The Camon X Pro review: Heading to flagship status

I‘ve spent every waking moment of the past few days in the company of the Camon X Pro. This phone has surprised and delighted me like few others, and what you are about to read is a collection of mix of happy and not so happy words about it. I don’t think the Camon X Pro is perfect, nor the best phone ever released in its category, but I do believe it’s one of the most important devices we’ve seen this year.

In spite of its massive phone distribution network in Uganda and Africa, including the millions of phones it sells in developing nations, Techno has remained an underdog in other smartphone markets. Will the Pro brand change this? This phone is as great, refined, fast, stylish, and desirable as anything we’ve seen from brands like Samsung, LG, and HTC’s mid-tier flagship devices.

Tecno is releasing the Camon X Pro  for a price of around UGX 700,000 to  UGX 800,000 in Uganda with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. It comes with a 24 Megapixel selfie camera with dual flash (clear selfie), 6 inch FullHD display and to top it all off, a FaceID feature which claims to rival the competition. The remarkable thing is how well Tenco’s phone competes in that rarified class of super mid-tired flagships.

The Camon X Pro is a typical Chinese phone in that it has a great spec sheet and good design. My review unit has an eye-catching deep red paint job at the back and the combination of beauty and brawn come lacking in some areas like lack of IP67 certification for water and dust resistance. Every Chinese phone company would want to imbue its devices with a premium feel, but few succeed as well as Tecno has done with the Camon X Pro.

It starts as soon as you take the phone out of the box, with its perfectly rounded contoured sides resting softly in the palm of your hand. For a phone with glass on the front and metal at the back, the X Pro feels surprisingly rigid and durable. It comes with two free red plastic protective casing and front scratch resistant screen protector saving you a few dimes along the way. With a huge 3,750mAh battery inside, it also conveys a satisfying sense of density that only we’ve seen high-end phones from top phone makers matching. There’s a litany of subtle design details and pleasing symmetries in this Tecno design that add up to create a positive first impression. I am not a fan of the volume and SIM card placement but coming from a Galaxy phone I guess that’s a personal gripe. But, it’s fair to say that I liked the X Pro before I even turned it on, mostly due to the marketing hype around it.

THE DIMENSIONS  AND ERGONOMICS ARE PERFECT

Coming from a Samsung Galaxy S8 plus, I find the X Pro to be a somewhat ergonomic downgrade, but great looking for devices in its price range tier obviously. Tecno’s phone has a slightly larger screen, at 6.0 inches, but is physically smaller. The X Pro does provide more screen real estate than recent notch phones designs. But more to the point, the X Pro is easy to pick up and to grip securely. The red surface at the back can feel slippery at times, however I haven’t come close to dropping the phone even once during all my testing.

My other complaints about the X Pro’s industrial design are minor. One is that the rear placement of the fingerprint sensor is almost at Galaxy S8 Plus position level making it tricky to reach with one-handed use. I am also not fan of the protruding lens/flash combo at the back as it kills the phone’s great aesthetics. And, the other downside is the use of old micro-USB instead of the new USB- C standard for charging.

Techno’s decision to put the fingerprint sensor at the back of the phone was a good move, given how everyone else has either removed it (Apple), or integrated it directly into the display (Vivo). But it took me only moments of using the X Pro’s fingerprint reader to realize that it was it put way too high up for a 6-inch screen device. However, it is astonishingly fast and accurate, and the way it feels under my thumb is great. It takes no more than a glancing tap to unlock the phone. In-display fingerprint sensors can’t yet compete with the quickness of a discrete solution like Tecno’s, even if rear-mounted ones just aren’t as easy and intuitive to use as those at the front.