As you can see, there is no shortage of good smartphones in the budget segment and all of these phones have their own specialty. Will LG’s new offering be able to make its place in this crowd? Today we will learn in LG’s 10 LTE review.
Look and design
The thing that first attracts attention in this smartphone is its glossy peble design. There is no sharp line on the phone’s body. The rear cover is textured. This phone with round designs can be caught in a convenient manner in hand. The phone is quite light and it also weighs only 142 grams with batteries.
The K10 LTE has a 5.3-inch HD in-cell display that makes the text and photos look crisp. The protective glass of the phone is not a screen-proof, so the phone already comes with the screen guard. However, this screen guard does not cover the entire part. Colors look good on the screen and the display can be easily read in sunlight. When changing the ambient light, the phone reacts slightly slow and there may be some trouble in the transition. There is no notification LED in the phone.
The phone has the headphone socket and micro-USB ports at the bottom and the power and volume button is on the rear, which is LG’s signature style. We found the volume button of the phone a little soft because we accidentally pressed them several times while running the phone. Texture rear cover gives a good grip to the phone. We can say that today LG’s 10 LTE is the most beautiful phone in the budget plastic phone available in the market. Our Indigo color variant is fantastic to see the review unit but you can also choose white and gold tomorrow.
On buying 10 LTE of LG, you get 4.3 watt charger, USB cable, headset and flip case together. With this case, you can see basic notifications like weather, battery life and time and date in the phone. The quality of the case is fine but the second accessory can be said to be better.
Specification and software
LG has introduced several variants of this smartphone for various markets. The 10 LTEs launched in India have a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor. The phone has 2 GB RAM. Despite being old, it is a strong processor but today it can be said to be a little old due to Snapdragon 615 or 616 processor coming at a price less than Rs 10,000. The internal storage is 16 GB which can be increased to 32 GB with the help of microSD card.
LG’s 10 LTE supports 4G on the first sim with VoLTE on Indian band. While the second SIM supports 3G data SIM. It is also not easy to change the instant sim in the phone. If you remove a SIM or put another SIM, the phone will have to be rebooted. Other features for connectivity such as Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.1, FM radio and GPS are also present. The phone also does not have fingerprint sensor, NFC and USB OTG support.
The phone launched in India will come with Android 5.1 variants while some of its variants are expected to come to Android Marshmallow. It is expected that OTA updates will be received soon in Indian variants. The phone has LG’s custom user interface which is good to use. The K10 LTE has a traditional app drawer entface. An additional button, notification shed and SIM switcher given to take a screenshot with Android navigation strip given below can be customized.
This LG smartphone can be customized well. You can replace lockscreen and homescreen animation. You can include a new theme from the Smartworld App. Double tap can activate or lock the screen. The notification shed has togle switches, brightness and volume slider. Like LG’s expensive phone, it does not have floating apps but if you are using an app, you will get floating notifications when you get a call.
In the setting app, sub-manue can be viewed like a tab, which made us find it easier to navigation. Talk about the pre-install app, the file manager, LG backup, QuickMeo+ (which can be sinked with Google calendar), remotecal service and task.
Performance
Due to its easy and light UI, we get 1.4 GB RAM empty almost all the time for the app. The normal performance of the phone was good. However, we had some trouble going from one app to another and bringing the notification shed down. There is no problem in call quality on 4G network in the phone. Stock LG keyboard is also convenient to use. Flip cover makes the phone a bit heavy but without it 10 LTE gets very easily fit in the pocket. We liked this specialty of the phone. Due to the quite plastic around the screen, it is not always possible to use the phone with one hand.
LG’s 10 LTE has no problem in playing high-wibrate video files. But the phone does not support all audio codes. Even with MX Player, we could not play AC3 audio during file testing. The music player does not support ‘Flack’. The headset that comes with the phone is very spectacular for voice calls but the media is fine for playback. Apart from this, earbud is also not very convenient. The rear speaker for alert is very loud but it is also not very good for music.
K10 LTE has a 13 -megapixel rear camera and 5 megapixel front camera. The rear camera captures fine landscape and macro photos in daylight. The focus and photos are gently covered and the camera slows down in low light. In good light, the colors and details in the macro shot are better than the landscape, but the pictures and videos taken in low light are less detailing and the quality also falls. And when zoomed, this deficiency in pictures is clearly visible. The front camera does not bring much good pictures.
We got to see both good and bad things in LG’s camera app. You will have an option for the shutter button and on the other side the settings will be seen in the viewfinder either you have to remove them. A picture can be taken anywhere.
Talking about settings and shooting mode, the camera app does not have much option. The app has timer and voice or gesture trigger to take selfies. However, there are also no common filters such as HDR and panorama mode. This makes it difficult to take wide landscape photos in the phone.
battery life
The 2300 mAh battery given in LG’s 10 LTE supported our video loop test for 10 hours and 24 minutes which can be said to be good. Due to lack of quick charge technology in the phone, you may have to wait long to have a complete charge of the phone. In half an hour, the phone is charged only about 16 percent. According to today’s standard, this charging speed cannot be said to be good at all. The good thing is that the phone does not end quickly during normal use. We were able to run the phone easily for a day even during the use of 4G and Wi-Fi.
Our decision
LG has priced K10 LTE at Rs 13,750, which is high according to all these specifications and features. It seems that the phone will not be able to compete and it is difficult to justify this price with these features in mid -2016. Apart from the design, good screen and great battery life of the phone, there is nothing special in the phone to call this price right.
If LG is expecting the success of the phone in India, then there is a need to improve the price of 10 LTE.