Tecno unveiled a new mid-ranger in India last week, dubbed the Camon 30 Premier 5G in a price segment that’s being dominated by another flagship killer, the iQOO Neo 9 Pro. Both the smartphones excel in certain areas but which one’s better worth your money? Find out by the end of this comparison of the Tecno Camon 30 Premier 5G and the iQOO Neo 9 Pro, purely on the basis on-paper specifications.
Display
The iQOO Neo 9 Pro gets a 6.78-inch LTPO AMOLED Display with a 1.5K (1260 x 2800 pixels) resolution, HDR10 support, 2160Hz PWM dimming and up to 1400 nits brightness and up to a 144Hz refresh rate.
The Tecno Camon 30 Premier 5G carries 6.67-inch AMOLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, 1400 nits peak brightness and 1080×2400 pixels resolution. It gets an in-screen optical fingerprint scanner for biometrics. As it is an LTPO panel, it sports a dynamic Refresh Rate up to 120Hz.
Both of them have impressive panels but we have to give it to iQOO because its display supports higher refresh rate than Tecno’s. We also noticed how vibrant and bright the display on the iQOO Neo 9 Pro was in our detailed review of the smartphone.
Software & Performance
The iQOO Neo 9 Pro is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, paired with up to 12GB LPDDR5x RAM and up to 256GB of UFS 4.0 inbuilt storage. It runs on FunTouch OS 14 based on Android 14. It will get 3 years of major OS upgrades till Android 17.
The Camon 30 Premier 5G is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 8200 Ultra Chipset paired with 12GB LPDDR5x RAM and 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage. The device comes preloaded with HiOS 14 based on Android 14 and will receive 2 years of OS upgrades until Android 16.
Once again, the iQOO Neo 9 Pro wins in this segment, thanks to a more powerful chipset, longer software support along with faster storage as well. This doesn’t mean the Camon 30 Premier 5G won’t be able to provide you with ideal expressions. However, the Neo 9 Pro guarantees you longevity and more power due to which it turns out to be a better pick, despite lacking a 512GB model in comparison to Tecno’s handset.
Battery & Cameras
The iQOO Neo 9 Pro is backed by a 5160mAh battery with 120W Fast charging support. The Tecno handset has a slightly smaller 5000mAh cell with 70W fast charging. While the larger battery capacity would result in marginally better results (considering both of them have decent software optimisation), its the charging speed that gets the iQOO a win once again.
As for optics, the iQOO device packs a dual rear camera setup including a 50MP main IMX920 camera with 1/ 1.49″ VCS bionic, f/1.88 aperture, OIS, LED flash, paired with an 8MP ultra-wide-angle camera with f/2.2 aperture. For selfies and video calls, the handset features a 16-megapixel f/2.45 camera on the front.
Tecno Camon 30 Premier 5G focuses on the optics with the new PolarAce Imaging System that utilises a CXD5622GG Sony Imaging chip. The company then further integrates its Universal Tone technology, which uses AI to render accurate skin tones. Then, it uses Sony’s Lytia components as well. The imaging system supports end-side FP16 floating computing and can achieve 4.6 TFLOPS at FP16 (16-bit floating point).
Camon 30 Premier has a triple rear camera system including a 50MP Sony IMX 890 sensor with OIS, a 50MP periscope telephoto sensor with support for 3x optical zoom, 60x hybrid zoom, and a 50MP ultrawide sensor. Additionally, there’s a 50MP shooter with Autofocus on the front.
While we were highly impressed with the camera performance of the iQOO Neo 9 Pro, we cannot say the same for Tecno as we haven’t tested the device for ourselves. However, considering we are comparing the two on the basis of on-paper specs, the Tecno handset finally wins in the camera segment because of the additional telephoto sensor and an imaging system that looks better than iQOO’s.
Verdict
The iQOO Neo 9 Pro is currently priced at Rs 34,999 for the 8GB + 128GB model, Rs 36,999 for the 8GB + 256GB model and Rs 38,999 for the top-end 12GB + 256GB trim. The Tecno Camon 30 Premier 5G is priced at Rs 39,999 for the sole 12GB + 512GB variant.
Price-wise and value-wise, the iQOO Neo 9 Pro is a clear pick over Tecno’s phone. However, if you want more storage and a superior camera experience is also on your list of priorities, Camon 30 Premier 5G can also be considered, but with a lot of other tradeoffs which in our opinion aren’t exactly worth it.
