Tecno Camon 20 Premier review

New triple camera setup with a huge ultrawide

Camon devices have always had an extra focus on the camera experience. One might say this is even evident in the series name - "Cam-ON". The Camon 20 Premier is no exception. Let's start with the main camera. It is based on a pretty big 50MP Samsung s5kgnx sensor behind an f/1.8 lens. That "x" suffix at the end that the phone reports suggest that the sensor could either be a GN3 or a GN5. Both of these are 1/1.56" sensors with 1.0 µm individual pixels. While it is hard to tell exactly which one of the two Tecno used, our bet is on the newer Samsung GN5. The main camera is also equipped with tri-axis sensor-shift stabilization technology, as well as laser autofocus.

The pretty impressive main camera is arguably overshadowed by the super large 108MP ultrawide on the Camon 20 Premier. It sits behind an f/2.2 lens. Digging through the phone, the ultrawide seems to be based on a Samsung s5khm6sxwide sensor. It is colloquially known as the ISOCELL HM6. It is a 1/1.67", nona-pixel ISOCELL 2.0 sensor with 0.64 µm pixels. The ultrawide on the Camon 20 Premier has autofocus and is also leveraging the laser autofocus module. That allows it to double as a powerful macro camera.

The third and final camera on the back of the phone is a 2MP, f/2.4 supplementary depth sensor. It is based on a GalaxyCore gc02m1 sensor. Nothing particularly special.

On the front, the phone has a pretty large 32MP camera. It sits behind a rather dim f/2.5 lens. It is based on the Samsung s5kgd2sp sensor. This is the same sensor found on the Tecno Camon 19 Pro. It is a 1/2.8" sensor with 0.8µm pixels and a tetrapixel arrangement. Unfortunately, the selfie on the Camon 20 Premier lacks autofocus. At least there is a couple of hidden LEDs that serve as fill light for your selfies in the dark.

There is nothing particularly special about the camera app on the Camon 20 Premier. The inclusion of actual focus points visualized in the viewfinder is a noteworthy addition that you don't see every day. Other than that, it's business as usual, with modes on one end of the UI and quick toggles on the other. One thing specific to the Camon 20 Premier is that it has high-resolution toggles for both its main camera and ultrawide (50MP and 108MP, respectively).

Camera UI

The Camon 20 Premier expectedly has a Pro mode. It is pretty standard as well. It offers exposure correction (-2 - +2), shutter speed (1/1500s - 30s), ISO (100 - 6400), white balance (2000K - 9000K), autofocus and metering mode. Unfortunately, no RAW mode is available, nor is there anything else fancy like a histogram.

Camera Pro mode

Daylight photo quality

The main camera on the Camon 20 Premier captures stills in a little over 12MP by default. These look nice and sharp with plenty of detail, good contrast and colors.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 12.5MP main camera samples

While we generally like how foliage and fine details are rendered, some of that comes down to additional sharpening, which is a bit on the aggressive side. We wouldn't say the photos are oversharpened, though. The one other complaint we have is regarding dynamic range. Detail in dark areas gets frequently crushed and lost.

You can make the main camera shoot in its full 50MP resolution, and if you can deal with the slightly slower capture times and the bigger file size, we believe it is largely worth it. 50MP photos have noticeably more fine detail than their 12MP counterparts. They also look much more natural with a lot less processing and sharpening applied.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 50MP main camera samples

Colors do come out slightly muted compared to regular 12MP shots, but it's not a huge deal.

The main camera on the Camon 20 Premier captures some great-looking portraits. These are sharp with plenty of detail, nice and true-to-life skin tones and good-enough skin texture rendition. Subject detection and separation are pretty great, and the quality of the background blur is excellent.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 12.5MP main camera samples

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 12.5MP main camera portrait samples

Portrait mode works pretty well on non-human subjects too. The camera picks those up without too much hesitation.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 12.5MP main camera portrait samples

The Camon 20 Premier lacks a dedicated telephoto camera, but it still has a 2x zoom toggle in its UI for digital crops from the main camera. These shots look pretty good and very close in terms of quality to 1x ones. Besides slightly more noise in the frame, we have very little to complain about.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 12.5MP main camera 2x zoom samples

Here's how the main camera stacks up against competitors in our extensive photo database. Pixel-peep away.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier against the Samsung Galaxy A54 and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 Pro in our Photo compare tool

50MP: Tecno Camon 20 Premier against the Samsung Galaxy A54 and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 Pro in our Photo compare tool

Let's move on to the 108MP ultrawide camera. By default, it actually captures photos in a bit under 12MP resolution. These shots look pretty good. The resolved detail level, while not close to that of the main camera, is still very good for an ultrawide. Contrast is good, and so is dynamic range. Barrel distortion near the edges and edge softness are almost non-existent. Ultrawide shots are not as aggressively sharpened as main camera ones, which is a plus in our book.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 12MP ultrawide camera samples

Colors tend to come out a bit too warm for our taste. There is somewhat of a yellow tint applied to the frame. Definitely enough so to be very distinct from the main camera's color rendition. This is not a huge dealbreaker, though.

The ultrawide camera can shoot in its full 108MP resolution. We would advise against doing that, however. The file sizes are huge, and the high-res mode doesn't appear to offer any obvious advantages over the regular one. Definitely not in terms of resolved detail, which is actually a bit worse on average when pixel-peeping. These photos also seem to be a bit noisier.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 108MP ultrawide camera samples

Thanks to its autofocusing capabilities, the ultrawide camera has another party trick - it can double as a very potent closeup/macro camera. These shots from the Camon 20 Premier look truly great. There is plenty of detail in the frame and enough resolution to zoom to your heart's content. Subject detection and autofocus work great. We also love how the natural bokeh background looks.

Honestly, closeups might be one of the highlights of the camera experience.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 12MP ultrawide camera macro samples

The selfie camera on the Camon 20 Premier captures 32MP photos, which does mean that their file size is a bit on the larger side. It's a bit of a weird choice, given that the sensor in the selfie cam is Quad-Bayer and should produce 8MP shots by default. On the plus side, however, selfies look great with plenty of detail, nice and true-to-life skin tones and texture. Colors look great too.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 32MP selfie camera samples

While we would have loved to see autofocus on the selfie cam, the focal plane is quite wide and forgiving as it is.

Selfie portraits do get saved in 8MP resolution, as expected from the sensor. These look about as good as regular selfies in terms of skin tones and texture.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 8MP selfie camera portrait samples

Subject detection and separation aren't always perfect, but they are definitely good enough. The quality of the background blur is pretty high.

Video quality

The Tecno Camon 20 Premier can shoot video at up to 4K@30fps on both its main and ultrawide cameras. The selfie cam is capped at 1440p. Video gets recorded in a standard H.264/AVC video stream at around 50Mbps for the main and ultrawide and 20Mbps for the selfie with a stereo 48 kHz AAC audio stream, saved in an MP4 container.

The main camera captures great 4K video with superb detail and awesome colors and contrast. The frame rate is both smooth and stable. Honestly, we have no complaints beyond the dynamic range being perhaps a bit wider.

Here's how the main camera stacks up against the competition in our video compare database.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier against the Samsung Galaxy A54 and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 Pro in our Video compare tool

And here's some 2x zoom 4K footage from the main camera.

The ultrawide camera also captures very clean and sharp 4K videos. Detail is pretty good, and so are colors. Just like with stills, there is a noticeable yellow tint compared to the main camera.

Even so, these are some of the better ultrawide 4K videos we've seen, particularly in this price range.

Even though they cap out at 1440p selfie videos also look great. Detail is plenty, colors are nice and natural. Skin tones and texture look good.

Honestly, the only deficiency we can spot is the relatively narrow dynamic range. But, even it isn't bad enough to complain.

For stabilization, the Camon 20 Premier has something called Ultra steady. It's EIS that works pretty consistently across all cameras. It does a good job of smoothing out shakes and bumps. However, you are limited to 1080p resolution, which makes a huge difference to the level of detail in frame.

Low-light camera quality

The main camera on the Camon 20 Premier captures pretty good low-light photos. These have plenty of detail and good, true-to-life colors. The dynamic range isn't half bad either, and dark areas have impressive detail.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 12.5MP main camera low-light samples

On the flip side, the phone doesn't handle light sources all too well, and some noise is noticeable, particularly in darker areas of the frame.

The Camon 20 Premier does some form of automatic low-light optimization, as indicated by the scene detection trat triggers with a "moon symbol" in the camera UI. Beyond that, the phone also has a "Super night" mode in the camera. It takes two to three seconds to capture a shot, which is not the fastest we've seen, but not too slow, either.

The results are a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, night mode does noticeably sharpen up the photos, but frequently a bit artificially and way too aggressively. There is less noise in darker areas, which is good, but not necessarily any more detail. Light sources are handled notably better in Night mode.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 12.5MP main camera night mode samples

Contrast is cranked up way too high in these photos, and colors don't look as natural as in regular shots. Night mode photos look a bit darker overall.

Beyond Night mode, it is worth noting that the Camon 20 Premier has a particularly powerful rear LED flash array. You can depend on it for close-quarters shooting.

2x zoom shots from the main camera are very comparable to regular 1x ones in the dark. They are just a bit softer and noisier, but not by a lot.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 12.5MP main camera 2x zoom low-light samples

Night mode has pretty much the same effect on these photos as well. We like the better light source handling, but not necessarily the aggressive sharpening, nor the excessive contrast and overall darker look.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 12.5MP main camera 2x zoom night mode samples

The ultrawide camera generally does alright in low-light conditions without being overly impressive. It manages to focus properly most of the time, which is great to see and always a concern about autofocusing ultrawides. Its regular shots have plenty of detail and nice colors.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 12MP ultrawide camera low-light samples

Light sources tend to be blown out, and there is noticeable softness on surfaces, but not too much actual noise, which is good.

Night mode on the ultrawide can probably best be described as aggressive. Contrast is cranked way too high, and everything is artificially sharpened up. So much heavy-handed processing is applied that some of the actual detail gets lost in the process.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 12MP ultrawide camera night mode samples

On the plus side, light sources are handled and contained noticeably better.

The 32MP selfie camera does alright in low light conditions but is nothing to phone home about. There is a good amount of detail, though facial texture doesn't really come through. Colors aren't bad either, but skin tones could be a bit more natural.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 32MP selfie camera low-light samples

Night mode is available for the selfie as well. Interestingly enough, Night mode on the selfie produces 8MP photos, as this quad-bayer camera should in the first place. It offers a bit more detail with slightly more skin texture coming through and more natural skin tones.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 8MP selfie camera night mode samples

Just like on the rear cameras, it sharpens the image rather aggressively with lots of contrast. It's definitely a particular look, but one you might enjoy.

The Camon 20 Premier also has another party trick up its sleeve for low-light selfies - the pair of pretty powerful selfie LED lights on the front of the device. We think using these provides a great middle ground between regular and night-mode selfies. There is more detail, better skin texture, and more natural skin tones.

Tecno Camon 20 Premier: 32MP selfie camera low-light samples with flash

All of this without aggressive oversharpening or overly high contrast. Unlike night mode, you do still, unfortunately, get large 32MP selfies, though.

The main camera captures pretty great 4K low-light videos. These are plenty sharp with a lot of detail, good dynamic range and nice and natural colors.

Shooting video in 2x zoom mode produces very comparable results, which is great. Naturally, there is a bit more noise in the frame, but nothing deal-breaking.

The ultrawide camera holds its own well in low-light conditions. Detail is nowhere near as good as on the main camera, but pretty decent for an ultrawide. Dynamic range is not as wide as well, but again, quite good. There is some noise in the frame, but not too much. We didn't notice any focus hinting, which is also great.