Earlier this month 10.or (pronounced Tenor) made its debut in India with the 10.or E aiming at the budget segment. The 10.or E series comes in Aim Gold and Beyond Black colors, is priced at Rs. 7,999 for the 2GB RAM with 16GB storage version and the 3GB RAM with 32 GB storage variant costs Rs. 8,999. It goes on sale exclusively on Amazon.in. Let’s see how it fares among other budget segment smartphones.
Unboxing
We recently unboxed the phone, check out the video below.
Box contents
- 10.or E in Beyond Black color
- 2-pin charger (5V-2A)
- micro USB cable
- SIM ejector tool
- Quick start guide
Display, Design, and Hardware
The 10.or E sports a 5.5-inch (1920 x 1080 pixels) IPS 2.5D display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. The display surprisingly good and bright enough with good color reproduction, viewing angles. Due to its reflective display, the sunlight legibility is average.
The build quality of the smartphone is too good at this price range. It is solid, premium, compact and feels good when held in hand, even though the phone has a polycarbonate body. The control you get over this smartphone when using two hands is just too good. It comes in metal unibody design like other smartphones in the market.
The bottom bezel is too big and looks awkward without any physical or capacitive button on it. The company could have implemented fingerprint scanner at least on the bottom. The phone measures 154×78 x8.5mm and weighs 150 grams.
Talking about the placement, the front side we have LED flash, earpiece, 5MP camera, small notification LED and the usual set of proximity and ambient light sensors. It also has a magnetic sensor (magnetometer) and gyroscope so you can use the phone with VR headsets. This mobile comes with on-screen navigation avoiding physical button on the bottom bezel.
Moving right, we have the power button and volume rocker.
Unlike most of the phones with hybrid SIM slot, this has dedicated SIM tray with dual nano SIM slots and a separate microSD card slot on the left.
At the bottom, we have a primary microphone, MicroUSB port, and speaker grille each sitting right next to each other. Up top, we have just the 3.5mm audio jack.
Turning it back, we have a 13MP rear camera with LED flash and fingerprint scanner module just below it. Above the camera, we have a secondary microphone.
Software
The 10.or E is shipped with Android 7.1.2 Nougat out of the box, and as per the company, it is upgradable to Android 8.0 Oreo as well. The huge advantage of this device is that it runs on almost stock android except for some apps from Amazon such as Amazon Shopping, Prime Video and Amazon Kindle, Google utility apps and an app 10.or itself.
The 10.or Care app helps you to diagnose various parts of the device including a battery, RAM, Wi-fi and more. With this app, you can also book for mobile repair, get the service estimates and you can also get in touch customer care either through call or email.
From the lock screen, you can access Google assistant and camera app. The 10.Or E comes with stock dialer UI and Google keyboard. During calls, the earpiece volume is good and there is no call drop as well. Google Plus music is the default music player, but it doesn’t have FM radio. Loudspeaker output is decent enough for a silent room, otherwise it’s average. Audio through headset is good.
Talking about the storage, it comes in two variants — 2GB RAM with 16GB storage and 3GB RAM with 32GB storage. We got hold of the latter. Out of 3GB RAM, the user will get around 1.5GB of free space generally, and out of 32GB user will get around 22.73GB free space for data storage. If it’s not enough, you can also expand the storage slot up to 128GB with microSD.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
It has 4G connectivity with support for 4G VoLTE for Reliance Jio. Both the SIM slots have 4G support, but you can use 4G on only one SIM at a time. Other connectivity features include, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2 and GPS.
Performance
The 10.or E is powered by Octa-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 ( 4 x 1.2 GHz Cortex A53 + 4 x 1.5 GHz Cortex A53) 64-bit Mobile Platform with Adreno 505 as GPU. This chipset from Qualcomm is specifically made for casual usage ranging from browsing the internet, listening to songs, chatting and watching videos.
Having said that, it is not meant for intensive gaming or multi-tasking between heavy apps. During casual usage, the performance is smooth as butter and when tried to multi-task, it hangs and lags. If you are an intense gamer, then this device is not for you. It doesn’t get heated on 4G usage or when gaming. Check out some synthetic benchmark scores below.
Camera
The 10.or E sports a 13MP rear camera with LED flash, PDAF, f/2.0 aperture and 5MP front-facing camera with LED flash, f/2.0 aperture. To our surprise, the picture quality during daylight condition is good for a smartphone at this price range again. Images shot on the rear camera comes out naturally with right amount details and clarity. The processing capacity is right on point.
On the downside, the images under low light tend to be grainy. Also, the flashlight tends to complement the picture by not overpowering the subject. But we cannot expect a smartphone from this price segment to be exceptional. The selfie camera is just average and the flash helps to take decent selfies at night as well.
Check out some camera samples below (Click the image for full resolution sample)
Fingerprint scanner
This device has fingerprint scanner placed on the back side of the device just below the camera module. The process of adding fingerprint is too fast and accurate to a certain extent. In this device, you can add up to 5 fingerprints to unlock the device. As per the company claims, the fingerprint sensor on the back can unlock the phone in 0.2 seconds and the company kept its promise.
Battery
The 10.or E is powered by a 4000mAh battery without any fast charging technology so it takes over 2 and half hours to charge the phone. Talking about the usage, it comfortably take us through one day with both casual and intensive usage.
It achieved a One Charge Rating of 15 hours and 41 minutes, which is pretty good. We will bring you the complete set of battery life test results soon.
Conclusion
Among other smartphones including Xiaomi Redmi 4, Moto E4 and more in the range, the 10.or E with the blend of solid build quality, smooth performance and long-standing battery, is definitely here to stay. Unless you are a heavy user, the first smartphone from the debutant 10.or won’t disappoint you at all when it comes to day-to-day usage.
The 10.or E starts at Rs. 7999 and will go on sale exclusively on Amazon.in from tomorrow, September 29th, for which you can register now.
Pros
- Build quality
- Dedicated Dual SIM and microSD slots
- Battery life
- Stock Android 7.1.2 with promised Android 8.0 Oreo
Cons
- Front camera
- Lacks fast charging