10.or D first impressions: The budget-smartphone competition just got tougher

10.or D has been launched as an Amazon exclusive and is a part of Crafted for Amazon programme.

By Samden Sherpa

| Updated: Friday, December 22, 2017, 17:55 [IST]

10.or D unboxing and first impressions

After witnessing some fair share of popularity with its earlier smartphones, Huaqin Technology owned mobile brand 10.or (Tenor) has yet again launched a new budget smartphone 10.or D in India. While the company is expanding its portfolio, it looks like 10.or with this new product is set to take on its counterpart Xiaomi.

Having said that, this smartphone has been launched as an Amazon exclusive and is a part of Crafted for Amazon programme, which features products that have been made in India, and designed for India. Besides, Amazon and the 10.or have stated that the device has been built keeping users' reviews in mind.

The e-commerce platform has already listed the device on its website, for which the registrations are open but the sale will only begin on January 5 at 12 PM. As for the pricing, there are two variants of the device wherein the 2GB RAM+16GB storage variant is priced at Rs. 4,999 while the 3GB and 32GB storage model is priced at Rs. 5,999.

With such pricing Amazon's 10.or D promises good features for a better user experience. At the same time the latest entrant from 10.or will be taking on the newly launched Redmi 5A in the entry-level segment.
In any case, we were able to get our hands on this device and here is what we think about it so far.

Design

To begin with, the design. Well, the smartphone holds on to the previous design element that we have seen on 10.or G and 10.or E. There is a little change on the aesthetics side. The 10.or D comes with a plastic shell, which covers the back and the sides. It has a sort-of a matte finish which gives it a slightly premium feel. Meanwhile, the device feels a bit heavy to hold and it sports big bezels both at the top and bottom of the display.

The good thing that the company has done with this smartphone is the addition of a fingerprint sensor on the back. It is good to see companies incorporating such feature at this price point. However, setting up the fingerprint sensor was quite a task as it took some time to register a fingerprint. Definitely at this price, you can't expect more and it is certainly not the fastest. But again it is not too slow considering the price it has been announced at.

Display

Moving on, the 10.or D features a 5.2-inch HD display and our first reaction was that the display seemed pretty bright. The brightness levels were good and the colors look vibrant. Viewing angles are decent and talking about the visibility, it was great indoors. Do note that this is our initial thoughts. We will be giving our full ratings in the full review later on.

Under the Hood

Under the hood, the smartphone is powered by by a Snapdragon 425 SoC clocked at 1.4GHz which is further paired with 3GB of RAM (our unit). The initial experience with the smartphone was smooth. No such noticeable lags and opening apps were snappy but it is not as fast as the other smartphones. It operates at a decent speed. The good thing though is that the smartphone offers stock Android experience. It runs on Android Nougat 7.1.2.

With regards to the batttery backup, the smartphone comes with a large 3500mAh battery and according to Amazon it will provide up to 2 days of battery life, 70 hours of MP3 playback time, 10 hours of Web browsing, and up to 25 hours of talk time. We are yet to test this aspect out. But that's a good battery size for a budget smartphone.

Cameras

Imaging comes next, 10.or D is equipped with a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. After taking few pictures, the overall result was okay. The pictures come out good when there is sufficient lighting. But again since this is a budget device you get what you pay for. That being said, the camera app comes with several shooting modes, filters and a lot of options are provided in the settings page which helps to adjust the camera as per your requirements. In any case, we'll talk more about the cameras in our detailed review.

Crafted for Amazon Product

As this is a "Crafted for Amazon" product, the phone does come with a few Amazon apps like Kindle and Prime Video, which are non-removable. You don't have to worry though, these apps don't take up a lot of storage space. Besides, if you have an Amazon account or have a membership, this smartphone makes it easy to access Amazon's service using the apps.

Conclusion

All in all this phone seems quite promising. While the design remains the same, it does come with decent specs and features considering the price point. The fingerprint sensor and the 3500mAh battery is a good addition too. The most enjoyable part of this smartphone though is the software part as it delivers a fluid performance with the stock Android.

A detailed review of the handset will be coming in few days, so do stay tuned to Gizbot.