Tecno Camon 50 Ultra review

HiOS 16 on top of Android 16

The Camon 50 Ultra boots Android 16 OS with a custom Hi OS 16 skin on top. Tecno promised 3 generational OS upgrades and 5 years of security patches.

The customization options of HiOS 16 have been greatly improved, starting with the new Always-on Display options (AOD is everything but always-on as it lights up for 15s) and going through the depth-effect-enhanced lock and home screens.

There is also AI Theme Generator and 3D Wallpaper generator.

Customization options

The Android OS, even with Tecno's HiOS skin, is pretty straightforward.

HiOS 16

The lockscreen has a couple of shortcuts on the bottom - one for the camera, and the other for the flashlight.

Multitasking features include split-screen and pop-up window modes for supported apps - nothing out of the ordinary.

Multi-tasking

There are some pre-installed apps and utilities, but overall, it's a clean enough package. You get an in-house gallery, video player, and browser, but no proprietary app stores.

Tecno has its own AI assistant called Ella. It is chock-full of useful features and offers voice wake-up and voice responses. Most of the data for the AI model requires an internet connection to fetch; however, commands for phone settings and tasks can also work offline.

Ella

Holding the One Tap button summons Tecno's FlashMemo feature, which recognizes the content on your screen and records it, then sends it to your Mind Hub.

The Long Press can be customized - open Ella, Silent mode, Do Not Disturb mode, Flashlight, Screen Recording, Sound Recording, Quick Note, Translate, Custom app shortcut, or None.

One tap button

The Tecno Camon 50 Ultra has a rather large notification light on the back and there are plenty of customization options for it as part of the Settings menu.

Notification light

Tecno's AI functions include real-time translations, document and writing assistance, sketch conversion to pictures in notes, wallpaper generation, picture editing (expand, remove objects), and more.

AI edits

Performance and benchmarks

Tecno Camon 50 Ultra 5G runs on the 4nm Dimensity 7400 chip by MediaTek. It packs an octa-core processor with 4x 2.6GHz Cortex-A78 and 4x 2.0GHz Cortex-A55 cores.

The SoC incorporates ARM Mali-G615 MC2 GPU. There is 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB of UFS storage.

Let's see some benchmarks now.

The Camon 50 Ultra 5G puts up a good fight next to other competing midrangers. As we said before, the Camon series have never been about maximum performance, but about best camera experience. Still, the Camon 50 Ultra seems to be doing quite alright within its price bracket.

The sustained performance turned our excellent on the Camon 50 Ultra - the CPU kept 80% of its maximum performance during our stress test, while the GPU did not throttle at all.

CPU test • GPU test

Overall, the Camon 50 Ultra is an adequately equipped smartphone for the mid-range class. It's far from the fastest, but it's no slouch either.