As a leading website for smartphone camera reviews, we get to test a lot of new models at varying price points, and I have the good fortune of being able to try some of them, and I’ve come to realise that for me, there is absolutely no need to spend north of $1000/£1000 on a phone, and I refuse to do so. And that’s where budget phones come in.
Personally, as a photographer, the only feature on a smartphone I really care about is the camera. I’m not a gamer, and have no desire to be using a phone as a business device – my laptop does that better. I call, I text, I browse social media, but most of all I take pictures. Thousands of them. And I defy anyone to spot the difference between pictures taken on the latest iPhone 17 Pro, or on my Tecno Camon 40 Premier, which costs less than half the price.
Tecno is a budget brand whose handsets are not even officially available in the UK, US or EU but who are a major player in their key markets in Africa, Asia and Latin America. I became familiar with their Camon phones through a series of photo walks with readers that we did last year. Like the readers I was blown away by the quality of the photos, especially with the flagship Camon 30 Premier. I especially enjoyed using its 3x telephoto lens – something that my own Apple iPhone 13 lacked.
I began carrying the Camon 30 Pro alongside my iPhone to use just as a camera, because the pictures were better than those from the iPhone, and I had that 3-lens versatility. When the Camon 40 Premier came out earlier this year I decided to go the whole hog, switched my SIM card over to the new TECNO phone and ditched the iPhone altogether. It was either that or spend over a grand to get a similar spec on a newer model iPhone.
I have been using the Camon 40 Premier for most of this year now and have no regrets. I am constantly being told by people who appear in my photos how much better my pictures are than theirs. I like to think that this is entirely down to my photographic skill but honestly, TECNO’s Camon camera really is that good. It’s especially good at reproducing different skin tones, which TECNO puts a lot of effort into getting right because of their strong focus on the Global South.
By default the TECNO Camon range is stacked with AI processing features that do an effective job at smoothing skin. I find it a little heavy handed but it can be easily toned down (or dialled up!) via one-touch icons right on the screen. In portrait mode you get a choice of 35mm equivalent focal lengths from 24mm up to 85mm to shoot at, and the camera blurs the background to give a pretty convincing shallow depth of field effect.
There’s a really effective night mode too which the default camera automatically switches to when the light drops, so I don’t have to remember to do it manually – though I can also do that. And new on the Canon 40 is a high-speed burst mode confusingly called FlashSnap, designed for moving subjects, which can shoot at 30fps. The camera uses Ai to pick what it thinks is the best shot in the sequence, though you can go through them all and change it or add others. (I find that I agree with the camera’s choice about 50% of the time). I have no use for the Dual Video mode which splits the screen between front and read cameras for ‘reaction’ type videos, but it has been a big hit our sponsored photo walks with those who are much less shy about videoing themselves than I am.
You get the usual panorama, slo-mo and time-lapse and a pro mode which provides full manual control of focus, exposure and white balance. The only thing lacking which some more expensive phones have is a raw mode. While that would be useful on occasion it isn’t worth the extra half grand to me.
The main things I miss about my iPhone are not camera related, they’re about connectivity to my other devices, because the rest of my tech eco-system is 100% Apple: Mac Mini, Macbook, iPad, Apple TV. But that isn’t the phone’s fault and even then there are workarounds that make this only a minor inconvenience.
One legitimate concern people may have about budget phones is their durability, but I have had the privilege of visiting TECNO’s factory in Chongqing, China, including the lab where high tech machines repeatedly subject their handsets to stringent endurance tests including drop tests, water tests, scratch tests, shake tests, and even a hand-sweat test. And having performed multiple unplanned endurance tests myself, including dropping my phone in the bath, and onto the tiled floor of my kitchen at least half a dozen times (yes, I’m clumsy!) I can say hand on heart I have no worries about that. Finally, nearly a year in, my battery is still usually showing around 50% charge when I plug it in at night on my bedside table.
There was once a cachet to owning a fancy phone, especially an iPhone, but those days are long gone. Everyone has a smartphone now – indeed half the kids in the average primary school are rocking their parents’ cast-off iPhones. I can’t think of a sensible reason to spend $1000/£1000 or more on a phone, especially when you can buy the TECNO Camon 40 Premier 5G brand new on eBay for under $400/£350.
The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of Amateur Photographer magazine or Kelsey Media Limited. If you have an opinion you’d like to share on this topic, or any other photography related subject, email: [email protected].
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