10.or E Review: Smooth Experience At An Affordable Price

10.or E Rear View

There have been many Chinese smartphone makers who have come to India in search of their next billion customers or users. While some of them succeed at this, some don’t. The latest entry in this segment is Huaqin Tehnology with their 10.or brand phones. We spent some time with the 10.or E phone and here is our review of this device

10.or E Rear View

Here are the key specifications of this phone

10.or E specs

10.or E specs2

Let’s begin with the design and feel. Right at the outset, it is very clear that the makers are not here to win any design awards. Neither are they here to make heads turn every time you pull the phone out of your pocket. Having said that, there really isn’t anything wrong with the design as such. It is a very practical design. The phone has the power button and the volume rocker on the right side and there are the SIM and microSD trays on the left. The rear camera is aligned with the fingerprint scanner on the back side and there is a flash alongside the camera. The logo is on the bottom end at the rear with a few regulatory messages. The color we got is the black one. It had a matte finish on the rear that was pretty fingerprint resistant. So all in all, a very practical design that fits into one hand and works without discomfort. It isn’t heavy to hold.

The phone has a 5.5 inch Full HD IPS display with 2.5D glass. Given the price at which the phone is being sold, this is a very big plus. It has Gorilla Glass 3 protection for the wear and tear or scratches that the surface might have to go through in day to day usage. It has a brightness of 400 nits and when set on  adaptive brightness, it delivered very legible and readable output under sunlight and otherwise too.

It is powered by an Octa Core Snapdragon 430 processor that is supported by an Adreno 505 GPU. We got the 3GB RAM and 32GB ROM version of the device to review. Performance-wise, there wasn’t much to complain about the phone. It came with Android Nougat 7.1.2 out of the box and the manufacturers have guaranteed that it will get the upgrade to Android Oreo later this year. We tried average multi-tasking and did not see major issues with the phone. There wasn’t any noticeable stutter or lag when loaded reasonably. The performance under heavy gaming was a tad bit on the underwhelming side. There were some frame drops that were seen. But given the price range and the target segment that this phone is positioned at, that is to be expected and hardly anything to complain about.

The phone does not have any major heating issues that were seen, it was running well even when loaded. The 4000 mAH battery stood it in good stead for a day and a few hours. We threw in a heavy mix of 4G, WiFi, Social Media and multimedia and go around 15 hours on a single charge.

The call quality on Indian networks was fine, there weren’t any call drops or quality issues. The speaker was okay with music, the higher notes were a bit distorted and sounded better using headphones. The other sensors worked fine without any issues. VoLTE calls were fine on the Jio network and there weren’t any issues. The fingerprint scanner on the rear was fast and reliable. The unlocking from locked dark screen was very fast using the fingerprint scanner

Let us talk about the cameras on this phone. There is a 13 MP rear sensor and the front camera is a 5 MP one. On paper, it is nothing to write home about. But when we used the camera we felt that given the price range and the people that the camera is targeted at, it practical and stands up to the task well. The full light and sunlight photos were okay and there wasn’t any noticeable color distortion. The reds were okay and the contrast was fine. Low light photos were not vivid enough. The LED flash on the rear was more a miss than a hit. The front camera was adequate for selfies and video calls. There’s also a front flash. Here are a few pictures we took with the phone.

The phone runs on Android Nougat and there is very minimal bloatware. It also comes with key Amazon apps pre-loaded: Amazon shopping, Prime Video and Kindle apps and a deals widget with unique access to Amazon deals of the day. All of this tied together with single sign on (SSO) during Out of Box (OOBE) experience. We guess this is not as bad as the tons of bloatware that other brands push with their devices.

Verdict

When we first got the phone and looked at the fact that price is at 7,999 for the 2GB/6 GB version and 8,999/- for the 3GB/32GB version, we weren’t expecting much from the device. our review ended up pleasantly surprised. Overall experience was very good and not much to complain about. This one will definitely hit a note with the Indian budget buyers

About Shakthi

I am a Tech Blogger, Disability Activist, Keynote Speaker, Startup Mentor and Digital Branding Consultant. Also a McKinsey Executive Panel Member. Also known as @v_shakthi on twitter. Been around Tech for two decades now.

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