Tecno Camon i Sky First Impressions: Android Oreo and Face unlock in budget price-point

Design

Tecno Camon i Sky follows the same design platform as its previous Camon series siblings. The budget smartphone feels extremely light in hands and is compact enough to be used comfortably with one hand. Camon i Sky boasts of a thickness of 8.3mm and weighs just 137gms. The front of the handset sports a 2.5D Curve Glass with smoothened edges.

Camon i Sky is crafted out of polycarbonate and has been given a metal finish. The fingerprint scanner and buttons are placed ergonomically and the rear panel has been given a matte finish. The hybrid SIM card tray is placed on the left side that can be used to accommodate two SIM cards and one microSD card at the same time.

Display

Camon i Sky follows the latest trend and sports a full view display that makes for a good screen-to-body percentage of 81.3%. The handset features a 5.45-inch screen that offers a resolution of 960 x 480 pixels, which is not par with market standards and can be a deal breaker for consumers. In real-life, the 480p screen does not look very sharp but colors look vibrant while playing videos. Besides, just like the first Camon i handset, the brightness level of the IPS LCD display also seems to be on a lower side. The large screen, however, enables the better split-screen experience, making Camon i Sky suitable for multi-tasking.

Camera

Tecno Camon i Sky features a 13MP primary camera that also supports PDAF. The camera works on F/2.0 aperture and has a 5P lens. The smartphone boasts an 8 MP front camera, which is endowed with a dual selfie flash to brighten up the images. Besides, the handset also has screen flash feature. Camon i Sky can also create software driven Portrait effect and also comes equipped with Self-Beauty 4.0 mode, which is designed to optimise and make adjustments to India skin tone. Another interesting camera feature is video chat flash support for video calls and adjustable flash.

The cameras on Camon i Sky are mostly good for clicking pictures in daylight. The auto-focus is not very consistent thought. The low-light images show considerable noise, but thanks to dedicated flash and screen flash, the selfies look bright. We will test the Camon i Sky camera in detail in the comprehensive review in the coming days.

Hardware and Software

The smartphone runs on Android 8.1 Oreo with company's in-house custom skin- HiOS. The custom skin deployed on the latest Android flavor is clean and easy to use. The smartphone supports gesture controls such as flip to mute, cover screen to silence incoming calls, etc. and do not come with any unwanted bloatwares. Camon i Sky is also the first handset in the series to feature Face unlock.

The computing and multitasking is handled by MediaTek MTK6739 processor paired with 2GB RAM respectively. We did not come across any lags in our testing period and the handset can easily take care of everyday tasks like Facebook, Instagram, web-browsing, etc.

Battery and Connectivity

There's no change in battery power and the new handset is also backed by a 3,050mAh unit. The battery can last a day with light to moderate usage. As far as connectivity is concerned, Camon i supports GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and USB OTG. One feature that you will find across the company's product lineup is Hybrid SIM card slot with a dedicated space for microSD card. In short, you don't have to compromise on storage and Connectivity with Tecno Camon i Sky.

Verdict

Camon i Sky offers a lot of goodies at a budget price-point. However, the display resolution has left us disappointed. The handset has to face a tough competition from Xiaomi Redmi 5, which is also available in the Indian market in the same price-segment. Camon i Sky can bank upon the latest Android flavor, dedicated microSD card, and easy offline availability. Stay tuned on Gizbot for the comprehensive review of Teno Camon i Sky.