The TECNO Camon 12 Air was recently launched and I’ve been using for a couple of weeks now as my daily driver. The TECNO Camon 12 Air is the cheaper and better-designed smartphone in the TECNO Camon 12 series. The TECNO Camon 12 Air is the only device in this price range that features a punch-hole display. It’s not as feature-rich as the rest of the TECNO Camon 12 devices but still managed to impress me more than I expected.
Design
The TECNO Camon 12 Air comes in a beautiful and reflective colour gradient back where the triple ai-powered cameras and a fingerprint sensor are located. The phone is also light as a feather and makes for a good phone for those who hate bulky phones.
The phone’s back boasts triple camera setup vertically aligned on the top left corner. Next to the cameras is a quad-LED flash.
There’s a 6.55″ 720p display that features a punch-hole selfie camera with decent viewing angles but under direct sunlight makes it hard to read articles. The Dot-in display gives users of the TECNO Camon 12 Air a full-screen experience when browsing the web, consuming media or lazily going through your social media feeds.
The front of the TECNO Camon 12 Air has minimal side bezels. However, there’s a relatively large chin.
Performance
The TECNO Camon 12 Air comes with 3GB of RAM, 32GB of onboard storage and runs on Android 9 Pie with HiOS version 5.5.2. You’ll also get a MediaTek Helio P22 processor powers the phone. The performance is not class-leading but for the TECNO Camon 12 handles basic stuff well.
The phone also performs decently for some graphics-heavy tasks but you’ll occasionally have the stutter. Overall, the performance is surprisingly good and multitasking was no issue on this phone courtesy of the relatively fast processor and 3 gigs of RAM.
HiOS offers a few useful customisations options when it’s not annoying you with intermittent ads such as the Smart Panel and Fonts app. You’ll have to uninstall some of the preinstalled bloatware that comes with the phone.
Gaming on the TECNO Camon 12 is possible only at low settings. If you go with high settings, you’ll notice frame rates drop for games like Asphalt 9. If you’re a casual gamer, then this phone is for you.
The 4000mAh battery will push the TECNO Camon 12 Air through to the next day if you’re a light user but if you heavily tax your phone, you’ll still get a full day performance but you’ll have to juice it up before you go to sleep.
The face unlock is pretty fast and accurate and the face unlock animation is adorable.
You can trust the TECNO Camon 12 Air with its relatively superb performance considering the price category it exists in.
Cameras
The TECNO Camon 12 Air spots a 16MP, 5MP and 2MP lens for the rear cameras and an 8MP selfie shooter. In well-lit scenes, the cameras areversatile and will give you decent shots. You have modes such as beauty, Bokeh, Portrait, AR Shot, Panorama, Wide Selfie and Video to play around with. Here are some samples and as always, click to expand.
Selfies
Portrait
Beauty Mode
Regular Shots
Bokeh shots
Low light
Being AI-powered gives the cameras an upper hand in scene recognition and optimising them to take better shots.
In low lit scenes, the cameras give an average performance and low image quality.
The macro camera works well and you ‘ll not be disappointed.
Generally, you won’t go wrong with the cameras on the TECNO Camon 12 Air especially in well-lit scenarios.
Should you buy it?
You’d think that the TECNO Camon 12 Air is underpowered since it lacks some of the features of its bigger siblings but that’s not the case. The phone impressed me in my hands-on review and still did after the honeymoon period.
The TECNO Camon 12 Air makes it easy to recommend to people as it’s not only the most interesting phone because of its modern-looking design in this fiercely contested price segment but also brings with it capable cameras, trustworthy performance and decent battery life – all at a budget.
The TECNO Camon 12 Air is available online and in TECNO retail stores and you can buy it for Ksh 13,499.
