Design and handling

The Camon 30 Premier is aiming for a high-end feel and build and we think Tecno has nailed it with this one. Sure, the handset is graded with just IP54 ingress protection and the Gorilla Glass 5 sheet on the front isn't the latest, but the overall build and materials are pretty solid.

The side frame, along with a small portion of the back, is made of aluminum, while the rest of the back panel is vegan leather. But the eco leather feels different than usual. It has a fine, soft-touch texture, which feels exceptionally nice but isn't very grippy.

The available colors are Alps Snowy Silver and Hawaii Lava Black. As evident from the photos, we have the former.

Despite the handset's understandably higher weight, it doesn't feel hefty in hand. It's also somewhat thinner than expected - 7.9mm without the camera bulge. The flat side frame is slightly curved toward the edges and creates a seamless transition with the back and front panels.

Tecno Camon 30 Premier

We also liked the buttons and their placement. In contrast to most Android smartphones, the Camon 30 Premier has its volume keys on the left and the power key on the right. All buttons are conveniently placed, but the power could require some finger gymnastics for people with small hands. Good thing the button itself is relatively big and easy to distinguish.

Tecno Camon 30 Premier

The same cannot be said about the under-display fingerprint reader. It works well - snappy, responsive and accurate, but it's placed a bit too close to the bottom edge, which isn't ideal.

In any case, the design is memorable and the overall build feels extra nice to the touch, albeit being a bit on the slippery side.

6.77-inch LTPO OLED panel

The Tecno Camon 30 Premier punches above its weight class with its display. The handset uses a generous 6.77-inch LTPO OLED panel with 1264 x 2780px resolution. This is a higher-than-average resolution for the price range and a rare LTPO panel, allowing granular refresh rate control. And we also liked the rather thin bezels all around. They give the phone a more modern look and feel.

The screen supports HDR and support for Widevine L1, which allows you to stream high-quality videos on platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

When it comes to real-world performance, however, the display disappoints a bit. In manual mode, the screen can go up to 579 nits, while in auto mode, with high-brightness mode turned on, the OLED peaked at 696 nits. Tecno advertises 1,400 nits in HBM, so we may be dealing with a faulty unit or a widespread display issue. It's not the first time we've seen brightness issues with Tecno's smartphones, so everything goes.

Still, 700 nits isn't all that bad and should provide a comfortable viewing experience in most scenarios, but it trails behind the competition for sure.

Refresh rate

The system offers four refresh rate modes - 60Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz and Auto-switch. The names of these modes are pretty self-explanatory, so we explored the automatic mode further.

Since this is an LTPO panel, it supports granular refresh rate control, which we observed in various cases. For instance, leaving the display idle will lower the refresh rate down to 10Hz and interacting with it will boost that to 120Hz in most apps we've tried. When it comes to video playback in YouTube, for example, the system will opt for the appropriate refresh rate - 60fps videos will play at 60Hz, 30fps videos run at 30Hz, but 24fps videos play at 60Hz.

Battery life

Our new Active Use Score is an estimate of how long the battery will last if you use the device with a mix of all four test activities. You can adjust the calculation based on your usage pattern using the sliders below. You can read about our current battery life testing procedure here. For a comprehensive list of all tested devices so far, head this way.

The handset earned a respectable 13:29h Active Use Score, which is more than what you could expect from most devices in the same price range.

The Camon 30 Premier uses a 5,000 mAh battery, which is tasked to power a large 6.77-inch OLED display and a Dimensity 8200 SoC. Interestingly, the OLED is of the LTPO kind, which probably saves some power, and as evidenced by the tests, the Dimensity 8200 takes it easy on the battery as well.

As you can see, the Tecno Camon 30 Premier's overall score is slightly better than all smartphones in this group, although the handset doesn't stand out with great scores in either test. Instead, Tecno's competitor plays the role of "jack of all trades". The handset is competitive in all aspects and posts one of the best gaming runtimes in this comparison. Solid endurance, for sure.

Charging speed

The Camon 30 Premier offers a competitive 70-watt charging solution with its bundled brick and appropriate USB-A to USB-C cable. In our tests, the device did remarkably well, falling short only to the Redmi Note 13 Pro+ with its 120W charging.

Tecno's contender is also neck to neck with the vivo V30 Pro, and the latter beats it to the punch with two minutes at a full charging cycle.

In any case, the Camon is particularly fast in the first 15 minutes, while a 30-minute charge would most probably give a full charge if you aren't doing a full cycle.

Speakers

The Camon 30 Premier has a standard hybrid speaker setup, the bottom-firing speaker being the main one and the other doubles as an earpiece. As usual, the bottom speaker is slightly louder, but not by much in this particular case.

Right off the bat, we are impressed with the loudness, and the "Excellent" -21.9 LUFS score attests to that. It's one of the loudest smartphones we've tested.

Unfortunately, this comes at a price, and that's quality, or at least at higher volumes. The highs start to ring, and there's noticeable distortion, but turning the volume down a few notches helps. The bass is okay and gives music tracks that much-needed fullness.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.

HiOS 14 + Android 14

The Tecno Camon 30 Premier runs on a familiar HiOS 14 custom Android overlay with an underlying Android 14 OS. Unfortunately, Tecno doesn't explicitly promise any software updates, so we don't know how long the handset will stay relevant. Still, at least one more major update is likely in the cards.

This version of HiOS 14 is exactly the same one we saw on the Tecno Pova 6 Pro and the Tecno Spark 20 Pro+. It's very similar to HiOS 13 but has a better implementation of the so-called Dynamic Port 2.0 - Tecno's own version of Apple's Dynamic Island. It gives contextual info as well as quick and easy ways to interact with certain system apps.

HIOS 14 + Android 14

HIOS 14 + Android 14

In general, the system felt snappy and responsive, so no complaints when it comes to performance.

Benchmark performance

The Tecno Camon 30 Premier runs on the well-known Dimensity 8200 Ultimate SoC based on the 4nm manufacturing process. However, the Ultimate part remains a mystery as the specs of the Tecno-marketed Dimensity 8200 Ultimate are identical to the initially announced Dimensity 8200.

Anyway, the SoC is supposed to be a direct successor to the Dimensity 8100, but the specs sheet suggests it's an entirely new chip. Instead of a 4+4 core configuration, the 8200 adopts a more modern 1+3+4 combo. The main core clocked at 3.1 GHz is still Cortex-A78, though, while the second cluster of 3x Cortex-A78 cores is clocked at 3.0 GHz. The energy-efficient cluster of 4x Cortex-A55 cores is ticking at 2.0 GHz.

The GPU remains unchanged from the previous generation, though, as it's still the Mali-G610 MC6.

Interestingly, Tecno offers just one memory option - 12GB/512GB. We must admit, though, it's a generous one. We tested the storage speed, and it's likely a fast UFS 2.2 or a slower UFS 3.1. Tecno doesn't disclose the exact specs, so we are left in the dark here.

Here's how the Camon 30 Premier fares against the competition with its Dimensity 8200 chip.

We've discontinued GFXBench graphics benchmarking as the app is often banned/blacklisted on the phones we receive for review. The graphics performance ranking in 3D Mark is just as meaningful, so we suggest you refer to that one instead.

The benchmarks show that the Dimensity 8200 is a competitive chipset in the price bracket, falling short only to the Snapdragon 8- Gen 1, mostly in combined and GPU-heavy benchmarks. CPU-wise, the Dimensity 8200-powered Camon gives the Nothing Phone (2) and Galaxy S23 FE (both affordable flagships) a run for their money.

Sustained performance

The Dimensity 8200 sure is a demanding chip, and the device handled it relatively well. During heavy loads, the CPU maintained 73% of its performance during an hour-long test, which is better than some Dimensity 8200-equipped rivals, but we've also seen better.

CPU and GPU stress tests

The handset maintained relatively high stability during the GPU-intensive 3DMark Wild Life stress test as well.

Potent 50MP, triple-camera setup

The Tecno Camon 30 Premier is obviously a camera-centric smartphone in the upper mid-range class and the hardware suggests so too. The device features a triple 50MP camera setup with a relatively big main sensor along with a large 50MP sensor for the telephoto camera sitting behind a periscope setup. The latter allows smartphone makers to fit bigger sensors in constrained space.

• Wide (main):50MP Sony IMX 890, 1/1.56", 1.0µm, f/1.8, 23mm, PDAF, OIS; 2160p@60fps
• Ultrawide:50 MP Samsung ISOCELL JN1, f/2.2, 1/2.76", 0.64µm, 14mm, PDAF; 2160p@30fps
• Telephoto: 50 MP Samsung ISOCELL JN1, f/2.15, 1/2.76", 0.64µm, 70mm (periscope telephoto), PDAF, OIS, 3x optical zoom; 2160p@60fps
• Front camera: 50 MP Hynix Hi5022Q f/2.45, 24mm, 1/2.8", 0.64µm, PDAF; 2160p@30fps

Interestingly, the telephoto camera is the same one used in the Xiaomi 14. The only difference is the latter's setup doesn't use a periscope, and the zoom reach is 3.2x instead of 3x.

The selfie camera also gets some love - it's 50MP with support for autofocus. A rare find not only in this price range, but in the smartphone world as a whole.

In addition to the already impressive camera hardware, the Tecno Camon 30 Premier is marketed as the first smartphone with Sony's dedicated CXD5622GG imaging chip. It helps with computing for camera processing, but we doubt that it fully replaces the MediaTek 8200 own ISP.

Overall, the camera hardware looks promising on paper, so let's see what it can do in the real world.

Daylight photos

Main camera

The handset delivers nice daylight photos with plenty of detail, sharpness, wide dynamic range and somewhat conservative color reproduction. Foliage can sometimes be smeared away, but it's hard to pinpoint the reason. Noise is kept at bay even in more challenging indoor conditions, for example.

Main camera daylight samples

Tecno's additional processing adds a bit of sharpness, and you can notice some sharpening halos around the edges of buildings and in trees and foliage. It's not something you could notice right away, but we believe it's actually a nice rendering. Shadows could be a bit on the dark side sometimes, but this is also a very minor issue. Focus hunting was a problem in some cases too.

Portraits: Normal • Portrait mode

Interestingly, the camera app offers upscaled 100MP photos instead of full-res 50MP, but they look awful anyway.

100MP samples

3x zoom camera

The 3x zoom periscope camera produces excellent images with a rendition that's very close to the main camera's. Colors are a tad more saturated, but the overall look is the same. The stills are clean, sharp, detailed, and have a wide enough dynamic range. We noticed some focus hunting, like on the main camera, but a simple tap on the subject you want to focus on will do the trick. Going indoors produces slightly softer photos, but not by much.

3x zoom daylight photos

Telephoto portraits: Normal • Portrait mode

Additionally, the camera supports focusing from as close as 25cm, which allows for great close-up shots.

Macro samples

Ultrawide camera

We were pleasantly surprised by the ultrawide camera as well. We must admit that we didn't have the highest expectations, but the ultrawide unit showed exceptional performance in various scenarios. Dynamic range is a bit limited compared to the main and telephoto units, but the pictures are sharp, detailed and lack noise even in more challenging scenarios.

Ultrawide camera daylight photos

Our only complaint is that the ultrawide camera itself isn't wide enough - Tecno advertises 114-degree FoV, which is pretty narrow compared to competing solutions with more than 120-degree FoV. On the flip side, there's minimal barrel distortion.

Low-light photos

Main camera

The low-light samples look very nice and natural. There's an automatic switch to Night mode when the software detects low-light conditions and we found it to be very generous, meaning the Night mode was active in almost all of our scenes. When triggered, it improves dynamic range and light sources look nicer.

Main camera low-light samples

In any case, the samples we took look nice, without oversharpening and the tendency to go for lower exposure produces more natural-looking scenes. That leaves some shadows a bit too dark, though. Colors are slightly muted, although noise, sharpness, detail and dynamic range are excellent.

3x zoom camera

Of course, the telephoto camera has its limitations, but the Night mode does an excellent job of retaining detail and sharpness. The color temperature might be off sometimes too. Nonetheless, the overall quality is comparable to that of the main camera.

3x zoom camera low-light samples

Ultrawide camera

The ultrawide camera is understandably softer than the other two, but it's still quite impressive in the context of rivaling solutions. We observed a similar rendition to the main camera with less detail, lower color saturation and a bit narrower dynamic range. Highlights are sometimes clipped, while shadows are crushed in some of the scenes. Still, performance is excellent and the outlined issues aren't deal-breaking.

Ultrawide camera low-light samples

Selfies

The selfies are also excellent and we believe the AF makes a huge difference. They are detailed, sharp, with accurate colors and the subject is always well-exposed, suggesting a wide dynamic range.

Selfies

Video recording

The handset supports 2160p@60fps video recording with all its cameras, including the selfie unit. The software also offers an Ultimate video enhancement mode, which is supposed to improve video quality in various ways, but more on that later. We believe the Ultra steady mode is just an EIS mode, because when turned off, the stabilization looks like pure OIS. This is just us speculating, but since there's no resolution limitation, we suggest leaving that option on. Even then, we've seen better EIS implementations.

The main camera's 4K footage looks great and leaves no room for complaints. Everything looks clean, sharp, detailed and colors are lively, but not overboard. Exposure seems to be a bit on the high end, but nothing too major.

Turning on the Ultimate enhancement mode adds artificial sharpness and boosts brightness, which isn't ideal. We liked the non-enhanced video better.

The telephoto camera also produces nice 4K videos with plenty of sharpness, detail and excellent contrast. It's definitely a reliable camera for video shooting.

We were once again surprised by the ultrawide's performance. It delivers a video that's close to the main camera's quality, which is hard to come by. Despite the ultrawide lense, the video looks sharp, detailed and with impressive dynamic range.

The two low-light videos are surprisingly good. We have a standard sample and one with Ultimate Enhancement mode, but we liked the former more. It has a more natural color tone and has more detail in the shadows without introducing too much noise. The "enhanced" footage, on the other hand, is ever so slightly sharper, with wider dynamic range and less noise, but there's something off with the color reproduction and the white balance.

Video sample playlist

You can check out the playlist below, which includes multiple video samples.

Competition

The Tecno Camon 30 Premier is an excellent upper-mid-range all-rounder. Yes, that's a mouthful, but it's indeed a phone that punches above the standard mid-range class and covers all bases in terms of performance, battery life, display, charging speed and, most certainly, camera quality.

Despite Tecno's relatively low popularity (compared to other brands), the Camon 30 Premier gives many of its competitors a run for their money. Unfortunately, we are left guessing the device's exact price as Tecno hasn't revealed it just yet. After some digging and considering the Camon 20 Premier's launch price last year, we made an educated guess that the handset will cost around INR 35,000 (€400) or maybe more. Either way, this would be a competitive price, given the handset's capabilities. And here's why.

The Camon 30 Pro will likely slot in between Samsung's Galaxy A55 and the Galaxy S23 FE, price-wise. And yet, the 30 Premier makes a compelling reason not to get either Samsung. The device has an energy-efficient LTPO OLED panel, solid battery life (a lot better than the S23 FE), faster charging, and arguably better camera experience overall, offers 512GB storage by default and outperforms the A55 with its Dimensity 8200 SoC. The only reason not to get the Camon 30 Premier is the lack of clarity when it comes to software support. Tecno hasn't publicly committed to software support for a certain duration, while the Samsungs will remain up-do-date for years to come.

Samsung Galaxy A55 • Samsung Galaxy S23 FE • Xiaomi 13T

Another hard-to-beat competitor is the Xiaomi 13T. It has the same chipset and perhaps a slightly better display but falls short in the battery department; it's slower to charge and doesn't have the same camera prowess. Software support remains an advantage, though, as Xiaomi promises 4 years of full software support.

The recently released vivo V30 Pro is another alternative worth mentioning. Interestingly, the two devices are very similar - the same chipset powers both, offers roughly the same battery endurance, charges equally fast, has very similar displays and features a slim and lightweight design. Still, the Camon 30 Premier pulls ahead with a slightly better camera experience and further zoom reach. Perhaps the deciding factor would be the price, but we suspect the Camon 30 Premier will undercut the V30 Pro.

vivo V30 Pro • Realme 12 Pro+ • Nothing Phone (2)

Realme's 12 Pro+ is another similarly priced contender, but we need to see a compelling reason why you'd choose this one over the Camon 30 Premier. The latter is objectively better in most aspects if not all, so instead, we recommend looking into Nothing's Phone (2) - а flagship from last year. Despite being a year-old phone, the Phone (2) has a more powerful chipset, longer battery life, better display, LTPO at that, and better software support for the coming years. The unorthodox design is a bonus but falls short in the camera department. Even if you make a case for the Phone (2)'s camera processing being better, the exceptional selfie and telephoto cameras the Camon offers are hard to overlook.

Verdict

Aside from some nuanced issues, the Camon 30 Premier is a good example of a "jack of all trades". The device will likely be positioned around competitors that offer less for the asking price. Tecno's solution has excellent performance, long battery life, fast charging, energy-efficient LTPO panel and near-flawless camera experience. It also has one of the loudest loudspeakers around, adds an IR blaster, and delivers 512GB internal storage by default. All of this is packaged in a nice, lightweight chassis with a premium feel.

We only wished the display was brighter in auto mode and that Tecno committed to some kind of extended software support, as this is becoming the norm in the industry.

All in all, the Camon 30 Premier gets our approval and the small shortcomings are not enough to ruin the excellent score we gave. The value package speaks for itself.

Pros

• Thin, light, standout design with premium feel.
• Energy-efficient 120Hz LTPO OLED.
• Exceptional camera performance all-around, including selfies and videos.
• Solid battery life and fast charging.
• One of the loudest speakers around
• Potent chipset.
• 12GB/512GB memory by default, IR blaster.

Cons

• Small issues with focusing on the main and telephoto cameras.
• Display could be brighter.
• Uncertain software support.