Tecno Camon 12 has been around for a while now. We made a first impression post about the device about a week ago and talked about what we liked after our initial interaction with it.
The Camon 12 is the latest entrant into the brand’s camera-focused Camon series. In this post, we shall take a deeper look at the device and its features.
Design and Display
The Camon 12 is sturdily built and boasts of round edges on its 6.52-inch HD display. There is a waterdrop-notch at that top of the screen which houses the device’s 16MP front-facing camera. All its buttons are located on the right-hand side and at the bottom, a micro-USB port, a 3.5mm headphone port, and single loudspeaker.
The back and side-frame are made from a shiny polycarbonate material with a gradient color. It also sports a triple vertical camera with an LED flash and a fingerprint sensor next to the camera setup.
The Camon 12 has a sharp display although it does not use the AMOLED display. The device’s LCD screen is decent, colors are not oversaturated, and it is generally a good display. The Camon 12 also does not have an in-display fingerprint sensor. Youtube videos are capped at 720p.
Software and Performance
The Tecno Camon 12 comes with 4GB of RAM and 64GB internal storage. It runs on Tecno’s latest HiOS V5.5 which is based on the Android 9 (Pie) OS. This lets you customize your phone the way you would like to although it comes with lots of ads. For people who would not like the annoying ads, the option is to install a new launcher.
It is powered by the Mediatek Helio P22 Octa-core processor clocked at 2.0GHZ. This is efficient and lag-free when using about 15 apps in the background. It also doesn’t get too hot and it is very battery efficient.
The fingerprint sensor and Face unlock takes about half a second to unlock and is accurate most of the time. You get basic modes like eye care, reading mode, bike mode, WhatsApp mode, screen record, one hand mode, multi-window mode and option to hide the notch among others. The phone also comes with many bloatware apps and thankfully, most of these can be uninstalled.
For gaming, it uses the Power VRGE8320 Graphics Processor Unit that is very good when it comes to playing lightweight games. PES also works pretty well on this device. It also has a Game mode that stops any background activity from interrupting your gameplay.
Related Article: Tecno Camon 11 Pro review: Clear Selfies for a Lite price
Battery
The Tecno Camon 12 is powered by a 4000MaH battery which is very decent for the device. The battery lasted about 8 hours when using it to play games, surf the internet and use social media while on Wi-Fi. It took me just over 3 hours and 30 minutes to charge the battery from 0% to 100%. This is definitely too much time for ‘modern times’. It also doesn’t support fast charging. Quite disappointing.
Camera
The Camon 12 has a triple-camera configuration on the back and this does very well, most especially in bright light. The dynamic range gives you excellent picture quality which even becomes better with the wide-angle lens. It also has a macro mode which helps you focus when you get close to the subject.
When you open the camera app, you will be taken to the AI camera mode this means that there is no need for you to manually tweak the settings. Instead, everything is performed by algorithms that determine the correct color adjustments and all the settings.
You can also take pictures with the bokeh mode that blurs the background. I was, however, not very impressed by the output that came out when I used this mode. There is also an AR shot mode that introduces AR effects to your pictures.
It has a 16MP selfie camera lens that has good exposure although it did not capture as much detail. Using portrait mode produces better colors than the normal mode. The dual front flash also gives a shaky motion effect that hopefully will be fixed in the update.
It shoots videos in 1080p, 720p, or 480p using the primary camera. The videos are good although a bit jerky. You will need to have steady hands or a tripod stand if you plan on using the Camon 12 to record lots of videos.
Summary of key specifications
- Design: Premium Plastic, Scratch Resistant Glass, 2.5D Curved Glass
- Display: IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors, 6.52 inches, 102.6 cm2 (~81.6% screen-to-body ratio
- Rear Camera: Tripple Camera set-up with 16 MP + 2 MP + 8 MP cameras
- Front Camera: 16MP single camera.
- OS: Android 9.0 (Pie) HiOS v5.5
- Chipset: Mediatek MT6762 Helio P22 (12 nm)
- Memory: 4GB RAM, 64GB Internal Storage, microSD support up to 256GB
- Battery: 4000mAh
- Connectivity: Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by), Micro USB 2.0, USB OTG, Bluetooth 5.0, A2DP, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot, GSM / HSPA / LTE, Headphone jack.
Verdict after Tecno Camon 12 Review
On a scale of 1-10, I would give the Tecno Camon 12 an 8/10 rating. The phone’s performance can be described as decent, the battery is good and the camera is great. The Camon 12 is a good upgrade on the Camon 11 which makes it one of the best performers for the price. In the next Camon device, I hope to see a non-plastic build and better resolution.
Do you own the device? What do you love about it? Are you planning on buying the device? What feature(s) are you looking forward to using? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.
