but it sometimes overexposes it. There’s also other camera modes including film mode which allows you to take a couple of shots and merges them with nice transitions and sound. Super Night mode is also impressive and allows you to take better pictures at night.

Battery

The Tecno Camon 17 Pro has a 5000mAh battery and so far battery life has been solid. It has 33W fast charger in the box which is expected to power it up in a short time, but surprisingly in my experience of charging this device, it took me around 2 hours to power it from 0 to 100 per cent. I am not sure why but I expected it to be significantly faster.

Final verdict

Based on my experience, we have got good things like the processor, night mode, enough RAM and memory, and also good camera performance. The only real complain I can have about the Camon 17 Pro is HiOS. Take that out of the way and you have a solid device. For devices in this price range, you get almost the same quality. It is worth the price tag of Rs 16,999.