Tecno Camon 17 Pro review

Android 11 with HiOS on top

 

The Camon 17 Pro runs Android 11 with a layer of Tecno's in-house HiOS on top. We were less than thrilled with the company's aggressive advertising policies and pre-installed bloatware when we reviewed the Camon 16 Premier, but what we see here is a somewhat toned-down approach, a development we appreciate.

 

That's not to say there isn't a whole bunch of pre-installed apps and utilities, and an in-house gallery and video player, and an app store - no, these are all still here. That app store still pushes a ton of notifications, nudging you to install this or that app or game.

But you can disable the Instant apps row in the app drawer, the Phone master shortcuts in the notification shade aren't there, and aside from the Palm store's suggestions, there aren't really any other ads. The situation still isn't ideal, but we're finding it to be more tolerable now.

Hi Browser * AI Gallery  * Phone Master * AHA Games * Palm Store * Palm store notifications

Getting into the Camon 17 Pro is business as usual with both fingerprint and face recognition available. You can have the fingerprint reader unlock with just a tap, or require a press as well, and you can do that for the face recognition as well.

Biometrics and security 

The lockscreen has a single shortcut in the bottom right to access the camera. Once you're past that, you arrive at a standard homescreen interface. The leftmost pane, called Zero screen, holds cards with suggested news, weather and quotes widgets and an app usage widget. You can disable the Zero screen in the 'Desktop settings'. There's an app drawer by default which you can access from the old-school A-Z orange icon at the bottom or with an upward swipe from the bottom. 

Lockscreen • Homescreen • Zero screen • Folder view • App drawer • Task switcher

All the custom bits found on the Camon 16 Premier are here on the 17 Pro as well. That includes the Game mode with all the settings statistics and parental controls, the Smart panel with slide-from-the-side shortcuts, the Social Turbo toolset (a WhatsApp enhancer of sorts), as well as the CarIcare aftersales assistance utility. You can read more about all of these in the software section of the Camon 16 Premier review.

Game mode • Social Turbo • CarIcare • Smart Panel

Synthetic benchmarks

The Camon 17 Pro is powered by the Mediatek Helio G95, a pre-5G chipset made on a 12nm process. Its octa-core chipset is in a 2+6 configuration (2x2.05 GHz Cortex-A76 & 6x2.0 GHz Cortex-A55), and the GPU is the Mali-G76 MC4. We're only finding a single 8GB/256GB RAM/storage configuration in online stores, and it's a plenty generous one. Oddly, our review unit has 128GB on board.

The Camon put out respectable numbers in our benchmarks, comfortably outperforming the Galaxy A32, and posting similar results to the Redmi Note 10 Pro and the Galaxy A52. We didn't observe thermal throttling or any significant drop in results after repeated benchmark runs either.

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro
  1780
• Realme 8
  1690
• Tecno Camon 16 Premier
  1672
• Tecno Camon 17 Pro
  1668
• Realme Narzo 20 Pro
  1666
• Infinix Zero 8
  1663
• vivo V21 5G
  1600
• Samsung Galaxy A52
  1577
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10S
  1576
• Samsung Galaxy A32
  1277

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• vivo V21 5G
  574
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro
  569
• Realme 8
  533
• Tecno Camon 16 Premier
  532
• Infinix Zero 8
  532
• Samsung Galaxy A52
  525
• Realme Narzo 20 Pro
  517
• Tecno Camon 17 Pro
  511
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10S
  502
• Samsung Galaxy A32
  361

AnTuTu 8

Higher is better

• vivo V21 5G
  336699
• Tecno Camon 17 Pro
  309107
• Realme 8
  298328
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro
  295442
• Realme Narzo 20 Pro
  291407
• Tecno Camon 16 Premier
  283847
• Infinix Zero 8
  282348
• Samsung Galaxy A52
  261282
• Samsung Galaxy A32
  174332

GFX Manhattan ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• Realme Narzo 20 Pro
  34
• vivo V21 5G
  34
• Tecno Camon 17 Pro
  33
• Realme 8
  33
• Tecno Camon 16 Premier
  30
• Infinix Zero 8
  30
• Samsung Galaxy A52
  29
• Samsung Galaxy A32
  15

GFX Manhattan ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• vivo V21 5G
  31
• Realme 8
  29
• Tecno Camon 17 Pro
  28
• Realme Narzo 20 Pro
  28
• Tecno Camon 16 Premier
  26
• Infinix Zero 8
  26
• Samsung Galaxy A52
  26
• Samsung Galaxy A32
  13

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• Tecno Camon 17 Pro
  20
• Realme Narzo 20 Pro
  20
• Realme 8
  20
• vivo V21 5G
  20
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro
  19
• Tecno Camon 16 Premier
  18
• Infinix Zero 8
  18
• Samsung Galaxy A52
  17
• Samsung Galaxy A32
  9.3

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Realme 8
  18
• Tecno Camon 17 Pro
  17
• Realme Narzo 20 Pro
  17
• vivo V21 5G
  17
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro
  16
• Tecno Camon 16 Premier
  15
• Infinix Zero 8
  15
• Samsung Galaxy A52
  15
• Samsung Galaxy A32
  8.1

3DMark SSE ES 3.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• vivo V21 5G
  3331
• Tecno Camon 17 Pro
  2719
• Realme Narzo 20 Pro
  2683
• Realme 8
  2610
• Infinix Zero 8
  2537
• Tecno Camon 16 Premier
  2531
• Samsung Galaxy A52
  2529
• Samsung Galaxy A32
  1323

3DMark SSE Vulkan 1.0 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• vivo V21 5G
  3050
• Realme Narzo 20 Pro
  2735
• Realme 8
  2639
• Tecno Camon 17 Pro
  2593
• Tecno Camon 16 Premier
  2577
• Infinix Zero 8
  2556
• Samsung Galaxy A52
  2406
• Samsung Galaxy A32
  1371

3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• vivo V21 5G
  1605
• Tecno Camon 17 Pro
  1498
• Realme 8
  1486
• Samsung Galaxy A52
  1040
• Samsung Galaxy A32
  686