Tecno is a Chinese mobile phone manufacturer based in Shenzen China that was established last 2006. It is one of the brands that release budget-friendly and low-cost mid-range smartphones making them one of the popular and go-to brands in the country.
Today, we are going to take a look at the Tecno Camon 17p, it is one of the iterations of their Camon 17 series and the successor of their previous model.
Table of Contents
Pros
- Large display
- Decent camera performance
- Affordable
Cons
- No gorilla glass protection
- 60Hz display
- No video stabilization support
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DESIGN
The design of the Tecno Camon 17p is pretty much simple and shows how premium it looks. On the bottom left you can see the Tecno Camon branding, for they could have made it a bit smaller so it won’t eat too much of the design’s visual appearance. It has a protruded vertical camera module that has a text inside that says AI quad-camera. It is made out of organic glass that has a matte finish that avoids fingerprint smudges, and that they also say that it is drop resistant but I wouldn’t dare to try dropping since this is just a review unit.
It has a thickness of 8.8mm but the curve design makes it look slim, and also lightweight. The design around the frame resembles smartphones from back in the day where the back cover can be removed, but this time it can’t. It has a side-mounted fingerprint scanner on the right alongside the volume rockers. The sim tray on the right has a dual nano sim slot and a dedicated slot for its expandable storage, and on the bottom are the 3.5mm headphone jack, microphone, USB C port, and a single down-firing speaker.
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DISPLAY
Switching to its display, Tecno is one of the brands that put out large displays for their devices. Tecno Camon 17p boasts a 6.8-inch IPS LCD with FHD+ resolution. It has a peak brightness of 500nits and a screen-to-body ratio of 85.2%. It has slightly thick bezels and a chin, and using the device with a single hand especially if you are preoccupied will be a hard time because of its large display, but if you are into symmetry the 16mp punch-hole cutout is located in the middle.
As for its display quality, It has a bright screen, and using the device outside while you are on the field or you just happen to be outside won’t be a problem. colors are sharp and vibrant, thanks to its FHD+ resolution and the PPI density of ~395.
As for its display settings, It has a dark theme that works just like dark mode and an eye care feature that will tint your screen to amber that makes it easier to use in dim lights. unfortunately, it doesn’t have color adjustment features on its display settings but it does have Inadvertently mode. it prevents accidental operations cause by fabric sliding when the device is in your pocket.
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CAMERA
Tecno Camon 17p is equipped with a quad-camera setup that is consists of a 64mp main cam, 2mp for macro and depth purposes, and an unspecified 4th camera.
Moving to its quality, the 64 main cam outputs great color reproduction, it has true to life color, white balance is on point, and it has good sharpness thanks to the 64mp sensor. turning HDR mode on colors are now more vibrant, and details pop out. I say this is a pretty decent output for a budget smartphone.
outputs for indoor photos are the same, good colors, sharp and detailed images.
As for its night mode shots, once you click the shutter, you have about 3 to 5 seconds to stay still for the image to be captured perfectly. Output quality with night mode on is okay, It has decent exposure, details, and colors are now visible thanks to its super night mode. although if you are in a bit of a hurry while you are taking a night mode shot, you might find your output blurry, soft, and grainy as well. But overall the quality of its night mode shots is acceptable around its price range.
As for macro shots, outputs are okay, it has a fixed focus and can capture subjects at 4cm apart from the phone. It introduces grains, and outputs tend to have a warm tone. It doesn’t give that many details as we want it to be, but it is decent enough for the price.
As for its portrait mode, you have to be 1.0m to 2.5m away from the subject for better outputs. It has good subject to background separation, but sometimes focusing the sensor on the subject is going to be hard especially if the lightsource is limited and highlights tend to blow out.
For its selfie, It is equipped with a 16mp selfie camera inside the punch hole cutout in the middle. it outputs decent images with true-to-life skin tones and is also sharp and detailed. taking a selfie in front of a lightsource gives a warm tone, and also be careful taking photos with the sky as your background because highlights will blow out.
As for video recording, both the front and back camera can record up to 2k@30fps, but we don’t see an option to change fps per resolution. It doesn’t have stabilization on both resolutions, but some of the available features are the film, beauty, super night, AR shot, slow motion, panorama, and time-lapse. These are some of the needs for our basic photography, and videography.
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SOFTWARE
as for its software, It runs on Android 11 with HiOS 7.6 on top. Unlike other smartphones, this has less bloatware, and scrolling through the UI is smooth but sometimes shows some light stuttering.
Our review unit comes with 6GB of ram and 128GB of storage, which is pretty good considering its price.
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PERFORMANCE
Under its hood, It is powered by a MediaTek Helio G85 with a 12nm process, I know it is not that power efficient just like any other chipset in the market, but it is quite famous for budget smartphones. It has a Mali-G52 MC2 GPU with a max frequency of 1ghz. It is based on Bifrost architecture and is intended for mainstream smartphones. If you want to watch our gaming review click here.
BATTERY
Now for the battery, While we were testing its gaming capabilities we also checked its battery performance. after 3 hours of gaming, the battery dropped from 100% to 57%. It doesn’t have a 90hz display nor a power-efficient chipset but the battery performed well considering the amount of time that it was used.
as for charging, charging the 5000mAh power battery with its 18w fast charging. from 0 to 100% It will take about 2hours and 10minutes to fully juice up the device. Charging time is pretty standard for an 18w fast charging.
VERDICT
TECNO Camon 17p is priced at Php 8,490 for the 6GB of ram and 128GB of storage. If you are interested in buying this phone check out TECNO’s official flagship store in shopee.
Overall TECNO Camon 17p succeeded the TECNO Camon 16 in terms of gaming and camera performance. They could have opted for an 8mp ultrawide rather than a 2mp macro but who am I to judge. It has a simple and premium-looking design, a good display that works great whether if it’s for gaming or entertainment use, and sure enough worth it considering its price. As we keep on fighting through this pandemic, we encounter budget-friendly and entry-level smartphones in the market, and TECNO Camon 17p is one of the worthy competitors out there.
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