Tecno Camon iClick Review – Offline Champ?

Tecno has been steadily increasing their foothold in the Indian Smartphone market and the latest report shows it gaining ground as the fifth largest Smartphone player in India within its one year of operations in the country. Tecno Smartphones retail offline in stores and they have managed to spread a good number of retail points across India.  Their latest addition to their portfolio is the Tecno Camon iClick. Already I have talked about the Tecno Camon iClick first impression, so am not going to run through the design aspects of the iClick again here, you can hop over that post for the design part, the link is  here. On a quick note, the Camon iClick is clad in metal body and is available in two colors – gold and black. The Smartphone has a good ergonomics, it measures 7.8mm in thickness and is 150 grams in weight a perfect measures for every day handling.

• 6″ IPS LCD display
• 18:9 aspect ratio
• 1440 x 720p
• 500 nits brightness

The Camon iClick features the contemporary 18:9 aspect ratio and has a 6-inch IPS LCD display with a HD+ (720 x 1440) pixels resolution. The display has 500 nits brightness and is well lit. The outdoor visibility and viewing angles leaves no room for complaints. Though it is bit reflective. There are on-screen navigation buttons. There is also eye care or blue filter to use the phone in dark to protect your eyes. You can control the intensity as well as schedule it for particular time.

• Android Oreo 8.1
• HiOS

Camon iClick runs on Android Oreo with their own HiOS layered upon. The UI features include:

• The quick setting toggle has quick access to blue filter toggle, screenshot, split screen, battery saver, flash light and a quirky feature called WhatsApp mode. Enabling the Whatsapp mode, restricts the data to background apps and only Whatsapp would be enabled.
• Gesture control actions which allows you to quickly launch certain apps by drawing certain alphabets on sleeping mode.
• Flip to mute
• Three finger screenshot
• Music gesture option to quick control your music by specific gesture with your finger over the off-screen
• One-hand mode for easy operation

The UI is decent. With my discussions with consumers, many people are keen on the extra features UI offers compared to the stock experience and Tecno packs some of the features which consumer might like.

• Mediatek P23 chipset
• 64-bit octa-core processor clocked at 2.0GHz
• 4GB RAM
• 64GB storage
• Dedicated microSD card slot

Smartphones exclusively for offline channels have till date been facing tough challenge to maintain costs and specifications of the Smartphones. We have seen phones even now offering 3GB / 32GB storage for around 15K in offline markets. Tecno pushes the offline game by offering 4GB RAM and 64GB storage, which is commendable.  The phone runs on Medaitek P23 chipset, which proves to be a decent processor for daily needs. It might not be the best out there for heavy gaming needs but for a normal user who looks for a decent processor for his day to day mobile uses, this would work. Call quality is good, the speaker quality is decent enough too.

• 16MP rear camera with quad flash
• 20MP selfie camera with quad flash
• AI powered front camera

There is too much of buzz about AI in Smartphones these days, Tecno also claims to bring AI capability to the front camera in iClick. The AI features include AI bokeh, auto scene detection for better software algorithm for pictures, AI beauty capabilities. The iClick stresses upon its selfie importance with a 20MP front camera with f/2.0 aperture and at the rear has a 16MP camera with f/1.8 aperture. [gallery link="file" columns="5" ids="13719,13720,13721,13722,13723"] Selfies come really good and the bokeh works decently well on selfies. Rear camera also can take decent pictures as evident by the sample. You can shoot videos up to 1080p. The iClick has a 3750mAh battery. With P23 processor that doesn’t strain the battery much and HD+ resolution, the iClick has a solid battery life and you can easily push through a day and a half.

Verdict:

Many reviewers and people who buy phones online fail to recognize and accept that offline retail format is a different ball game including the demands of the users in that segment. These particular set of consumers are not very keen on the specifications on the paper like processor but more on the storage, RAM and camera pixels. With 4GB RAM, 64GB storage, dedicated microSD card and good camera specs and AI to talk about, the Tecno ticks the requirement list of these segment and does a good job at it. With an increasing footprint in retail outlets , Tecno has a potential good performer for this segment. At Rs 13,999 it does looks promising for the segment and might have many takers.]]>