10.or (Tenor) D: At ₹ 4,999, this one's a steal

10.or (Tenor) D: At ₹ 4,999, this one's a steal





The Indian smartphone market is not the best place to be Brands like Xiaomi has taken the race to a new level, which has brands and OEMs getting out of their comfort zones to win buyers. It looks like we have now a new competitor in the sub-Rs 5,000 smartphone price range in India.

10.or (pronounced tenor) is back with a third smartphone called 10.or D, which takes on budget rivals in India like Xiaomi Redmi 5A. The handset was unveiled in India on Wednesday and its price was revealed on Thursday. Interested buyers will have to wait until January 5 for the sale of the handset.

10.or is a qualified competitor in India's budget smartphone segment for one more reason, but the biggest one is the price tag. The handset comes in two variants - 2GB RAM + 16GB storage and 3GB RAM + 32GB storage - costing Rs 4,999 and Rs 5,999.

IBTimes India got the higher-end version of the phone for review, and here are the first impressions of the new-launched phone.

Design

If you've seen the 10.or E and 10.or G, you'll find very close resemblance in 10.or D. The smartphone comes in a plastic unibody design with rounded corners for a better grip. A rear-mounted fingerprint scanner sits just below the primary camera and the speaker is placed on the rear bottom.
On the front, there is a 5.2-inch display, which is surrounded by bezels all around. The front camera is located at the top next to an earpiece.

Surprisingly, there is no visible proximity sensor to turn on the screen, but we will test for that in our review.

10. or D comes with on-screen navigation buttons
The SIM card tray with two micro SIM card slots and a dedicated microSD card is available on the left and on the right side of the power button and volume controls.
It is the power button placed on the volume controls, but that's something all 10.or phones have - at least till now. A 3.5mm headphone jack was found at the top and a micro USB port.

Display
The 5.2-inch display is quite compact and offers a good grip on single hand. The resolution is set at 1280x720 pixels, which is the most likely to use both indoors and outdoors.
The screen also manages to keep fingerprint smudges at bay, but it can not avoid them.

Performance
It's too soon to end on the performance of the device, but given the fact that it uses the Snapdragon 425 chipset and 3GB RAM with stock Android 7.1.2, we have little doubt on any lags for minimal use.
We did not experience any problems or issues with the UI, but we will be testing the phone under extreme conditions to see if 10.or survives or gives in. The 16GB storage in the base model and 32GB on the high-end one suffice, but the dedicated microSD card slot helps a lot.
Under the hood, the phone packs a 3,500mAh battery, which sounds impressive The company is a promising two-day battery.

Fingerprint scanner
Given the phone's price, we were able to see a fingerprint scanner. So we quickly set up our biometrics to test out 10.or D'fingerprint scanner. We were not too amazed or disappointed
It takes longer than usual to set up and when it was done, it worked with great levels of accuracy.

The company claims 0.3 seconds to unlock, but we noticed the lag while waking up the phone using the fingerprint scanner.

But even if 10.or D's fingerprint scanner is late, it is through
Camera
The camera is too much to offer.

The 13MP rear camera does a decent job of capturing images, but do not go looking for details and true colors under artificial lighting. The selfies seem reasonable for a smartphone with a 5MP sensor.


But it's worth considering the phone comes in an affordable package, so expecting a lot.
Verdict

The 10.or D sale starts on January 5, exclusively on Amazon India. We will be completing our review of the phone before then and will give our final verdict
But our initial impressions of the 10.or D give us a good prospect for those who are upgrading from feature to smartphones.

Is it better than Xiaomi Redmi 5A and similarly-priced phones? We hope you find out about our upcoming review.