10.or D review: A worthy challenger to budget phones

Aparna Banerjea lists the reasons why it's highly recommended for those looking for an affordable phone with the latest features.

10.or (pronounced Tenor) the phone brand that's 'crafted for Amazon', has brought out a new handset, the 10.or D, which follows the 10.or G and 10.or E, both of which meet the company's budget-friendly price tag.

The 10.or D is priced at ₹4,999 for the 2 GB RAM and 16 GB internal memory variant and ₹5,999 for the 3 GB RAM and 32 GB internal memory variant.

Interestingly, the new kid on the block sports specifications similar to Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi's Redmi 5A priced at ₹5,999.

With a massive 3500mAh battery, fingerprint sensor and stock Android, among other things, 10.or D is fully prepared to create tension among OEMs in the affordable smartphone segment.

We reviewed the 10.or D to test its overall performance. Here are our observations:

Photograph: Courtesy 10or.com

Design

In terms of design, 10.or D has nothing attractive to offer to the users. It comes in a simple, basic design that may not catch your attention at all.

But this is not new. Companies are bound to make certain compromises in such low-priced entry-level phones that come with the latest features.

On the other hand, one of the biggest highlights of this smartphone is the fingerprint sensor at the back, which is quite rare to find on phones at this price tag. The Redmi 5A does not sport a fingerprint sensor, so extra points to 10.or D for this feature.

The 10.or D also sports a 5.2 inch HD display, and comes in a plastic unibody design with rounded corners for a better grip.

You can operate this phone with a single hand for casual usage.

Apart from the fingerprint scanner, the primary camera with LED flash and the speaker is placed on the rear bottom.

On the front, the 5.2 HD display is surrounded by thick bezels all around.

There are no capacitative navigation buttons at the bottom.

The ejectable dual-sim tray and dedicated memory card expansion slot are placed at the left side of the device, and both require a pin for ejection.

The volume keys and the power button are placed on the right side. The 3.5mm headphone jack, along with an infrared blaster and secondary microphone, is placed at the top.

The bottom is covered with a micro-USB port and the primary microphone.

Overall the device is light and easy to hold, but it is a bit thick owing to the 3500mAh battery inside.

Display

As mentioned earlier, 10.or D sports a 5-inch HD display (1280 x 720 pixels), which is bright enough for day-to-day use both indoors and outdoors.

The phone in maximum brightness provides a decent and sharp display outdoors and works just great in indoor lightings.

However, the device does not come with an ambient light sensor, which can be pretty disappointing for the users as they have to manually adjust the brightness of the screen according to the surroundings.

Photograph: Courtesy 10or.com

Software and performance

10.or D does not come with any customisable skin over its Android 7.1.2 Nougat OS -- a feature which may please some users and disappoint some.

Apart from that, the device is powered by a 1.4GHz quad-core processor Snapdragon 425 processor (Cortex A53) with Adreno 308 GPU.

We got the 3 GB variant with 32 GB internal memory, which gave a decent performance despite being high on energy efficiency.

The fingerprint scanner, which makes up for the lack in other smartphones at the same price point, works just fine. It may not be as fast the other flagship phones available at much higher prices, but it does its job pretty well. The scanner may lag sometimes and take up to a couple of seconds to operate but considering the price, the feature is more than satisfactory to use.

Furthermore, making it a stock Android smartphone, the company has been careful to exclude a bevy of bloatware as well.

In terms of apps, the device is pretty clean.

The Google Now launcher works really smooth and the phone's performance seemed satisfactory with almost no lags during casual usage.

However, certain heavy apps like Facebook and also camera-centric apps like Snapchat and Instagram significantly slowed down the phone, which is understandable considering the chipset.

Battery

Unlike many of its competitors, 10.or D comes with a slightly better battery backup.

The 3500mAh battery is highly appreciable at this price tag.

Another plus point is that despite the massive battery, the phone is comparatively light in weight.

The battery performance is certainly a boon for the 24X7 smartphone users as the power lasts at least one full day of heavy usage, such as playing games, streaming videos or even making video calls for hours.

The phone however, tends to heat up a little but that should is a normal tendency of any battery after such heavy usage.

With a light usage, such as making calls, browsing apps and using Whatsapp, the battery can last even up to 2 days, which is quite impressive.

Camera

The 10.or D houses a 13MP rear camera with LED flash that does a decent job at capturing images.

The photos lose out heavily on details, get overexposed in daylight and come almost with an artificial feel to it.

The 5MP selfie camera takes average selfies and comes with a set of almost outdated beauty modes.

There are no in latest selfie features such as in depth effect, blur effect or beautify modes.

Overall, the camera features are not built for the selfie lovers or photographers.

Photograph: Courtesy 10or.com

Verdict

The 10.or D is a promising smartphone in the market and highly recommended for those looking for an affordable device with latest specifications, fingerprint scanner, and stock Android.

Priced at ₹4,999 (base model), the 10.or D seems like a worthy challenger to take on the Redmi 5A and other entry-level phones.