Tecno Camon 19 Pro review

Triple camera setup with OIS and a telephoto

Techo offers intriguing camera setups, particularly in the Camon line of phones. The Camon 19 Pro is no different. From a hardware standpoint, the Camon 19 Pro looks impressive with a 64MP main camera with OIS and Laser auto focus, a whopping 50MP 2x telephoto camera and a large 32MP selfie.

The Camon 19 Pro was nice enough to have its camera sensors listed in internal settings files. The 64MP, f/1.6 primary camera uses a Samsung S5KGWB sensor - 1/1.7", 0.8µm. Tecno implemented it with a couple of extras like OIS and laser autofocus for an even better experience. The sensor also has RGBW arrangement, replacing part of the green pixels of a traditional RGGB array with white ones. The alleged benefit from that is the better quality of light captured by the sensor. The camera also has a real glass lens element instead of a plastic one.

The 50mm 50MP, f/2.0 telephoto camera is using a Samsung S5KJN1 sensor - 1/2.76", 0.64µm. It is colloquially known as the ISOCELL JN1 and is fairly popular as well. It comes with phase detection autofocus in the Camon 19 Pro. Last and least around back is a 2MP depth sensor. Tecno decided not to include an ultrawide.

The 32MP, f/2.4 selfie camera uses a rather exotic Samsung S5KGD2 sensor -1/3.4", 0.8µm. We've seen this particular sensor in the Samsung Galaxy A52 5G and the Tecno Camon 18 Premier again in the selfie cam. The sensor has fixed focus and no other fancy extras to note.

The camera app is straightforward - aside from the full-auto photo mode being called AI Cam, things are mostly as expected. You can swipe down on the viewfinder to bring the top row of icons closer - something Techno calls one-handed mode.

Night mode is now available for both the main camera and the telephoto, which wasn't the case on the Camon 18 Premier.

Camera app

There is now a Pro mode as well. In Film mode, you have different presets for short videos. Bokeh mode is available in Video mode if that's your thing.

Camera app pro mode

Photo quality

The 64MP primary camera uses a Quad-Bayer pixel setup and hence captures 16MP stills by default. These look very clean but the colors appear a bit less saturated than what we are used to. The contrast rendering also appears rather unusual.

Tecno Camon 19 Pro: 16MP main camera samples

The Camon 19 Pro has an Ai color enhancer toggle in its camera app, which is off by default. In this mode, it saturates colors better but they appear off - especially greens. Still, if you prefer more "pop", the toggle is there.

Tecno Camon 19 Pro: 16MP main camera Ai color enhancer samples

The main camera can be set to 64MP mode. It works quite well and overall manages to deliver more fine detail in the final shots. Colors remain consistent, too.

With the 64MP stills, there is less processing overall. This makes for softer lines and edges and less noise on surfaces.

The Camon 19 Pro is fairly quick to capture 64MP stills as well, making the mode quite useful overall.

Tecno Camon 19 Pro: 64MP main camera samples

The main camera does alright with portraits. Subject detection and separation are very good, and so is the quality of the background blur. You also get a number of "studio lighting portrait" modes to play around with beyond the simple bokeh one with intensity sliders and the whole nine yards.

Tecno Camon 19 Pro: 16MP main camera portrait samples

The mode works well with non-human subjects, too.

Tecno Camon 19 Pro: 16MP main camera portrait samples

Here's how the main camera on the Camon 19 Pro stacks up against competitors in our extensive photo compare tool at both 16MP and 64MP.

Tecno Camon 19 Pro against the Tecno Camon 18 Premier and the Samsung Galaxy A32 in our Photo compare tool

64MP: Tecno Camon 19 Pro against the Tecno Camon 18 Premier and the Samsung Galaxy A32 in our Photo compare tool

The 50MP 2x telephoto camera captures stills in just around 12.5MP by default and they are likeable. There is plenty of detail and colors are okay. The overall color and contrast, however, are slightly mismatched with the main camera.

Tecno Camon 19 Pro: 12.5MP telephoto 2x camera samples

The telephoto camera can do portraits as well. Here are some samples.

Tecno Camon 19 Pro: 12.5MP telephoto camera portrait samples

Selfies

The selfie camera on the Camon 19 Pro looks quite impressive on paper. Its 32MP sensor, while not particularly popular, has been used by some of vivo's flagship X series devices, as well as some Xiaomi and Samsung phones. Technically, the Samsung S5KGD2 uses a Quad-Bayer setup, meaning it should produce around 8MP photos by default. However, ordinary selfies from the Camon 19 Pro come out in 32MP.

While generally good with plenty of detail and nice skin tones, these selfies have a certain softness to them, especially in skin texture. Our working theory is that Tecno is upscaling 8MP stills for some reason.

Tecno Camon 19 Pro: 32MP selfie camera samples

A theory further backed up by the fact that selfie portraits get saved in 8MP and tend to look sharper to our eye with better-defined skin features and texture.

Tecno Camon 19 Pro: 8MP selfie camera portrait samples

Video quality

The main camera on the Camon 19 Pro captures videos at up to 1440p resolution (2560 x 1440 pixels) at 30fps. That's not an overly common resolution to see these days, but it's still a good step above FullHD as it is essentially four times HD (720p). Videos get captured in a standard h.264 AVC video stream at a respectable 50 Mbps or so and a stereo 48 kHz AAC audio stream inside an MP4 container. So, pretty much the typical setup.

These 1440p clips look good with a solid amount of detail and good, even if slightly muted colors.

Here's the main camera of the Camon 19 Pro in 1440p in our video compare tool.

Tecno Camon 19 Pro against the Tecno Camon 18 Premier and the Infinix Note 11 Pro in our Video compare tool

The 50MP telephoto is capped at 1080p@30 for its video capture. These clips also look very decent in terms of detail, keeping in mind the FullHD resolution. Just like with stills, this camera tends to have a slightly brighter exposure, which affects color rendition. Overall the videos are quite clean.

The selfie camera is also capped at 1440p for video capture. These videos look pretty great, with plenty of detail and nice skin tone and texture.

As for stabilization, the main camera on the Camon 19 Pro has OIS, but it seems to be doing very little for video stabilization, with the most jarring shakes and stutters left in the final clip. The same is also true for forage from the telephoto and selfie cameras as well. You can check out samples in the playlist.

The Camon 19 Pro does have EIS. You can toggle for all three cameras. It does noticeably smooth out big bumps and shakes but does nothing for the annoying little shakes that make for blurry footage akin to focus hunting or wind vibration. Interestingly enough, the shaky artifacts are almost non-existent in EIS-enabled footage from the selfie camera, so it might actually be a focusing issue. Regardless, we can't really praise the EIS.

Low-light camera quality

16MP photos from the main camera are about what we would expect from the hardware at hand. There is a good level of detail, and darker areas are generally well exposed.

Colors vary from natural to a bit yellow or orange from shot to shot, which means that white balance consistency isn't the greatest. More than a few of our test shots have a notable color tinge.

While there is a lot of detail, it is also clear that much is lost to the noise reduction algorithms, which is understandable. The Camon 19 Pro also struggles a bit with containing light sources and they are blown out.

Tecno Camon 19 Pro: 16MP main camera low-light samples

The Tecno Camon 19 Pro has an automatic night mode that consistently kicks in on its own even though it's not flagship level.

Beyond that, there is also a Super night mode as a separate entry in the camera carousel. It sharpens up shots from the main camera considerably and consistently.

This mode renders light sources much better. Textures are also much improved in sharpness and contrast. The shadows don't get much of a boost, however, and are even darker.

The Camon 19 Pro takes a good 6 seconds or so per Super night shot, but it might be worth it to you if you are not into the softer, less contrasty look of the regular mode.

Tecno Camon 19 Pro: 16MP main camera Super night mode samples

12.5MP low-light shots from the telephoto camera generally keep up well with the main camera in terms of detail and colors. Though the color rendition is noticeably different, it is still good in its own right. Darker areas are a bit softer and generally have less detail with this camera, and light sources are frequently blown out.

Tecno Camon 19 Pro: 12.5MP telephoto camera low-light samples

Super night mode on the telephoto camera is even more aggressive than on the main camera. Most of the time, these shots look too artificially oversharpened. It's not necessarily the worst look when zoomed out, but once you start pixel-peeping, the illusion of actual detail starts to fall apart quickly. Light sources are handled much better in this mode, though, so we'll just call it a mixed bag.

Tecno Camon 19 Pro: 12.5MP telephoto camera Super night mode samples

The 32MP selfie camera does a decent job in low light without being overly impressive in any way. Skin texture doesn't really come through, and most of the finer details in the background are lost as well. At least the skin tones and general color reproduction are pleasant.

Tecno Camon 19 Pro: 32MP selfie camera low-light samples

There is Super night mode for the selfie camera as well. It sharpens up shots considerably through a mixture of capturing a bit more detail in some areas and then aggressively sharpening almost every line in the frame.

Tecno Camon 19 Pro: 8MP selfie camera Super night mode samples

It can be a somewhat jarring look but does also have a certain appeal, especially when zoomed out. If you like the look better, it's worth waiting a few seconds for night mode to do its thing. Plus, you end up with much more manageable 8MP stills in this mode instead of huge 32MP files.

Low-light video from the main camera looks great. Detail is plenty for 1440p. There is very little noise, colors look true to life and light sources are well contained.

The telephoto camera also offers solid low-light video performance. It particularly shines in the Camon 19 Pro's budget price segment. These videos are expectedly a bit noisier than those from the main camera, and light isn't handled quite as well. You also don't get the benefit of OIS, but generally, we are quite pleased with the performance.