Just over a week ago, Tecno unveiled the Camon 16 series, the latest iteration of its camera-centred budget smartphone lineup.
The series comprises a standard Tecno Camon 16, a Camon 16 Pro and the Camon 16 Premier. We might be looking at those other models in coming days but, since, launch, I have had with me the Tecno Camon 16 Premier. Below, right after the unboxing video, are my impressions of the device so far in the lead up to the review next week.
Unboxing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTZp7IJgZr4
Impressions
- The Camon 16 Premier is a large device and it makes no effort to hide that in a compact design as we’ve seen other six inchers do. It looks big, feels big and acts big.
- One of the things one easily notices is the new design, which can be seen in all its glory at the back of the device, that takes a different approach (at least compared to past Camon devices) to the arrangement of the camera lenses. They are bundled in a bump that, interestingly, is balanced enough to not wobble when the device is placed on a flat surface like a table top. So, you don’t have to worry about that. You don’t even need to hide all that beautiful design under a case, like the one included (see above video), to even things out.
- While Tecno is not new to incorporating USB Type-C ports on its devices (we had one on the Tecno Phantom series as early as 2016), it has been hesitant to do so for devices in its entry-level and lower mid-range classes. That changes with the Camon 16 series with the Camon 16 Premier featuring a USB Type-C port for charging and data transfer.
- The USB-C port, paired with the 33W charging brick you can see in the video above, combine to give users some very impressive fast-charging – up to 70% in just half an hour – one of the best one can get on devices in this segment of the market.
- The side-mounted fingerprint sensor is fast and very responsive, acting as a perfect complement to the face unlock which also works very well.
- At a glance, the performance is just as you’d expect of a device powered by the MediaTek Helio G90T chipset which brings immense power to devices of the Camon 16 Premier’s stature.
- As far as the software goes, not much has changed given that this is what we’ve seen Tecno do ever since it rolled out its customized take on Android 10.
- On Monday, the device received a software update (version CE9-H851ABC-Q-OP-200826V319) which brought with it some new improvements (the camera app’s user experience, for instance), added missing features like live wallpapers and newer ones like AR 3.0, as well as bringing the device’s security status up to date with the August patch update.
I’m working on a review of the Tecno Camon 16 Premier so check back in a week or so for a complete rundown of how the device fares with that high-refresh-rate display, the highly-rated Sony IMX686 image sensor that gives us the Camon 16 Premier’s 64-megapixel shooter and more.
Meanwhile, check out our first look at the device:
