TECNO Camon Slim 5G Review: The Best-Looking CAMON Yet

Introduction

The TECNO Camon Slim 5G arrives with a narrow brief: be the lightest thing in your bag. At 6.39mm and 190 grams it is the slimmest phone in a CAMON line that has spent years building its name on photography, and it still holds a 6,000mAh battery, a 50MP Sony LYTIA 700C sensor, and a triple IP rating. The design case held up immediately in our testing, and so did a clear ceiling on performance.

At a glance

• Variant tested: CAMON Slim 5G (CN6), 256GB + 8GB RAM with 16GB extended RAM
• Philippine price: PhP29,999
• Best for: buyers who rank design, weight, portrait photography, and durability above raw speed
• Skip if: you play graphics-heavy games or want a real telephoto zoom

Price and positioning

At PhP29,999, the CAMON Slim 5G sits above TECNO’s own CAMON 50 Ultra 5G, which launched at PhP19,999 for 8GB + 256GB and PhP21,999 for 12GB + 256GB, and in a bracket where several phones post two to three times its graphics scores. TECNO is not selling speed here but a thin, light, water-resistant body, a Sony-based camera, and a battery that does not shrink with the chassis.

Design and display

This is the best-looking phone TECNO has shipped. Burgundy Red is the colorway TECNO is pushing, and burgundy is close to unavoidable in phones and accessories right now. On this body it does not read as a trend: the color suits the frame, the finish sits flat against the rails, and the phone looks deliberate rather than decorated. Gossamer White, Matisse Black, and Rebel Pink round out the options.

The 6.39mm profile and 190 grams are what you notice daily. The phone disappears into a pocket, and the flat 6.78-inch 1.5K AMOLED panel makes one-handed typing easier than a curved screen would. It runs at 144Hz with 2160Hz PWM dimming and a TUV-certified blue light filter, and it stays bright outdoors. Audio is better than expected too.

Durability is unusual at any price. IP69K, IP69, and IP68 all apply, covering 2-meter submersion for 30 minutes, 100-bar water jets, and water up to 80 degrees Celsius, plus MIL-STD 810H shock certification. Rain Touch stops ghost taps on a wet screen, and the phone offers underwater photography mode once it senses submersion.

Performance and gaming

Under the hood is the MediaTek Dimensity 7300e, a 4nm chip paired with LPDDR5X memory and UFS storage. In our suite, the phone posted 905,634 on AnTuTu 10, 1,024 single-core and 2,893 multi-core on Geekbench 6, 694 on 3DMark Wild Life Extreme, and 10,919 on PCMark 3.0.

Geekbench lands close to the CAMON 50 Ultra 5G, which scored 910 and 2,839. Every other result goes the other way: that phone posted 972,694 on AnTuTu, 1,054 on Wild Life Extreme, and 14,365 on PCMark 3.0, and it costs less.

The gap shows up in sustained work. Messaging, camera work, editing, and social apps run without complaint, and 5G, NFC, eSIM, and Wi-Fi 6 are on board. The GPU gives up the most for the thin chassis.

Gaming follows from the numbers. Popular titles run well enough at lower graphics settings. Demanding titles will ask you to drop settings to hold a usable frame rate, and long sessions will warm the frame, since a 6.39mm body has little room to spread heat. TECNO’s reviewer guide claims 90FPS in high-graphics gaming, and our Wild Life Extreme result says that is not realistic for the heaviest titles.

Cameras

The main camera is a 50MP Sony LYTIA 700C with a 1/1.56-inch sensor and an f/1.8 lens, joined by an 8MP 112-degree ultra-wide with autofocus and a 32MP front camera. Stabilization covers OIS for stills, AI EIS for video, and an AI Shutter that times the capture.

Photos are a clear strength. Daylight shots hold detail, color stays natural, and the camera is quick enough to catch moments that do not wait, which is what Super-Zoom FlashSnap is for. Portraits are the best part: with 24mm, 35mm, and 50mm focal lengths, the separation between subject and background holds up even against a busy scene, which is where most mid-range portrait modes fall apart.

Zoom is where the system runs out of room. There is no telephoto lens here and FlashSnap tops out at 2x. For portraits and group shots that does not matter. Across a street, it does.

Camera samples

Battery and charging

A 6,000mAh battery inside a 6.39mm frame is the number TECNO built the phone around, and it is the reason the thin chassis is worth discussing at all. Charging runs at 45W Super Charge, which is modest next to faster systems selling below this price, and a thin body has less thermal mass to absorb heat while charging.

In my experience, at normal usage, the Camon Slim 5G managed to stay up for 13 hours and 2 minutes with 20% battery remaining. That’s more than enough to keep it running throughout the day.

Software, AI, and the extra key

The phone ships with Android 16 and HiOS 16, and TECNO promises three years of major Android updates and five years of security patches. The AI features include AI Snap Poster, AI LightMaster 2.0, AI Recording Notes, and AI Healthy Eating.

The extra key on the frame is the addition that earns its place. It launches TECNO’s AI features and doubles as a camera shutter, which turns a hardware button into something you use while shooting.

The CAMON Slim 5G also pairs with the TECNO MagBadge, a 29-gram wearable display with a 1.73-inch OLED panel that clips on like an accessory. It shows a live preview from the rear camera, so the better camera on the back can handle group selfies and vlog framing, and it works as a remote shutter from up to 10 meters.

Verdict

The TECNO Camon Slim 5G is the best-designed phone TECNO has put out, and it makes the slim-and-light pitch without giving up battery capacity or water resistance. Photos, especially portraits, are a strength, and the IP69K rating is rare at any price.

The price is the sticking point: at PhP29,999 you pay more than the CAMON 50 Ultra 5G costs, and that phone is faster in gaming and sustained work and carries a telephoto lens.

If you want a light phone that looks and shoots better than its spec sheet suggests, the CAMON Slim 5G delivers. If you want the most speed for every peso, it is not the one.