The K10 offers a decent set of features for the price, but the cameras could have been better
HIGHLIGHTS
• The K10 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 SoC
• It has a 5,000mAh battery with support for 33W fast charging
• The OPO K10 has a 50-megapixel main camera.
OPO has launched quite a few budget-friendly K-series smartphones in China over the years, and it's now introducing this series in India, starting with the OPO K10. This smartphone will sit alongside OPO recently launched A-series offerings such as the A96 and A76. Some of the K10's highlight features include an IP54 rating for dust and water resistance, a scratch-resistant design, and some camera enhancements. The OPO K10 in India boasts of modest specifications, quite the contrary to what was rumored not too long ago. The sub-Rs. 20,000 smartphone segments are flooded with a tonne of great options that offer 5G, high-resolution cameras, incredibly fast charging, stereo speakers, and even IP-rated bodies for weather resistance. Can the OPO K10 keep up with the onslaught from its Chinese brethren? Let's find out.
OPO K10 price in India
The OPO K10 is available with either 6 GB or 8 GB of RAM. The former option is priced at Rs. 14,990 in India, while the latter is priced at Rs. 16,990. Both variants feature 128 GB of storage. The phone is available in Black Carbon and Blue Flame colors.
OPO K10 design
Despite being built for a lower budget, I think OPO has done a decent job in making the K10 look and feel relatively upmarket. I quite like the bright and playful look of the blue version of this phone. The frame of the chassis has a matte finish, and so does the majority of the back panel. The smooth texture of the back resists fingerprints very well. I even tried scratching the surface vigorously with my fingernail to test OPO's claims, and it didn't leave any marks. The OPO K10 should do just fine with everyday use, even if you choose not to use, a case. The rectangular camera module bears a striking resemblance to the one on the OPO A76, but features an additional textured area around the camera bump, spanning the width of the phone. There are some inscriptions here that read Super Performance and '10-K'. The latter one baffles me, since I initially assumed it was a reference to the name of the phone, but OPO says it's just part of the design.
The OPO K10 has a headphone jack on the bottom. There's a bottom-firing speaker. But the earpiece doubles as a second one for stereo sound. A fingerprint sensor is integrated into the home button. You get a 6.59-inch display with a full-HD+ (2412x1080) resolution and a 90Hz refresh rate. It's a pretty standard looking panel, with decent brightness and colors. There's a cutout for the selfie camera, which is a nice modern touch. There's no missing the thick black bezels that wrap around the entire display, though.
The OPO K10 ships with a good set of accessories, including a transparent case and a 33W Supermoon charger. The case in particular is of good quality and affords ample protection for the edges of the display, rear cameras, and ports. It also offers better grip, as the K10's smooth finish can be slippery.
OPO K10 specifications and software
IP54 certification is a nice feather in the K10's cap, since most of the competition has IP53 certification at best. While the OPO K10 is on the same playing field as the rest when it comes to dust protection, it should be more resilient to splashes of water.
OPO has used a Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 SoC for the K10. It doesn't support 5G but is decently powerful and can also be found in phones such as the Real me 9i (Review) and Redmi Note 11. Along with it, you get the usual wireless connectivity such as dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5, GPS, and FM radio. The K10 has a 5,000mAh battery, which is quite capacious, and it can be charged quickly with the bundled 33W fast charger. This phone has a dedicated micros card slot in the SIM tray, and supports up to 1 TB storage expansion, The OPO K10 joins the long list of OPO phones waiting to get Android 12. The K10 ships with Color OS 11.1, which is based on Android 11. There are plenty of preinstalled apps, but most of them can be uninstalled. Some apps from OPO such as Theme Store and Game Space were a bit spammy with their notifications. OPO hasn't promised any long-term OS updates for the K10, so it's hard to say if it will be updated beyond Android 12. OPOK10 performance and battery life.
The 6 GB variant of the OPO K10 that I tested worked very well during the review period. General usage was always snappy, and the fingerprint sensor never failed. There's face recognition too, which worked well even in low light. The K10 has a RAM expansion feature, which is set to 2 GB by default, and I never really felt the need to increase this (up to 5 GB of storage can be allocated as RAM).
Videos looked and sounded good on the OPO K10's display and speakers. The left and right audio channels aren't evenly balanced, as the primary speaker sounds much louder than the earpiece, but it's better than having no stereo sound at all. The display doesn't wash out too badly under sunlight, so content is legible.
Gaming performance was also decent, although most heavy titles such as Asphalt 9: Legends and Call of Duty: Mobile didn't look their best, with noticeable aliasing and flicker around the edges of objects. The visuals in Call of Duty improved a bit after increasing the graphics fidelity to very high, but most of the advanced graphics settings were unavailable.
OPO K10 cameras
The OPO K10 boasts of a 50-megapixel main camera, along with two others for depth and macrophotography. Unfortunately, you don't get an ultra-wide camera, which is a big miss. I would have gladly traded the two 2-megapixel cameras for a decent ultra-wide. It's not just the K10; we've seen many recent models such as the Real me 9 5G (Review) ditch ultra-wide cameras altogether. There's a 16-megapixel camera in the front for selfies. The camera app is fairly standard and is similar to what we've seen on other recent OPO phones. The K10 does have some features that I haven't come across earlier, such as AI Palette. You'll find this in the Edit menu of the photo gallery, and it essentially allows you to apply a different color tone to your photo, either from some presets or by using the color palette of another photo in your gallery. It should be useful for users who love editing their photos. There's an AI retouch slider in the camera app, which lets you adjust the intensity of beautification applied to people's faces for stills and video, but this only works with the rear camera. OPO Booked Flare Portrait filter is also present, which we've seen on OPO's Reno series. Under good light, the main camera is capable of capturing good-looking photos. The OPO K10 struggled a bit with exposure if the subject was in direct sunlight or was even slightly backlit, but otherwise, landscape shots looked decent. Close-ups taken outdoors fared much better. The macro camera was a bit of a mixed bag and didn't really offer much in terms of quality.
Low-light landscape shots retained good color, but detail was weak and objects lacked good definition. Light sources had a blooming effect which was fixed after switching to Night mode, however this didn't help improve detail. Close-ups looked better in low light.
Selfies turned out well when captured outdoors under ample lighting, and were saved at the full 16-megapixel resolution. Shots taken with Portrait mode, didn't have the best edge detection. Selfies taken in low light were average, as they generally lacked good details.
The OPO K10 can shoot videos at up to 1080p only, and that too without any stabilization. There's no special stability mode, either, even if you drop the resolution to 720p. In terms of quality, video was just about usable in daylight, but not great at night.
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