The midrange smartphone market is currently a bloodbath, especially in the Philippines. To stand out in a sea of aggressively priced models, a phone needs more than just a decent screen and a capable processor — it needs a clear identity.
With the new CAMON 50 Ultra 5G, TECNO has decided its identity is defined first and foremost by its camera chops, paired with sheer, uncompromising endurance. But at a starting price of just ₱19,999 (around $335), the brand naturally had to make a few strategic cuts to keep the cost down. Does it actually deliver on its promises, or do its hardware and software quirks get in the way of daily use? We put it through the wringer to find out.
Sleek and surprisingly rugged
Visually, the TECNO CAMON 50 Ultra 5G fits comfortably into the aesthetic established by its siblings in the lineup, though with a few distinct physical tweaks. Compared to the previous generation, the rear cameras are now aligned vertically down the left-hand side. The pill-shaped module houses two of the three rear cameras, which brings us to a slightly awkward design choice: The ultra-wide lens is positioned completely outside of the main island. It looks a bit disjointed, especially since the bottom ring inside the module serves virtually no purpose. Awkward layout aside, we like the addition of a red indicator light just above the LED flash.
TECNO sent us the Moonshadow Black variant for review. It’s minimalist and unassuming, but if you want something that pops, the device also comes in Misty Purple, Cypress Green, Luminous Orange, and Nebula Titanium.
TECNO sent us the minimalist and understated Moonshadow Black version. For a bolder look, the phone is also available in Cypress Green, Luminous Orange, Nebula Titanium, and Misty Purple, the latter showcased by brand ambassador Sarah Geronimo in the video above
And despite looking like the rest of the CAMON family, the CAMON 50 Ultra 5G steps things up with two curved Corning Gorilla Glass panels, with Gorilla Glass 7i on the back. TECNO also claims the handset complies with MIL-STD-810 standards for transport, temperature, and humidity shock.
Plus, it boasts an alphabet soup of durability certifications — specifically IP66, IP68, IP69, and IP69K — meaning it is entirely dust-tight and can survive splashes, full submersion, and even pressurized water jets. The company is actually leaning hard into this, promoting the phone’s ruggedness by showing off its underwater photography chops, which makes perfect sense given those robust IP ratings and the inclusion of a dedicated underwater camera mode. Beyond the pool, this is fantastic news for local road warriors and commuters navigating the unpredictable Philippine weather. You won’t have to panic if you get caught in a sudden downpour.
Unfortunately, the frame connecting those durable glass panels is made of plastic. Sure, it’s thin and feels solid enough, but for what is supposed to be the most expensive offering in the CAMON 50 Series, a metal frame feels like a missed opportunity. Both the back panel and frame share a matching matte finish that’s smooth and capably resists fingerprints. The trade-off is that the unit offers minimal grip. That said, you should do yourself a favor and use the bundled faux-leather case; it looks incredibly sleek with its stylized CAMON branding and saves you from accidental drops.
Hardware buttons include the traditional power and volume keys on the right, plus a textured One-Tap Button on the left. By default, a single press activates FlashMemo, an AI-driven tool that takes a quick screenshot and summarizes its contents. It’s not annoying if you accidentally trigger it, but the images automatically save to TECNO’s MindHub, which leads to additional clutter. A long press, meanwhile, summons the Ella AI assistant. Thankfully, if you aren’t fully on board the AI hype train, you can remap the button in the settings or disable it entirely.
Rounding out the hardware, you get two Dolby Atmos-enhanced speakers positioned at the top and bottom, each paired with a microphone. The earpiece works with the top speaker to deliver a richer stereo soundstage.
Bold and beautifully curved
Up front, the TECNO CAMON 50 Ultra 5G sports a 6.78-inch curved AMOLED display with a 1.5K resolution and a buttery 144Hz refresh rate. It’s a gorgeous panel that supports 2,160Hz PWM dimming to reduce eye strain, alongside HDR support for YouTube streaming.
With a peak brightness of 3,200 nits, outdoor visibility is excellent in this price range. We had absolutely no issues scrolling through emails or catching up on social media feeds under the sun. The picture quality is exactly what you’d expect from a midrange AMOLED, featuring vibrant colors, strong contrast, and deep blacks.
More impressively, the display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2, which until recently was strictly reserved for flagship smartphones. Lab tests claim Victus 2 can survive drops of up to two meters onto asphalt-like surfaces, while delivering up to four times the scratch resistance of competitive aluminosilicate glass.
Those steep edges are a bit of a double-edged sword, though. They definitely make the bulky smartphone easier to grip, but they turn edge-swiping into a bit of a chore as well, making your finger trek uphill instead of sliding naturally across the glass.
A 50-megapixel triple threat
Predictably, the TECNO has equipped the CAMON 50 Ultra 5G with a capable optical setup. The rear system features two 50-megapixel sensors — one for the primary camera and another for the telephoto. The main shooter uses a Sony LYT-700C sensor paired with a wide f/1.8 aperture and optical image stabilization, making it the only stabilized lens on the device. An 8-megapixel ultra-wide completes the rear trio, while a 50-megapixel selfie camera sits up front.
In practice, the camera performance is largely impressive. The main sensor captures excellent detail and dynamic range, the telephoto delivers sharp optical zoom, and the selfie camera performs exceptionally well for crisp portraits. The 8-megapixel ultra-wide is serviceable, though understandably softer than the primary lens. Video recording maxes out at a respectable 4K at 60 FPS on both the front and rear cameras.
Sample shots
However, we did encounter one frustrating quirk regarding macro photography. Typically, on models with telephoto lenses, you can shoot macro photos by simply pushing the zoom and moving the phone closer to the subject. On the TECNO CAMON 50 Ultra 5G, the native camera app flat-out struggles to focus on close objects in standard Photo mode.
To get a sharp macro shot, you have to manually dig into the camera options and switch to the dedicated Macro mode. It’s a cumbersome, unnecessary extra step. This isn’t how a device with a high-end zoom lens should behave, and we’re hoping the Transsion sub-brand rolls out a software update to address the autofocus logic sooner rather than later.
While the shooting experience has a few of those software hiccups, the post-processing suite makes up for it in fun ways. A notable inclusion here is TECNO’s AI Art Gallery. Accessed directly through the native gallery app, this tool reimagines your everyday portraits and landscapes into highly stylized digital artwork. Frankly, the results are much better than we initially expected, producing sharp, highly shareable images.
The slight caveat here is that TECNO imposes a strict daily limit on these AI generations. Because of this, you’ll want to be selective and save your attempts for your very best shots. And a quick piece of reviewer advice: Make sure you disable the camera’s default watermark before taking photos you plan to run through the generator. If you leave it on, the AI will try to redraw the text, usually resulting in a distracting, garbled blob in the corner of the frame.
Apart from artistic filters, TECNO is also highlighting a feature called AI Auto Zoom. Also located in the gallery app, this tool uses AI to pinpoint the primary subject and automatically crops your images into three preselected aspect ratios, specifically a tighter center crop, a vertical cut, and a landscape framing. It’s a useful set of training wheels for beginners who are still figuring out image composition. However, seasoned photographers will likely prefer cropping manually. In our testing, the AI tends to just aggressively center the subject rather than making nuanced compositional choices.
Remember this?
We’d like to point out AI HD Enhancement, too. It’s a post-processing tool designed to digitally sharpen your photos. This should come in handy if you decide to push the telephoto lens to its absolute limit, which reaches 100x via software zoom. Since the CAMON 50 Ultra 5G lacks a periscope unit, extreme zoom shots naturally lose a lot of detail. But while the AI does a respectable job of clawing back some of that lost sharpness, you are still bound by the laws of physics. If you really want a nice, social-media-ready shot, your best bet is to keep the zoom capped at around 10x or less.
Midrange muscle plus a marathon battery
The TECNO CAMON 50 Ultra 5G is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 7400 Ultimate 5G chipset. It’s a highly efficient, 4nm midrange SoC featuring four Cortex-A78 performance cores clocked up to 2.6GHz and four Cortex-A55 efficiency cores at 2.0GHz. Graphics are handled by a Mali-G615 MC2 GPU.
Gaming performance is decidedly midrange, but still capable. You can confidently run graphically intensive Android titles without major hiccups. In Wuthering Waves, we maintained around 40 FPS on Medium graphics, while the Netflix version of Red Dead Redemption consistently hovered at its 30 FPS cap on the default preset. Emulation is also solid; we hit 30 FPS running WWE 2K13 via a Wii emulator, even with six wrestlers on screen. Standard synthetic benchmarks reflect this capability, with our unit nearly breaching the 1-million mark in the latest version of Antutu.
When it comes to thermal management and sustained performance, the smartphone holds up nicely. During a grueling 20-minute CPU Throttling Test, the processor maintained 83% of its maximum performance, while our 3DMark tests showed no signs of GPU throttling. The CAMON 50 Ultra 5G might not benchmark quite as high as some competing midrangers heavily focused on processing power, but that’s perfectly fine. This unit’s identity is tied to its camera and endurance, not mobile gaming.
On the software side, the handset boots Android 16 with TECNO’s custom HiOS 16 skin. The company promises three generational OS upgrades and five years of security patches. In daily use, the interface is snappy, and multitasking tools like split-screen and pop-up windows work flawlessly. While there are a few preinstalled apps, the software remains relatively clean, and thankfully, devoid of annoying proprietary app stores.
The company’s Ella AI assistant is deeply baked into the OS, offering voice wake-up, real-time translations, document assistance, sketch-to-image conversion, AI wallpaper generation, and generative photo editing (like object removal). Diving into the Wallpapers & Customisation tab in the Settings app, for example, allows you to tweak a wide variety of preloaded backgrounds or craft something entirely unique using your own gallery.
To tie this CAMON’s features together, we grabbed one of the stylized portraits we generated in the AI Art Gallery and quickly transformed it into a dynamic 3D lock screen. It creates a spatial effect similar to what you’d find on recent iPhones, subtly shifting perspective as you tilt the device. For the home screen, we applied that same image as a static background but layered on a slick depth effect to make the subject pop. It’s small touches like this that make the software feel highly polished and uniquely yours. Most complex AI tasks like the we just mentioned require an internet connection, though basic commands work offline.
Battery life is where this phone truly shines. While 6,000mAh batteries are becoming the new standard for everyone outside of Apple and Samsung, TECNO pushes it further with a massive 6,500mAh capacity. As our daily driver, the CAMON 50 Ultra 5G easily lasted a full two days of moderate use, comprising photography, gaming, social media, and video streaming.
Interestingly, our PCMark battery-rundown test only clocked the mileage at 14 hours and 36 minutes — a stark discrepancy from our real-world experience, which highlights exactly why manual testing is so crucial for our reviews.
When we broke down the battery drain by specific tasks — all conducted over a stable Wi-Fi connection with the display locked at 50% brightness — the sheer endurance of that 6,500mAh cell became obvious. Basic media consumption barely makes a dent. An hour of 1080p YouTube playback sipped a mere 5%. Gaming is remarkably efficient as well. An hour of Wii emulation at 1x resolution drained just 9%, while running the Netflix port of Red Dead Redemption took 12%.
Even pushing the hardware with Wuthering Waves resulted in a manageable 16% drop over an hour. But the real flex? We streamed an HD Netflix marathon of WrestleMania 30 for three hours and 41 minutes, and it consumed only 16% of the battery. Numbers like that validate our two-day endurance claim.
And when it’s finally time to plug in, the TECNO CAMON 50 Ultra 5G supports 45-watt fast charging via the included power brick, taking us just about 90 minutes to juice up from empty to a full charge. Mobile gamers will also appreciate the addition of bypass charging. When toggled, this clever feature routes power directly to the motherboard instead of continuously topping up the cell. This keeps the handset cool during heavy play sessions while simultaneously preserving the battery’s long-term health.
Final thoughts
The TECNO CAMON 50 Ultra 5G is a fascinating package, especially when you factor in the cost. Starting at just ₱19,999 ($335) for the 8GB RAM and 256GB storage base model, it delivers a gorgeous AMOLED display, exceptional durability for its tier, a monstrous two-day battery life, and a versatile, Ai-driven camera system that generally takes fantastic photos. While the plastic frame, slightly cumbersome macro photography, and a couple of awkward design choices keep it from being flawless, it easily holds its own in the fiercely competitive midrange market.
Even if you opt to step up to the 12GB/256GB kit for ₱21,999 ($368), or max out the memory with the 12GB/512GB configuration for ₱25,999 ($435), the value proposition here remains strong. If your priority is finding a reliable, long-lasting daily driver that can survive a harsh commute while capturing great moments, the TECNO CAMON 50 Ultra 5G should be on your shortlist.
TECNO CAMON 50 Ultra 5G specs
- 6.78-inch AMOLED curved display, 1.5K resolution, 144Hz refresh rate
- 4nm MediaTek Dimensity 7400 Ultimate processor
- 8GB/12GB RAM
- 256GB/512GB storage
- Triple rear cameras: 50-megapixel main with OIS, 50-megapixel telephoto, 8-megapixel ultrawide
- 50-megapixel front camera
- HiOS 16
- 6,500mAh battery with 45-watt fast charging
- Color options: Moonshadow Black, Cypress Green, Nebula Titanium, Luminous Orange, Misty Purple
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