Tenor D is a new brand in the country and Tenor E and Tenor G phones have already been launched. The new Tenor D smartphone has been launched under the ‘Crafted for Amazon’ program, regarding which Amazon says that under this, the best products are made as per the needs of the customers. Tenor D will be available exclusively on Amazon India and its price starts at Rs 4,999. The phone will go on sale in early January. The price of the phone is low, so 10.or will get a tough challenge from Xiaomi Redmi 5A (Review). Xiaomi has marketed Redmi 5A as the country’s smartphone. And this smartphone, which was launched for Rs 5,999, is being sold for Rs 4,999 for the first fifty lakh customers. Now if your budget is limited and you are looking for a smartphone, is the Tenor D a capable device? We have done a detailed review of this device. Let us know in the review whether it meets your expectations?
Tenor D’s design
Talking about the design, Tenor D is a simple designed handset and there is nothing that can be called special in it. The company has used plastic and a metallic finish has been given on the rear panel. This smartphone is available in Beyond Black and Aim Gold color variants. We had the gold review unit which has gold on the front and you can choose the black variant which has a more sober look as per your preference.
The Tenor D has a 5.2-inch screen with thick bezels at the top and bottom. A selfie camera, earpiece grill and notification LED are provided at the top of the screen. This phone doesn’t have an ambient light sensor, so you’ll have to manually adjust the brightness all the time. There is empty space below the screen and the phone uses on-screen navigation buttons instead of capacitive buttons.
We found the phone to be easy to hold with one hand due to its compact size, curved edges and curved edges. There are buttons on the right side while the power button on the device is placed above the volume rocker button. It takes some effort to reach the power button. The Tenor D has a fingerprint scanner on the rear and very few smartphones in this price range have this feature.
The thickness of the smartphone is 9.98 mm and weight is 150 grams, due to which it seems heavier than Xiaomi Redmi 5A. The Tenor D has a SIM tray slot on the left side that can be used for two nano SIMs and a microSD card. The micro-USB port, primary microphone is at the bottom while the secondary microphone and 3.5mm headphone jack are at the top. A loudspeaker is provided at the rear of the phone. A 5-watt charger is available with the Tenor D but headphones will not be available in the box.
Tenor D specifications and software
Now we have to see what we get in Tenor D. The phone has a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 processor which clocks at 1.4 GHz. The phone is available in two variants of 2 GB RAM / 16 GB storage and 3 GB RAM and 32 GB storage. We got the 3GB RAM variant for review, which is priced at Rs 5,999 and the lower RAM variant is available for Rs 4,999. Storage can be expanded via microSD card up to 128 GB.
The 5.2-inch IPS display has a resolution of 720×1280 pixels but no resolution. The panel has good contrast and great viewing angles. The Tenor D doesn’t have an ambient light sensor which means the brightness will have to be adjusted every time you go out and come inside. Compared to the Redmi 5A, the phone has a larger 3500 mAh battery.
Talking about software, the Tenor D runs on stock Android 7.1.2 Nougat and comes with many apps pre-installed. You get the Tenor Care app, Amazon Shopping, Amazon Kindle, Amazon Prime Video, and a sound recorder app. Apart from the option to schedule off and on, the settings are unchanged compared to stock Android. Tenor says that this device will be upgraded to Android Oreo which is very good considering the low price.
Tenor of performance, cameras and battery life
There’s no doubt that the Tenor D has attractive hardware for its price. We found that the phone runs without any issues. Our 3GB RAM unit had an average of 1.5GB of RAM free. But it takes time to load apps and games on the phone. This smartphone supports 4G and VoLTE but only one SIM card will support 4G network at a time. We found that the fingerprint scanner provided in the phone is quite accurate but it takes some time to unlock the phone.
Talking about benchmarks, we got decent figures. The battery life of the phone is also good and we could use the phone for a whole day without charging. In our HD video loop test, the phone’s battery lasted 12 hours, 26 minutes.
The Tenor D has a 13-megapixel camera on the rear and a 5-megapixel camera on the front. The camera app is basic. The camera is set to auto scene detection by default while you can choose from several modes manually. Apart from this you have modes like panorama and beautification. The camera has face detection mode by default and it works well.
We found that the photos taken from both the cameras of the phone are usable. And looking at them, it seems that they are taken from an affordable handset as the edges look blurry. In daylight, we found landscape shots to be lacking in detail and, in our opinion, quite ugly. The camera detects exposure late and locks focus slowly. There is decent detailing in macro shots but sometimes there is a need to set the focus. The camera struggles in low light. The quality of photos taken at night is not usable. There is less noise in the phone but in return there is a lack of detailing. Overall, the cameras are one of the phone’s shortcomings.
our decision
The performance of Tenor D is quite good considering the price. The phone has powerful hardware and runs stock Android well. But like other devices in this price range, the camera performance is not good. However, compared to Redmi 5A, this phone is a better option due to the fingerprint sensor.