By Vivek Singh Chauhan,

New Delhi : Aiming to carve out a place for itself in India’s highly competitive mid-range smartphone market, TECNO Mobile, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Transsion Holdings, has introduced TECNO i5 Pro that offers solid battery back-up and a fairly decent camera. The phone is priced at Rs 12,990.

Apart from being budget-friendly and offering almost all features that other smartphones in the same range provide, TECNO i5 Pro has additional attributes like “rocket charging” that would make staying in touch much more convenient for people on the go.

Let’s see what works for the device.

As far as design is concerned, the device has chamfered edges with volume rocker and power button on the right bumper. A micro-USB charger port is placed at the bottom while a jack is placed on the top.

The device comes with a 4,000mAh battery that, after continuous usage including light gaming, surfing the Internet, along with music playback and moderate using for calling purposes, lasted for more than a day.

The 5.5-inch HD IPS display device has “rocket charging” technology that helps charge the device super fast. Our review smartphone was fully charged in an hour-and-a-half.

Another distinct feature is the 13MP rear shooter with auto-focus, quad-LED flash, f/2.0 aperture and 8MP front camera with LED flash.

With few editing features in the camera app, the photos taken by the rear camera in well-lit conditions were impressive. The 8MP selfie camera performance was above average.

The Tecno i5 Pro is powered by 1.44GHz quad-core MediaTek 6737T processor and it comes with 3GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage that can be expanded up to 128GB.

The device runs Android Nougat 7.0 with HiOS skin on top with less bloatware.

In comparision, Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 offers 4GB RAM and 64GB on-board memory at Rs 12,999.

What doesn’t work.

The fingerprint sensor has a weak response making the accessibility to applications difficult for users. We experienced lag when we opened several apps simultaneously.

The smartphone is a little difficult to operate with one hand.

Conclusion: With good battery back-up and camera quality, TECNO i5 Pro has a place in the sub-15,000 segment.

(Vivek Singh Chauhan can be contacted at vivek.c@ians.in)

—IANS