The Breakdown
I guess that by now, the name TECNO isn’t something you look at for the first time – and for a good reason I might add. The Chinese company is one of the biggest surprises of the year, after launching several impressive smartphones one after the other. Recently the company unveiled the Camon 19 Pro Mondrian Edition, which features a distinctive back panel design and we have it for review.
The phone comes with a Mondrian-inspired back changes color when light strikes it and is considered by the manufacturer as one of their biggest hits of the year. We had it in our hands for a couple of days so here’s a really… artistic review of it.
TECNO CAMON 19 Pro – Main features
- Mondrian Edition (color changing back)
- 64MP Bright Night Portrait (OIS)
- The 0.98mm Slimmest Bezel
- 50MP 50mm Pro Portrait Camera
- 32MP Pro Selfie Camera
- 120Hz FHD+ High Gamut Display (6.8″)
- 33W Flash Charge,5000mAh
- Helio G96 Octa-Core
- 256GB+8GB Memory
- 128GB+8GB Memory
- 79 x 74.55 x 8.58mm
Technical Specifications
- Height: 166.79 mm
- Width: 74.55mm
- Thickness: 8.58mm
- 120Hz FHD+ High Gamut Display (6.8″)
- 1080*2460 Resolution
- 256GB ROM + 8GB RAM Memory
- 128GB ROM + 8GB RAM Memory
- Helio G96 Octa-Core
- 33W Flash Charge
- 5000mAh
- GSM
- GPRS
- FULL EDGE
- WCDMA
- HSPA+
- FDD LTE
- WiFi
- Bluetooth
- FM
- OTG
- NFC
- 32MP Front Camera
- 64MP Triple Rear Camera with Quad Flash
- G-Sensor
- Ambient Light and Distance Sensor
- Fingerprint Sensor
You can find more info about the device here
Mondrian Edition: Pure art and technology
First, let me clarify that the Mondrian Edition is not that of a different phone than the original Camon 19 Pro. It’s mostly the same device under the hood – TECNO and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston have joined to bring the unique vision of Piet Mondrian – the Dutch pioneer of abstract art best known for his bold and colorful block paintings – to a new format that is accessible to consumers in a way not previously explored.
The Mondrian Edition launched on the heels of the CAMON 19 Pro, with the same key features, including:
- First high-clear crystal sensitive lens with RGBW sensorfor the 64MP Bright Night Portrait
- The 0.98mm bezeloffers the industry’s slimmest form factor, framing a 6.8-inch FHD+ display, to deliver an unsurpassed immersive experience
- Dual-ring triple-camera design perfectly balances the camera and back panel aesthetic to create a seamless overall feeling. The metal dual-ring is perfectly integrated with the triple camera using an anodizing process, bringing a sense of professional performance.
- 50MP 2X Optical-Zoom Lensfor clearer, more detailed portraits
- AI Face Beauty technology intelligently identifies different facial structures and skin tones, and delivers smoothing complexions and accurate skin tones
- Powerful performance optimizes the phone for the clarity, brightness, and color accuracy for a stunning viewing experience. Certified by TuV Rheinland, the display minimizes blue light for more comfortable viewing, reducing eye strain and fatigue.
Dressed to impress
It’s an impressive mid-range phone, packing a 64MP primary camera with OIS and Laser AF features. It also uses a new RGBW sensor which improves the quality of photos and videos from the camera, making it a treat for all those influencers out there.
TECNO considers this phone as “the world’s first smart device that uses “sunlight drawing” technology to allow the phone to change colors in sunlight” – creating a device that is both artistic and intuitive. In addition to the device, included in the special edition gift set is a pair of TECNO TWS SONIC 1 earbuds, and other two Mondrian-style accessories.
I must admit the phone looks spectacular. It boasts TECNO’s “sunlight drawing” technology – more formally known as polychromatic photo isomer technology – is a process that breaks through the technical limitations of single-color or dual-color discoloration, and inspired by the impressionist works of Mondrian, enabling the phone’s shell to follow geometrical patterns of color change in the sun. Just watch the video below:
Display and quality build
I loved the artistic part of the device, but how about the quality? The phone is made from glass (front) and plastic (everywhere else) but still feels like more luxurious than you’d think. On the right side you can find the volume rock and power button (also the fingerprint scanner). On the bottom frame there’s the speaker, USB Type-C port, and 3.5mm headphone jack – yes it has one! 
The display size of the Tecno Camon 19 Pro is 6.8-inches. It’s an IPS LCD panel with high color Gamut, that comes with 120Hz refresh rate support and has a peak brightness of 500 nits. 
As per the design, the Camon 19 Pro comes with two rings on the rear that houses three camera sensors. On the front, it has a simple punch-hole that houses the selfie camera. The phone also has very slim bezels, flat-screen, sharp edges, and it’s about 9mm thick.
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Chipset and Performance
This phone is surely not for the game addicts, nor for the business aficionados. It’s a mid-range device with impeccable design, that packs the MediaTek Helio G96 chipset. The chipset is built on a 12nm process node technology and has a maximum CPU frequency of 2.05GHz. For gaming and graphic work, it uses the Arm Mali-G57 MC2 GPU which is just adequate for this type of entertainment. So don’t expect it to let you play graphic-intensive games. However, it can let you play PUBG and call of Duty, reducing the graphics settings and dropping the frame rates.
Using the phone for extended periods made it heat up too soon, affecting somewhat its performance. In any case this didn’t affect our experience with it, so here are some of the benchmark tests we made.
Photography is king
According to Tecno, all its Camon phone lineup is made for shooting photos and videos. The Camon 19 Pro lives up to its name and packs quite a punch: a 64MP primary camera with RGBW sensor, OIS, and Laser AF, a 2 Bokeh lens, a 50MP portrait lens, and a 32MP front camera. I really liked its quad light flash that offers impressive brightness during night photos. But that’s not all: there’s also Night Mode and Super Night Mode for Selfies and impressive nightlife photos.
For the first time, the Laser AF function works like a charm, as the phone can focus on objects in 0.1 seconds along with the 2 bokeh lens that can deliver impressive portraits in no time. There are a lot of pre-installed features in the Camera app (impressive backgrounds, selfie effects, AI Scenes, Night Mode and Super Night Mode settings etc).
The videos are not bad at all. The Camon 19 Pro comes with an OIS feature and a gyro-EIS feature that helps to stabilize photos and videos, while the shooting can get up to 2K of resolution (not 4K I am afraid).
TECNO CAMON 19 Pro Mondrian Edition Camera Features:
- First high-clear crystal sensitive lens with RGBW sensor for the 64MP Bright Night Portrait
- The 0.98mm bezel offers the industry’s slimmest form factor, framing a 6.8-inch FHD+ display, to deliver an unsurpassed immersive experience
- Dual-ring triple-camera design perfectly balances the camera and back panel aesthetic to create a seamless overall feeling. The metal dual-ring is perfectly integrated with the triple camera using an anodizing process, bringing a sense of professional performance.
- 50MP 2X Optical-Zoom Lens for clearer, more detailed portraits
- AI Face Beauty technology intelligently identifies different facial structures and skin tones, and delivers smoothing complexions and accurate skin tones
- Powerful performance optimizes the phone for the clarity, brightness, and color accuracy for a stunning viewing experience. Certified by TuV Rheinland, the display minimizes blue light for more comfortable viewing, reducing eye strain and fatigue.
Android and memory options
Tecno Camon 19 Pro comes with 8GB RAM + 256GB of internal storage, but there’s also microSD slot support that can beef up your storage if you wish. It also packs Android’s latest memory fusion (virtual memory extension) gimmick that can increase its memory up to extra 5GB of RAM – taking space from the storage.
It runs on HIOS 8.6 based on Android 12 out of the box, with some bloatware inside like AHA Games, BoomPlay, Hi Browser, Phone Master etc. There’s also Ella (!) – TECNO’s virtual assistant inside, that can help you navigate the device and interact better with it.
The good thing is that Tecno promises one year of major software updates and two years of monthly security patches for this phone. This means a lot!
TECNO CAMON 19 Pro: Battery and Charging
It’s always nice to see a budget friendly phone packing a large battery (5000 mAh) with support for 33W fast charging speed. This means that it can fully charge the device in just under 60 minutes – impressive time for the category. I had about 5-6 hours SOT of continuous heavy usage, but it could reach up to 8 hours if you use the phone modestly.
I didn’t notice any overheating issues when charging, or any sudden drops of battery percentage. Very nice work TECNO, well done.
Surprise inside
In the main package of the TECNO CAMON 19 Pro – Mondrian Edition I was happy to find a set of TWS earbuds. They’re called TECNO SONIC 1 and compliment the whole TECNO CAMON 19 Pro Mondrian Edition Gift Set. They provide extended battery life of 50 hours, significantly increased when compared to other TWS sets in the market. They also incorporate magnetic absorption technology.
This enables free switching between in-ear and half-in-ear wearing modes, to meet the needs in different scenarios, and ensure the comfort for long-lasting usage.
Our opinion about TECNO CAMON 19 Pro
So, who should buy the Tecno Camon 19 Pro, and who should avoid buying this phone? If you value cameras (photography and videography) more than performance, then the Tecno Camon 19 Pro is for you. But, if you value performance over cameras (that is you, love, playing games), then you might want to look the way of other phones with better performance.
There are so many good things about the Tecno Camon 19 Pro as there is also some room for improvements. The Camon 19 Pro features a fast refresh rate, good battery life, really good cameras, a beautiful design, and is very comfortable to hold. But, it’s relatively expensive, has an average chipset, and is not ideal for gaming.
The Camon 19 Pro Mondrian Edition will be available in July alongside the original model and other variants in the Camon 19 series. It will arrive in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Southern Asia, with prices varying by region.
