10.or (pronounced Tenor) made its debut in India with the 10.or E smartphone in September, later in the month it launched the 10.or G with impressive on-paper specs – 5.5-inch 1080p screen, Snapdragon 626 and dual 13-megapixel rear cameras at a competitive price tag of Rs. 10,999. Did it live up to our expectations? Let us dive into the review to find out.
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, Hardware and Design
It has a 5.5-inch screen with a resolution of 1080 by 1920 and a pixel density of about 401 ppi (pixels per inch), same as the 10.or E. It also has a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. The display is bright, colors are vibrant, viewing angles and the sunlight legibility are good as well. It has bezels, above and below the screen so the screen-to-body ratio of the phone is around 70%.
There is an earpiece above the display. It has a 16-megapixel front-facing camera with f/2.0 aperture, accompanied by flash. There is also a tiny notification LED next to the camera that glows in white color. In addition to the usual set of proximity and ambient light sensors, the phone also has gyroscope and magnetic sensor otherwise known as magnetometer for VR headsets.
The volume rockers and the power button are present on the right side, SIM and microSD slot is present on the left, 3.5mm audio jack is present on the top and the primary microphone, micro USB port and the loudspeaker grill are on the bottom. Even though there are two grills, only the right side houses a loudspeaker and the other grill is just a microphone.
Unlike the 10.or E that came with dedicated slots, this has a hybrid dual SIM slot that can accept two nano SIMs or a nano SIM and microSD. Even though the phone has up to 64GB storage, some people would still want to use more storage while using dual SIMs.
On the back there are dual 13-megapixel rear (RGB + Monochrome) cameras with dual-tone LED flash. There is a secondary microphone above the camera and the fingerprint sensor is present below the camera module.
Even though most of the back is metal, the top and bottom parts of the back have plastic finish, where the important antennas are present. Still the build quality is good. The metal back is slippery to hold. Wish the company had provided a clear case with the phone. It measures 155x76x8.5mm, but it weighs 170 grams since it has a huge 4000mAh (typical) / 3910mAh (minimum) battery.
Camera
The phone has dual 13-megapixel rear (RGB + Monochrome) cameras with f/2.0 aperture, 1.12μm pixel size, phase detection auto focus (PDAF) and dual-tone LED flash. The camera UI is simple with menu to choose different modes (Auto, HDR, Night, Portrait, Landscape, Sports, Flowers, Backlight, Candlelight, Sunset, Beach and Snow), flash toggle, color effects (Mono, Sepia, Aqua and Sketch), front camera toggle and Beautify (Low, Mid and High)) options on the top and the camera shutter button is on the bottom along with the image preview and option to switch to video and panorama. There is a separate dual camera button to switch to dual cameras.
Coming to the image quality the daylight shots were fine and macro shots were good as well and it focuses quickly. Depth-enabled shots were good with people compared to objects. It perfectly blurs out the part you need, but increasing the intensity of blur makes the image look artificial making some parts in the background bright. The depth mode also takes a few seconds to save the image since it captures two shots for each cameras and combines them to create the depth effect. Even though the phone has a monochrome sensor, you can’t capture monochrome shots.
HDR shots were good with improved contrast and saturation. Low-light shots had a noise, but the low-light mode is useful that requires you to keep the phone steady. Images with flash were good and the flash is not overpowering even in closeup shots. Thanks to dual-tone LED flash, skin tone is maintained in shots. The front-facing camera is pretty good for selfies and video chats, but the flash sometimes gives a blue tint. It can record videos at maximum 1080 resolution at 30fps. Thanks to the secondary microphone on the back, audio is crisp.
Check out some camera samples (Click the image to view the full resolution sample.)
Software, UI and Apps
The phone runs on Android 7.1.2 (Nougat) which is stock with some additional apps. The company has promised Android Oreo update. It was released with Android Security patch for August 1, 2017, and it recently got October Security patch. There is nothing to mention about the software in specific since it offers stock Android experience.
We have the 4GB RAM with 64GB storage variant. Out of 4GB of RAM you get about 3.7GB of usable RAM, out of which 2.3GB of RAM is free on boot with just the default apps running in the background. Out of 64GB of internal storage you get about 51.5GB of usable storage since OS and Apps take up about 6.7GB of storage. Since this runs on Nougat, you can use the microSD as the internal storage.
Apart from the usual set of utility apps and Google apps, the phone comes with 10.or Care, Amazon Kindle, Amazon Shopping and Amazon Prime Video apps. It doesn’t have any other bloatware.
Fingerprint Sensor
The fingerprint sensor is present on the back that is easy to access. It unlocks the phone even when the screen is off, so you don’t need to unlock the phone for the fingerprint recognition to work. It is quick most of the times, but sometimes misses to recognize the fingerprint. You can add up to 5 fingerprints and you can also use your fingerprint to authorize Google Play purchases.
Music Player
Google Play Music is the default music player for playback. The speaker is present on the bottom part of the phone so audio doesn’t get muffled when the phone is placed on a flat surface. Speaker output is quite loud. and the audio quality is good through third-party headset. Sadly the phone doesn’t come with FM Radio that is present in most smartphones phones in the range.
Connectivity, Calling and Messaging
It has Dual SIM option in the settings that lets you customize each SIM cards. 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, while the other goes to 3G. Other connectivity features include, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2 and GPS. . It got USB OTG (on-the-go) support after the latest update .
Since this is a dual SIM phone you get option to call or send SMS from either SIMs. It comes with Gboard as the default keyboard. We did not face any call drops or any other issues.
Performance and Benchmarks
Even though CPU-Z shows the SoC as Snapdragon 625, it is powered by an Octa-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 626 64-bit Mobile Platform that has eight ARM Cortex A53 cores clocked at 2.2GHz per core. The performance is good. We tested several games, which were smooth and graphics is also good, thanks to the Adreno 506 GPU. 4GB of RAM is more than enough for multitasking by running several apps in the background. The phone gets a bit hot when using 4G or playing games for long, but it doesn’t get too hot. Check out some synthetic benchmark scores below, in which it tops all the benchmarks.
Battery life
The phone packs a 4000mAh (typical) / 3910mAh (minimum) battery. It lasted for more than a day on a single charge with average use and should last the whole day even with heavy use. You can enable battery saver to extend the battery life when the battery is low.
It achieved a One Charge Rating of 17 hours and 44 minutes mainly due to brilliant talk time, but this is the best compared to other smartphones with a 4000mAh battery. Since the phone doesn’t have support for fast charging it took about 2 and half hours to charge the phone fully, but it took about 40 minutes to charge it from 0 to 50%. We will bring you the complete set of battery life test results soon.
Conclusion
At a starting price of Rs. 10,999, the 10.or G smartphone doesn’t disappoint when it comes to performance and battery life. Even though the dual cameras do a good job in capturing images with bokeh effect, low-light performance is just average. It lacks FM Radio that is present in most of the phones in the price range.
Those things aside, the phone packs a lot at the price tag to compete with Xiaomi, Motorola and others. Since this is a new online-only brand, the company is slowing building its service centres across India and the built-in 10.or Care app is useful to find such details. Hope the company will launch more service centres in major cities across the country in the coming months.
The 10.or G is available exclusively on Amazon.in. To summarize, here are the pros and cons of the smartphone.
Pros
- Good performance
- Brilliant battery life
- Good build quality
Cons
- Low-light camera performance is average
- No FM Radio
- Hybrid dual SIM might not be preferred by everyone